What drives history forward is a small minority of people who "play for real"

Chapter 0 Introduction

What kind of power determines the direction of Bitcoin's expansion? Users, miners and developers, almost all of them want to expand the capacity, except for a small number of core dev developers. Most of the obstacles to hard fork expansion have been cleared, but why can't these few core dev developers get over it? I have been confused???

I read an article in Wan Weigang's Elite Day Class, which quoted an article by Taleb, "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority". This article analyzed a truth from the perspective of a philosopher, and made it clear that what drives history forward is never the "consensus of mainstream scholars" or the "democratic choice", but a small group of people who are particularly persistent in "playing for real".

After reading the articles by Wan Weigang and Tabubu, I was filled with emotion and realized that the size of Bitcoin blocks was locked by a few people who were determined to "play for real" and insisted on 1M blocks.

Chapter 1: History is driven forward by a small group of people who are particularly persistent in "playing for real"

In his article, Taleb first mentioned a concept called "skin-in-the-game". This short sentence means "one's own interests are involved", which means that one has spent real money on it. To say that you are "skin-in-the-game" in a certain field means that you are "playing for real". The corresponding concept is "the crowd eating melons" (people who watch the fun are jokingly called the crowd eating melons).

Taleb used this concept to express his core truth: there are too many people who just want to watch the show, and "playing for real" is a scarce quality, but it is the small group of people who possess the quality of "playing for real" that drive history forward.

Taleb explained his logic and gave some examples to prove his point. One of the examples is similar to what happened in China. Most beverage packages in the United States have a Jewish mark, which is similar to the "halal food" in our country. Many milk and food packaging boxes in our country are marked with the "halal food" mark. But in fact, the Han people occupy an absolute share of consumption. The Han people don't care about halal or not. This is very strange. Why should a small part be marked "halal"? Taleb said that there is no conspiracy here. The logic behind this situation is as follows:

This group of people only eat kosher food and refuse to eat anything else. They are "serious". (Some Hui people in our country also only eat food labeled "halal".)

This small group of people are distributed all over the country and are not concentrated in one place.

Merchants simply label things in their own way, which is not costly, and other people (the spectators) have no objections because they are not “serious” (just like when we Han people drink milk, we really don’t care whether there is a “Halal food” mark on it).

Merchants and the vast majority of consumers don't care, but a small number of "serious" people do care, so just follow their demands. There is no conspiracy or violence in this process. As long as this small group of people can firmly stick to their own opinions, everyone else will have to obey them in the end.

Taleb proposed a concept called "Renormalization group" to describe this phenomenon.

This phenomenon can be seen everywhere in our lives. For example, when I was in college, we were the first batch of students to move into a new campus. There was no halal restaurant in the cafeteria. A few days after reporting, several Hui students went to the principal's office to petition. As a result, a halal cafeteria was set up in an area of ​​the cafeteria. The number of people served was very small. There were more than 6,000 students in the group, and I think less than 50 were Hui. A large number of people with other dietary habits accepted this fact.

I used to work for a company that opened a branch in Wuxi. Most of the employees in the branch were from Wuxi. They spoke the Wuxi dialect in the office. But two of the employees came from Beijing, so the company made a rule that dialect was not allowed in the office. Most employees had to cooperate with the two colleagues from Beijing and speak Mandarin.

There are also public facilities dedicated to people with disabilities.

There are also sensitive Internet words that are unique to our country, which are the work of a small number of civil servants.

Taleb applied this logic to the fields of politics and religion and found that it was no match.

Chapter 2 The Bitcoin block is locked by a few people who are determined to "play for real"

In fact, most of the three groups in the Bitcoin ecosystem, users, miners and developers, advocate for expansion, no matter how big it is, they all advocate for expanding the 1M block. However, the developers of the Bitcoin Core wallet, the ones with the most say, advocate retaining the 1M limit, and they are "serious". I wrote the code, so I won't change it.

To what extent are these Bitcoin Core devs really "playing for real"? Their number is less than 150, which meets the famous "Dunbar number". They have stable financial support. They have strong organizational and coordination capabilities and organize meetings regularly. They have a very good propaganda mechanism to the outside world and regularly release public opinion to the community. They also have strong media control capabilities and control the main media platforms of the Bitcoin community. They even use speech control methods that only dictators use to block a large number of opponents' speeches. They are also very tough in dialogue with miners and users.

Compared to these few “serious” people, some developers have started their own projects, such as XT, Classic and Unlimited. But compared to Bitcoin Core dev, these development teams are loose and completely inferior in strength. They also have no stable financial support. And their external publicity power is even weaker. They do not have a dedicated media platform, and they are not able to respond strongly to opposition voices.

