Politics, bias, and social matters generally are present everywhere that humans make decisions and pretending otherwise is naive if not a lie. I don't think there's reason to believe politics and bias are overshadowing merit and destroying bitcoin core, but politics are present in bitcoin core as they are anywhere. We should all admit that if we hadn't already.
I don't think there's reason to believe politics and bias are overshadowing merit and destroying bitcoin core
What would it look like if it were?
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313 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 13 Jul
Critical decisions are motivated by something other than doing what is best for the protocol.
That's the best answer I have right now at least. Do you have an answer?
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I'm not thinking too much about the core repo tbh. I'm thinking about my fellow node runners. He mentioned Greg Maxwell saying that CTV is more likely to get activated if Rubin weren't its maintainer. (That's from memory not a direct quote) and he pointed out that was not a technical argument, but a political one (not a meritocracy behavior)
Greg Maxwell aside, I think my fellow node runners think the same way. I've even pointed out how it's difficult to promote CTV, when it carries Rubins baggage (his stunt of trying to pull BIP 119 from the core repo for example).
It seems all the commenters have focused on just one aspect of the video and none of them are what I was thinking about (a self awareness). I should have seen that one coming. Maybe made this a discussion instead of a link and just talk about what I was thinking.
However, this is a great example of how Bitcoin is technology second and a social construct first. (Now that's an old tune you've seen me singing for a while lol).
He also mentioned how getting an op_code merged is a prestige thing that can compromise integrity. So I'm just sort of thinking about what those kinds of things mean socially. I know node runners ought to have way more awareness about the code that they run, but I'm not sure how that would be accomplished.
Start with myself right? It's all we can control.
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