Topic: jgarzik goes berzerk in #bitcoin-dev, wtf? - page 4. (Read 29034 times)

I believe jgarzik was trying to avoid with his temporary ban was once eloquently quoted after Pearl Harbor:

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Isoroku Yamamoto, Gensui (Imperial Japanese Navy)

I think you show great self insight. You don't get defensive. I think you have a bright future.

Good post and I do get it. I don't like getting stuck in pissing contests or flamewars either, that's why I basically stopped posting after going back and forth with a couple of people in the beginning.

I didn't really think too much when I created this thread, I simply did it because I felt my friend had been wronged. Regardless of that, it has been a great learning process. The point was to take it to the jury and while the jury has been anything but unanimous and not exactly on topic, it has been fairly interesting anyway.

Personally I need to spend less time on the forums and it's not just about this forum. In general. I know other Bitcoin enthusiasts that have this problem as well. They have actual projects and businesses to run but they procrastinate by spending time writing about Bitcoin all over the Internet. It's marketing, true, but often it's not that effective.

This post itself is off topic by the way, and I'll stop right here.

More like ignoring several requests about how much noise was been made with the phone even though there was complete silence. By the way I do not use an iPhone so the bright white screen is not an issue here. As with the original assumption that all trade with Iran is illegal in the United States, not all phones generate a flood of white light when checking the time.

Fixed it for you.



I'm not sure this will even sink in with you, but it's something I've seen with a lot of developers. They're so hung up in the small details, that they have problems seeing the whole picture. The world is a complex, irrational place, where people sometime behave very irrational, and often opposite of how the developer would want it to work.

I also see this happening a lot online, people getting hung up in miniscule and 'unimportant' things that's counter productive for everyone.

It's important to think about who is delivering a message. Was it sathosi, was it jgarzik, was it gavin or was it some random 17-year old from his mothers basement. Who should we listen to, and who should we trust?

There's always more to an action than the immediate action itself. Humans are complex, and they have a belief system, they have values, opinions, feelings, their likes and dislikes.

Now, for the future, if anyone upsets you, and it's important for you to clear up the issue. Just wait a day or two, till your blood has stopped boiling, go out for a walk, anything but hammering the keyboard. Then find their contact information, e-mail them or ask them if they want to have a conversation with you on skype. You will be surprised about how accommodating most people will be as long as you ask nicely.

Now, if we take you as an example, if someone has a discussion with you, and then they somehow come to the conclusion that you're a total ass hat, I'm pretty sure you'll disagree with that. And often, people will base their assumptions and conclusion about you on a very fragile set of facts. Someone may even say they lost all and absolute respect for you because something you said, although it would look quite differently in another light, and if it was put into some sort of context and a framework for understanding.

So, if you asked jgarzik privately about why he kicked and banned (?) you from the channel, and why he is against bitcoins being used In Iran, when it from your point of view is a great thing, then he might as well have taken his time to answer you to the best of his abilities.

While some people just look at the things immediately in front of their nose (this seems to be very popular with social media), some people actually have visions and long term plans, and they see things in a greater picture. Sometimes foregoing something in the present is not because of cowardice or lack of spine, but because the end goal makes it a wise move.

For instance, a big army moving into a foreign country may have spotted an outpost of the enemy, and if they wanted to, they could strike it and kill everyone, which would be along the goal of most of the soldiers of that group, ie. kill the enemy, bring it on! Instead, they silently go past that outpost in a stormy night, and hit the main capital of the country, and take control of it. If they'd chosen to take the outpost first, it's quite likely that the outpost would alert back to the capital, and the element of surprise totally vanished. This is a far fetched example, but you get the point.

As a last word, don't get to worked up about what someone says or does on the internet in a few sentences or in a short action (like kicking and banning someone on an irc channel). I'm sure most upstanding people are in for a reasonable discussion if you talk to them nicely. Don't jump to conclusions, and don't let your emotions cloud your judgement.

You may notice that the 'greater' participants of this forum seldom indulge themselves in pissing contests, but the stay polite, and stick to the facts. If one get dragged into endless pissing contensts online, it's just a waste of time, and the same is getting upset about every small thing that doesn't go your way. In normal life, there's a shitload of things that may be irritating, but it's how we deal with these things that determines our own well being.

Let me take myself as an example, if I had a shitty day, I may not even have answered you back if you said 'hello'. In 85% of the cases, I would probably have responded to you though, and in the remaining cases, your gut reaction might have been: "What a complete ass!" When in fact it's far from the fact if you knew me. Sometime I just have enough minding my own business. And I think a lot of people are like this. We have good days, and we have bad days.

Bitcoin is a little like the Manhattan Project if it were open sourced. The banksters think they have the ultimate financial weapons in derivatives, but they don't know the power of cryptonium. As long as we keep talking with big words and avoid the scary words used by pundits, we should stay off their radar.

And ignore several requests noting how distracting that bright white screen on said phone actually is.

