Nick Szabo (inventor of bit gold) about the block size

[SpaceMonkey]

We could get into the whole block size issue because there is a parameter we shouldn’t but I probably will talk about it a little bit. There’s a there’s a technical security parameter called the block size how the general public glommed onto this I do not know. But there’s there’s an obsessive group of people who think of this as some kind of artificial barrier to more transactions per second on Bitcoin. Really it’s it’s job is it’s it’s a fence preventing people from overwhelming flooding the network with lots of transactions that the full nodes I talked about can’t handle that that transaction history keeps building and building.

Yeah I mean this shouldn’t even be a public debate. It’s like the public debating and voting on the Grafite reactors that are Grafite things settings that prevent a nuclear reactor from overheating and melting down let them debate the issue. Yeah. There are certain things you should let the engineers decide. And this is one of them. And for some reason there’s just a whole group of people who want to want to pull out those graphite moderator rods and have it going full steam.

-Nick Szabo (inventor of bit gold, which is a direct precursor to bitcoin)

https://medium.com/@giftedproducts/cryp ... a99d037e04

[rizzlarolla]

We could get into the whole block size issue because there is a parameter we shouldn’t but I probably will talk about it a little bit. There’s a there’s a technical security parameter called the block size how the general public glommed onto this I do not know. But there’s there’s an obsessive group of people who think of this as some kind of artificial barrier to more transactions per second on Bitcoin. Really it’s it’s job is it’s it’s a fence preventing people from overwhelming flooding the network with lots of transactions that the full nodes I talked about can’t handle that that transaction history keeps building and building.

Yeah I mean this shouldn’t even be a public debate. It’s like the public debating and voting on the Grafite reactors that are Grafite things settings that prevent a nuclear reactor from overheating and melting down let them debate the issue. Yeah. There are certain things you should let the engineers decide. And this is one of them. And for some reason there’s just a whole group of people who want to want to pull out those graphite moderator rods and have it going full steam.

-Nick Szabo (inventor of bit gold, which is a direct precursor to bitcoin)

https://medium.com/@giftedproducts/cryp ... a99d037e04

WTF? You just quote any old shlte, without checking readability?
Makes no sense at all you dork. If you think Bitcoin will be swayed by this BS (bullshit, not blockstream) you are mistaken.

[vanityaddrs]

I accept the argument that this isn't well suited to public debate; what I take issue with are supercilious positions that offer no reasoning. The analogy is good, but still little or no reasoning is offered for why a block size increase would necessarily be catastrophic aside from the constant assertion that it would flood the network.

I think not listening to intelligent specialists like Szabo is a really bad idea; but constant appeals to authority like "Szabo said this or that" isn't logical or convincing.

It seems that Chinese miners control perhaps close to 50% of the hash power, or maybe more, with a disadvantage of limited bandwidth. Block chain design doesn't naturally lend itself to scaling obviously and easily either. So there you go. Two good reasons for no "arbitrary block size increase." The security mindset that panics at the thought have a point, too. Same for those who see dust spamming the network.

So rejecting the block size increase appears more straightforward than opponents would have everyone believe. It's not good enough to just say "changing this parameter in the code is stupid and simplistic."