● a preference for small blocks ("settlement system," upper layer scaling)



● a desire to stick with Core



● the reason that any token decentralization of development is incongruously sought through governance within Core (rather than competition among implementations - and why small blockists are always emphasizing forkwise compatible implementations, the reverse giving them heart attacks)



● a lack of concern about things like RBF



● why the centrally capped blocksize cannot be regarded as a temporary kludge



● even why Theymos would suddenly switch to censorship in spite of his libertarian politics and normally casual, hands-off demeanor​

Bitcoin was created. It attracted a bunch of people who thought, "This is awesome. Money that is democratically governed so that no central bankers can control it. We control it, through our consensus . We basically all have to agree for the rules to be changed. That is what makes it work."



"There is no need for governance besides just having a good neutral maintainer, which is just a clerical job, because the only things we need to change are block rules that we can - and have to anyway - all agree on, so we don't need competing implementations (except for robustness, and so "the code is the spec" is not a big deal). Decentralization of development is unimportant, because since we all have to be in agreement anyway, nothing silly can be forced on us; someone would veto it. Thus the maintainer's job is just a formality. This is what protects us from dangerous big blocks and changes to the 21M coin limit alike. Consensus is what makes Bitcoin tick. "



"Ah but there can be innovation and adaptiveness, too, because there are only some basic rules about block validity and everything else can be built on top. Large blocksize is pointless because it's just a settlement layer. It wouldn't even really help anything much in the long term, and there is potentially big decentralization risk. You can have your huge throughput, just use upper-layer solutions. It'll way outstrip any big block coin."



"The resulting artificial fee market driving people away to altcoins is no problem, because luckily LN and sidechains will soon be here to save the day. Plus any coin going the big-block route must fail eventually, even if it were to trump Bitcoin for a while among some fools."



"A stopgap measure in the meantime you say? Ethereum threatening to take over? Segwit will tide us over long enough. Plus we have the Bitcoin wizards. Their work can be forked, but we have the lead in network effect and the best crypto devs in the world, so no one can really ape us for long [and maybe we can obfuscate the code if necessary]."



"Fidelity effect? Delaying the next big rally? Patience, young Padawan. Even if there are big profits to be made in the short term by raising the cap, and even if an altcoin can take over, rushing ahead with kludgey on-chain scaling would be start down the path of doom. We could do it, but we should be disciplined and save it for an absolute last resort. If we lose a few investors in the meantime, we'll just buy up their cheap coins and they can buy them back at higher prices once they rush back in when LN is ready. In the end we have to just hope altcoins can't take over while we roll out the best tech in the business."



"Bitcoin Classic? It's an attack on Bitcoin and must be stopped at all costs! Because it would ruin strong consensus with its 75% threshold. Some of us can buy that 2MB would get us a little more breathing room as we wait for LN, but not at the cost of completely destroying Bitcoin, you dummies!"



"And XT? Horrifying! A sure death for Bitcoin as it locks in the path to 8GB. You say we can just fork again if we decide that's too big? No! Don't you realize that even if we somehow tragically got strong consensus for this because it was somehow pushed through by the unthinking Free Shit Army, what if we couldn't get strong consensus to stop it?? We'd be putting Bitcoin on a nearly irreversible course of doom. Anyway, hard forks need to be absolutely minimized, because each hard fork loses us precious credibility if we lose or piss off 5% of bitcoiners at a time even with 95% consensus. We definitely cannot be hardforking routinely and getting 'practice' at it like we practice our golf swing. Every hard fork is almost akin to mild genocide or triage."



"So you guys are fools to think you'll ever get this to slide by in the first place, but we'll censor you anyway because allowing anyone to trick the masses into this move, which sounds so reasonable but is really poison, would destroy the great protector of Bitcoin: rational strong consensus. Theymos hates censorship, but it's better than seeing Bitcoin die. He has declared a state of emergency, with special prohibitions on altcoin discussion and also any criticism of Core devs, because we need guidance from the experts during these dark times... all because of that traitor Mike Hearn and his populist protégé Gavin. This too shall pass." (The goalposts on "consensus" constantly shift because it was a subjective, probably partly subconscious assumption of people who were moved by this "democratic" approach.)



"Remember, all forks that change the block validation are altcoins. Sure they don't wipe the ledger clean like most altcoins, but they might as well do so because if people think of them as Bitcoin they threaten to destroy strong consensus, the very bedrock on which Bitcoin rests! But actually, if these altcoins gain enough support that a strong consensus of users want them, they become Bitcoin because essentially, strong consensus is Bitcoin." ( This is exactly what Theymos said when he started his censoring campaign. He said without consensus XT is an altcoin, but if it gets consensus it becomes the new Bitcoin whether he or other small blockists like it or not. It wasn't a rejection of XT so much as a rejection of its method, coupled with a sort of resigned disapproval of the scaling schedule itself. Had XT required 95% I don't think Theymos would have wanted to censor it, at least as long as it still wasn't that popular. He was against the method, because it destroys "Strongius Consensius, the god of Bitcoin.")

​

ForkiusMaximus is of course diametrically opposed to Strongius Consensius, but now he understands the internal logic of the worldview, how and why it holds together and mutually reinforces. His priors for "bad faith" and deliberate chicanery on the part of Core/BS/Theymos are now lower. The path to convince these people may be clearer. Strongius Consensius must be shown to be a false idol. The real story is much more fluid and robust, thankfully. (Gosh, this narrative even explains why many of the Strongius Consensius adherents are not very bullish. If I thought Bitcoin was that rigid and fragile, I wouldn't buy much BTC either.)

I'm glad to say I understand the strong-consensus view much better now, and also why it naturally pairs withThis is novel because before I had assumed these ideas go together mainly because of tribal affiliation and authority. "If you buy into the Core/BS sales pitch, you swallow it all." But in fact there seems to be a natural flow of one idea to the next, so that the pieces of the worldview are mutually reinforcing. There is also a special reason why authority from Core would hold undue sway.As most of us here had expected, it seems to stem from a lack of understanding of markets/money/investing/economics/politics and hyperfocus on code (except the realities of open source). However, within its framework of missing those nuances, the logic makes sense. This is the new thing I have learned from @jonny1000 . Let me sketch the story as I understand it (I know several of these don't reflect @jonny1000 's views):