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I think it's a broader problem with social consensus that plagues everything, because we live in an engagement based paradigm for social media (ad funded optimised for time on device) based upon the bunk idea of "revealed preferences", which is just a terrible idea that pervades everything.
The downstream effects of this in discourse, politics, and civil integration are myriad, but for the purposes of your question it has the unfortunate effect siloing for the sake of security through obscurity. Groups below the Dunbar number where it's possible to have repeat interactions with identifiable individuals segregate to avoid the noise of platforms like twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or whatever bullshit platform captures the broader communities attention. In dance communities they might balkanise into WhatsApp, which makes promoting what they want to get out into the public sphere really difficult. The same effect exists in technical communities. Technically anyone may be able to post, but the discourse happens in places where there is a technical or other hurdle, meaning public discourse is meaningfully segregated from technical discourse, and because the environments have different models for amplifying and suppressing voices (not necessarily better, different) they come to intractably different conclusions.
The segregation of networks below the Dunbar number also creates in-group team dynamics, and if a member of the in-group sides with "the mob" they get excommunicated for introducing "noise", even if the mob is right on that occasion (even if they are right for the wrong reasons), reinforcing friend-enemy distinctions. One hierarchy cannot abide the conclusions of another, one power center cannot abide the mandate of another.
Twitter is indeed a terrible place for discourse, but technical discourse has to happen meaningfully in public, not segregated and balkanised, or decisions like that made on OP_RETURN will feel to the public like something out of the blue, an attack.
Anything that works, anything robust against entropy, stable, reliable, trustworthy, is built on proof of work, even if bitcoin's is the most efficient. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Social media should be built on a Pagerank-like paradigm, shirking revealed preferences in favour of optimising for consensus, and applying the perfectly aligned business model of Substack or Patreon. A follow would be contextual, not general. You should follow people for a specific key word, not all of their content, and this would be a sort of weak endorsement. Build more explicit endorsements on top of that, and explicit references ("I stayed with this guy during a #bitcoin conference in New York and he was a great host" or "this guy is my #bitcoin development mentor" or "she has been my #salsa dance teacher for 5 years and is the best"). The highest reference I can think of is a monthly donation, and that is where the platform can take a cut for development funding. Build this around real world events because repeat interactions help to build integration and supports good behaviour, weeding out (decreasing amplification) the awful behaviour of people who hide behind keyboards.
I've been working on this since the block size wars, when I temporarily lost faith in bitcoin because I felt that it would eventually win but not within the current social media paradigm.
I wish I could build this on something that Bitcoiners would accept, but I don't know how to do it on something like Nostr, because private key literacy is still in its infancy.
I think we're just going to be plagued by these fork wars until Bitcoiners realise that we need to fix social discourse before bitcoin can break out, or it's fixed for them.
Once that problem is solved the business end, the thin end of the wedge, the tip of the spear that you're talking about resolves itself organically. Human beings are good at that part. The broader context is causing the problems.
In other words, you don't throw a spear by holding the pointy bit at the top.
It sounds like you believe we have to build an entirely different communication platform before we can do a good job of talking about Bitcoin (particularly, changes to Bitcoin).
I respect the thought you seem to have put in to the matter, but unfortunately, Bitcoin is here and now and we have to deal with the platforms that are in front of us.
In a way, I think delvingbitcoin.org was created as a place for the more healthy kind of conversation you describe (not that it includes any of the innovations you suggest).
Whatever the case, I don't see such a platform being built soon or the social media paradigm changing in the near future. We have to deal with what we've got. At the very least, we still have to make updates to Bitcoin software for the occasions when bugs are found or dependencies need to be maintained.
I still think it's worth trying to describe, given the current tools, what we think the process for changes to Bitcoin should be.
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You might think you're being practical but you're really being naive, wholly underappreciating the scale and breath of the problem.
The entire scientific academy, including theoretical physics, journalism, politics, any technical field that doesn't touch grass and is deeply and directly consequential for a dependent public, is plagued by the same structural collapse in social consensus. They are running on pure inertia and the prestige built my men long dead (even bitcoin falls in that camp).
Yes, it's a big problem, but "given tools" aren't fit for purpose, and it's a waste of time to intellect to pretend otherwise.
Its existential. Bitcoin is a financial prepper's bunker in a age of entropy, of decay, of collapse. Core's conflict with users is a symptom of that disease.
You can't cure cancer with the pills you have in your medicine cabinet. You cannot throw a spear by putting two fingers on the tip and guiding towards your target.
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