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Comment by bb88 | Hacker News Reader

I don't speak for HN, but why do bitcoin proponents always assume people to be ignorant on a website with some of the smartest people on the planet? I've never got this, and never will.

No offense, but it's the most incurious form of argument on a website dedicated to curiosity.

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I don't think your original comment was curious but had a snarky tone and demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the history of Bitcoin and what has been tried. As GP pointed out, it's not as simple as miners choosing to follow a different consensus algorithm or block size because you also need to convince the rest of the network (or 51% of it at least) to follow these new rules. Immense amount of effort is put into Bitcoin improvement proposals to make changes to the network while keeping the protocol compatible with older versions of it.

I think your own ignorance of Bitcoin's history is showing. Centralized decision-making saved Bitcoin.

"On March 11, 2013, Bitcoin experienced a technical crisis. Versions 0.7 and 0.8 of the software diverged from each other in behavior due to a bug, causing the block chain to “fork” into two.

The optimal course of action (and, in retrospect, the only one that avoided serious risks to the system) was first proposed and justified 16 minutes later, and the developers reached consensus on it a mere 20–25 minutes after that. Shortly thereafter — barely an hour after the discovery of the fork — the crisis response had effectively and successfully concluded.

Without the central co-ordination of the Bitcoin Core developers and the strong trust that the community places in them, it is inconceivable that adopting this counterintuitive solution could have been successfully accomplished."

[1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-...

I think there is a major difference between consensus-breaking bug which unites the community in adopting a new change and a BIP which proposes a change to the network and modifies the consensus rules. But I fully agree with you that it is possible to reach a consensus about some change to the protocol but as the network grows it becomes harder and harder.

Secondly, this is 9 years ago and the Bitcoin network has grown quite a bit since then, meaning back then it was quite a bit smaller undertaking in getting the majority of the network to adapt the bug fix than it would be today. The core developers are also very paranoid about introducing these bugs which you can see for yourself by browsing the open PRs and verifying that anything that even remotely touches the consensus code is very heavily scrutinized.

I think the only thing that matters is the miners. If the miners decide they want a change (like more total BTC to mine, or more BTC per transaction, or removing the difficulty halving) they'll fork it themselves and force everyone to move with them.

"Really nice bitcoins you have there, it would be a shame if a anyone did a 51% attack on them."

> but why do bitcoin proponents always assume people to be ignorant on a website with some of the smartest people on the planet?

Uh... because your comment is just straight up wrong?

For instance, miners don't have a vote or a say at all, unlike proof of stake systems. If a miner changes the consensus algorithm, that is forking bitcoin, but bitcoin itself goes on unchanged.

I was thinking the "smartest people on the planet" bit was at least misleading if not entirely wrong.

Of any significantly large site there will be a distribution of people for whatever reasons.

Who is to say who is "the smartest" ?

Your romantic view of this site is unfounded. At least the comment you complain about had an argument you can respond to. All you've done is tersely generalize.

I wish HN was a “website with some of the smartest people on the planet” where some meant >1%. It's clearly not.

Perhaps people from the industry so people that share lingo, but most people here are definitely not “smart”.

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