One of the weird and sometimes hard to notice effect of this type of thing is the boiling frogs see this and they say something like, "Gosh, I can't believe this is happening here and there. What should we do? We don't want this to become the new normal. We don't want this to grow." But the reality is this is normal and this is where we are. It is a fully fanged dystopia. And just because you can walk to the park today, or go to the grocery store this evening, doesn't change that fact. View quoted note →

I believe this is the only time anywhere that I've seen the core argument or reasoning spelled out clearly in the form of a bullet list with no fallacious arguments, no ad hom, no childish name calling or unnecessary drama. There will be great giant lessons to learn from this whole thing, but I doubt whether some of the people involved are capable of learning them. View quoted note →

@Adam Back has been even, logical, frank, and professional all throughout the incredibly contentious #datacarrier debate. He has stood his ground. Refined and even shifted his thoughts along the way. I think his involvement has been hindered and his reputation tarnished by two things out of his control. First, the astonishing level of black/white thinking on both sides. Binary thinking is a strong temptation for (even brilliant) people since it seems to simplify arguments and clarify a position. But in complex issues like this it is nearly never accurate or helpful. This is one reason Back's arguments have confused many. He argues from nuance. This alienates his position from many participants. Second, combined with the above the formation of polar factions has resulted in communication styles that have leaned into passionate and often dehumanizing language words like "retarded, low IQ, enemy, compromised" and so on have reduced the conversation to a non productive lowest common denominator. So each side demonizes those who disagree with them while exalting their own positron and "virtue" FAR too much. "Cyphetpunks/knights, saviors, devs (an exalted position)" and so on. All with vicious mockery of the other side. The childish namecalling brats who have taken center stage for their tribe have drowned out the people with reasoned, gentle arguments and done actual damage to their reputations by proxy.. Not just Back but many level headed folks. Bitcoin will survive this. And the adults in the room will recover their reputations and the damage done to their businesses. It will be harder for those who acted like spoiled children though. And that is just. In the end we are guilty of putting people on pedestals. We use "Don't trust, verify" as a virtue signaling bumper sticker when we SHOULD be concentrating on what misplaced trust can do... And concentrating on VERIFYING our positions OURSELVES rather that raising the flag of a tribe.

The maple kind? Yeah?

Here is one interesting way to look at the fact that small changes can introduce ripples that are so big that they change the course of #Bitcoin. Laszlo Hanyecz (that's right, the pizza guy) wrote the first GPU minor, very early in Bitcoin's life. Satoshi bristled at this because he could see that this was going to cause game theoretical changes. And it did. You can make the argument that it began to centralize mining, which then centralized further at the introduction of application-specific devices. And this meant that people without a farm of GPUs or specialized hardware weren't going to find blocks in a time frame that would make mining even worth it. So now you have mining pools showing up. This would enable smaller hash-rate miners to be able to collect Bitcoin in a time frame that wasn't super long. @Luke Dashjr was actually instrumental in founding one of the very first mining pools. Eligius. This meant that there were suddenly two kinds of Bitcoin nodes. People who were mining and therefore adding blocks, and then all of the other nodes that may not be mining but are still checking consensus and keeping the network alive and decentralized. So now consensus and standardness are actually handled by two different groups in a sense. Consensus is governed by everyone who runs a node. Thus, UASF was born. But ultimately, people that control hashrate are the ones that can add blocks to the chain, and therefore the standardness rules are followed by (or overridden by) them exclusively. (obviously, there is nuance here with non-mining nodes still having something to do with the mempool and standardness, but a different relationship, for sure.) And this distinction is fundamental to the current drama as compared to the block size wars. So, one night a guy was munching on some pizza and figured out that he might be able to mine more efficiently using a graphics card and wrote a miner that would use GPUs to hash. He made no changes to the code that Bitcoin runs on. He made no changes to consensus rules or standardness. And yet, arguably, he changed the course of Bitcoin and led us to exactly where we are today. So, if someone tells you that a small change to Bitcoin is sure not to matter? What you CAN be sure of is that person that's foolish enough to make that statement. ❤️ #btc #opreturn #op-return #datacarrier #knots #core #tiring

I started to write a long story about what I am seeing. But decided to just boil it down. Bitcoin since 2011. We are losing touch with: "DON'T TRUST, VERIFY". It might be on tshirts... But we are letting it slip from our hearts. #trust #sovereignty #wakeup