To use the movie theatre analogy what has happened here is more like someone taking out their phone to silently check the time and you telling them to STFU.

Thank you. I do strongly believe however that this ban needs to be lifted.

Context...

He's referring specifically to a single IRC room setup for developers to have technical discussions with other developers.  In that context, if you're not a developer, then yeah, STFU.  Yes I'm free to run my chatroom the way I want.  Plenty of other places, including plenty of other bitcoin-related IRC channels, to talk about such things.

The way people talk in this thread, if I'm having a dinner party and I kick someone out for telling extremely racist jokes, I'm abridging their freedom of speech.  If I'm at a movie theater, someone answers their phone and holds a loud conversation, and I tell them to STFU I'm destroying their freedom of speech.

This thread has been getting more off topic recently but I'm going to chip in with some final words. I'm a busy Bitcoin entrepreneur and I've used way too much time on this already but here are some conclusions based on the discussion.

I'm glad Jeff came here to explain himself and the explanation was decent, he has some respect back from me. I agree that it's important to be strategic and the issue is not black & white. That much I can agree with.

The ban itself I can't agree with, and I disagree with some people who think it was "no brainer" moderating decision. Personally I don't believe that any other op would've reacted the same way. Jeff clearly had a personal dislike of the subject. That is okay though, and it's the dev channel so the devs can essentially make the rules there.

I propose that the discussion over there is more strongly limited to development discussion so it's clear for everyone. Although in this particular case the ban was very questionable even if the rules were clear on that, because the discussion was moving from Iran in general to translating Bitcoin-Qt to Farsi, which is clearly a development issue.

All in all I think we're all in the same boat here and we want Bitcoin to succeed. We have different ideologies, different levels of risk we're willing to take for the sake of Bitcoin and different opinions on a lot of things.

What I can say is that this has been blown out of proportion on many levels. First of all the original issue is in my opinion not that much more serious compared to what Bitcoin is involved with already. Bitcoin is used in drug trade for at least 2 million dollars worth of bitcoins each month, probably more nowadays. Bitcoin in Iran, even though it is growing, is still a super niche.

For me the original frustration was more about the ban than anything else, the other stuff were differences in ideology which I don't see as that relevant. The issue about the ban was an issue about moderation and policies within the community. I don't have any experience of that btw, I'm a long time IRC user but I use different networks such as IRCNet. I have no experience of the official Bitcoin channels. I probably should come there though.

Finally, I would like to say that we need to prepare for the eventual heat. We don't want to invite the heat prematurely by our own actions, I completely agree with that. But we need to prepare for the heat. So I would listen to Jeff's advice and start running those full nodes more.

We also need more progress on decentralised exchanging, Bitcoin-otc and LocalBitcoins are very good starting points though. Thinking about what happens to Bitcoin if there is ever a crackdown on the dev team, is also something we should think about.

If I have offended anyone, including Jeff, I apologize about that. I don't want to burn bridges with anyone. I'm also doing this with my own name and I'm a Bitcoin entrepreneur full time, so I don't afford that.

Haven't there been quite some unrest in Iran, but if you express your unhappiness in the street, you might as well be imprisoned and vanish ? I've heard some really bad stories..

I never called you a coward. I merely stated that governments love cowards that do not challenge their authority. That is pretty much an undisputed fact of life.

While my username may be Daily Anarchist, it wouldn't take a genius to find out that my name is Seth King and the publisher of DailyAnarchist.com, so I'm hardly anonymous. Also, on Daily Anarchist I routinely broadcast my civil disobedience for all the world to see. Making anarchists out to look like jobless teenagers is disrespectful to a large part of the bitcoin community.

The hope is always that life will become uncomfortable enough for the population and businesses under economic sanctions that they'll revolt - with or without outside aid.  It doesn't always work out that way, of course.

The distinction you are making is an illusion. Corporations are creations of government. They exist because the government invented the concept of limited liability to shield them from the negative consequences of their actions, thus allowing them to grow artificially large.

You are correct, however...I am also simultaneously correct.

That is because in fascist countries, or countries that are heading towards fascism such as USA, big corporations and governments are working very closely together.

This assumes that the greatest threat to freedom actually comes from government. I would argue greatest threat to freedom in many cases actually come from big business in the private sector. 

There is a government official with an iPhone. Which of the two is the greater threat to freedom of speech the government official or the iPhone? I would make the case for the iPhone.

Actually, ArticMine, reading too much government documentation regarding sanctions on other nations is dangerous for your mental health. Take care!

...yet there are people even now, massively selling drugs (and were selling arms, but armory is closed ATM) for Bitcoin over the internet. Silkroad is the proof that what you are saying is false.

We already have the technologies to protect us from governments. Bitcoin is one of such technologies. We only need to reach for it and use it.

Also, you should watch Jay Rockefeller saying that "Internet should never have existed":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

They are NOT in complete control anymore, otherwise he wouldn't be so desparate to say it. And this shows they ARE afraid of us and of the Internet. We CAN win this.