So, have miners been "serious" about the expansion theme in the past two years? Miners are burdened with huge sunk costs, and it is in their short-term interests to stabilize and continue the status quo. But long-term interests require them to implement the expansion route. However, miners as a whole have been on the defensive in the past two years, and few dare to invest substantially in funds and computing power to support the development team of expansion. The entire mining group is also a decentralized organization and cannot form a unified voice. In order to achieve expansion, miners are more likely to adopt such practices as appeals, statements, negotiations and open letters, hoping to guide the technical route. Facts have proved that this is useless and they are still regarded as "the masses who eat melons."

Users are more like "the masses who just want to eat melons". This group has almost no organizational ability and cannot act in a unified manner. The main motivation for users to hold Bitcoin is the rise in the price of the currency. However, the factors that affect whether the price will rise or not are too complicated. Expansion does not constitute a sufficient and necessary condition for price increases, nor does it constitute a motivation for everyone to "play for real". In the past two years, in addition to writing articles online to express their opinions, users are actually "eating melons". Those who are really desperate and vote with their feet and say that if you don't expand the capacity, I won't play anymore are not the rational choice of users. The rational choice of users is to "eat melons". Anyway, as a coin holder, I am a die-hard supporter of large blocks, but even though the blocks are now locked at 1M, I still continue to buy.

In the situation where the minority who "play for real" VS the majority who "eat melons", the minority is intolerant and uncompromising, while the "eat melons" group calls for crying and making a fuss, and this quarrel has lasted for more than two years. The situation is completely dominated by the minority who "play for real". Unfortunately, this minority is wrong.

Chapter 3: Capacity expansion requires another small group of serious people to break through

Gavin, who once raised the banner of capacity expansion, fired the first shot at Bitcoin XT, but was quickly drowned in saliva.

It seems that Bitcoin Classic has not been able to continue to play for real.

The first time I saw that the expansion situation might be turning around was when the news said that Unlimited dev received a donation of $500,000. This shows that big funds have begun to lean towards expansion. This is real money being invested. This is "playing for real." $500,000 is a lot. This is playing for real.

Unlimited dev team organized technical publicity, meetings and media publicity. Including Xthin block, Flexible_Transactions (SW's competitive solution), online meetings such as OnchainScaling, and a series of systematic and organized offensives. This is "playing for real".

ViaBTC, a mining pool, announced the testing of Bitcoin Unlimited shortly after its establishment, and clearly expressed its intention to create large blocks to the media. This is also a “real deal”.

There are signs that some people are beginning to invest real money to promote block expansion. What is more noteworthy is that this minority includes developers who write code, sponsors who pay money, and miners. Perhaps I will see more people who are serious about block expansion in the near future. But can they continue to hold their own against another minority, Bitcoin Core dev? Which of these two minorities is more "serious"? And ultimately guide the "melon-eating group" to use their software?

Chapter 4: The “serious” minority decides that history is neutral

After reading Taleb's article, I sighed at first. I thought I had subjective initiative, but in fact I was just a member of the "group of people who eat melons". As a minority, we can decide the course of history. Perhaps this goes against our intuition. We would rather believe that the world follows the subjective initiative of the majority, because after all, we ourselves are part of the majority. But I soon let it go, because this law is actually neutral.

This law itself is neutral. It does not necessarily lead to evil results, nor does it necessarily point to good. A few bad people can do bad things by "playing for real", just like a dictatorial government composed of a small number of civil servants enslaves the majority of the people. Similarly, a few good people can also benefit the world by "playing for real". In fact, the computers and the Internet that we use so widely today were invented and promoted by a very small number of people who stubbornly "play for real" with science.

If a few people "really" do bad things, such as using the national firewall to prevent us from obtaining more real world information, some people in the majority may stand up to suppress the evil deeds of these few people. For example, we will climb over the firewall and curse. However, our determination is definitely not as strong as those few evildoers. As a result, most of us have to endure the persecution of the firewall. In this case, the "melon-eating group" is subtly coerced.

The Bitcoin Core devs, a minority group advocating small blocks, are also known for their stubbornness. In the two years of expansion controversy, the vast majority of Bitcoin users have had to silently accept the outcome of their "real" play.

Of course, there are also many people who use the "real" law to benefit the majority of "people who eat melons". Science is created by a minority of people who "play for real", and it benefits the "people who eat melons", and the whole world benefits from it. If there were no people like Bruno who insisted on believing that the sun is the center of the universe, we might still arrogantly think that the earth is the center of the universe.

Chapter 5: Arm Yourself with “Real Action”

Now that you know this law and understand this truth, you should take it as a life attitude. You should take things that you care about seriously and insist on being a minority with subjective consciousness.

I am one of the minority who insist on large blocks and are serious about Bitcoin block expansion. I will support the expansion by writing articles.

Chapter 6 Conclusion

The most invincible people in this world are the most determined, uncompromising and "real" minorities.

Taleb’s article is here https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.ypsg39xac

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