Apparently, my reply to @k00b's post (Interrogation of a toycoiner) was 493 characters too long:
So I am not sure what to do except posting this as a dedicated post. Maybe this means it's worth an own post just like @grayruby's submission to @siggy's first writing contest? Let's see. Reply starts now:
This is a good prompt. This is also one of these posts where I desperately want to share my thoughts to hear what other people think about them since I know that my view is incomplete and I have still much to learn. It's also a topic close to my heart since I wrote this.
Therefore, please take whatever I say as the view of a person that is still figuring things out—including while writing this—and changes his mind about things a lot but hopes this is seen as a virtue and not as being what we call in German "Fähnchen im Wind"1 or worse: someone was toxic enough to call me out on my bullshit and now I need to pretend that was never my view. I always want to be able to explain my views (in the past or present) in a way where I don't have to feel ashamed of them.
I think "toxic bitcoin maximalism" (TBMism) is one of these terms that suffers from a lack of common understanding. Essentially, what is one's TBMism is actually a mix of individuals that used that term to describe their behavior in the past of that individual. So basically based on past experiences with self-proclaimed TBMism, everyone makes up their own mind what TBMism is or is about.2
For example, I remember that I also used to think it's beautifully pretty stupid to be toxic to people that are "crypto curios". I still think that's stupid but that's no longer what I think TBMism is about—at least originally or at its core. I am aware that some (or maybe even most now?) see TBMism to be overwhelmingly about "protecting people from themselves [in a toxic way]" but that doesn't mean that I have to see it that way, too. At least I hope so, since I think TBMism is more complicated than that.
Since I like etymology, I looked a bit into the origins of TBMism—while writing this as mentioned—and I think it comes from the "civil war" or "blocksize wars" around the SegWit soft fork and the New York Agreement. Unfortunately, I wasn't around back then (how many here were?) but I found this nice panel where representatives of both sides of this important part of bitcoin history came together:
I extracted "some parts" which I think are important to understand my view on TBMism:
there's certainly an irony in having a panel about civil war when the entire point of the technology is for peace
there was one or two years of increasing intense discussion over the issue of bitcoin's scalability: how many transactions it could handle, how many it should handle and if that amount was going to be increased, how it could be done. There were sort of several trains of thought on this. One was it doesn't need to handle any more transactions. Another was it needs to handle lots of transactions and bring on the whole world so that people can be using it for all sorts of things. And then there were some very clever technical proposals like segregated witness which allowed more transactions to happen in a very interesting way and also provided some further safety for the blockchain. This debate is really a nuanced technical debate and it was really tragic to see how bitter and vitriolic it got.
I don't think bitcoins enemies were really involved in the discussion. Part of the result of that was that those involved in the discussion started seeing and making enemies out of each other.
I think that once the conflict was there it was exploited by people that had other intentions not necessarily Bitcoin enemies like as far as like nation-states but even people that just wanted to print their own money, create their own coins and use the marketing behind Bitcoin to be able to pump their own stuff.
I think that there was a lot of confusion at that point and when I saw this block size increase proposal I actually really wanted to see if it was possible to make this happen so I went out and talked to all the people that I considered the best protocol experts and asked them and discuss if this is really feasible.It became quickly apparent that actually deploying something like this and making sure the network doesn't fork was an extremely difficult problem and this is where SegWit came about.I was one of the co-authors of the SegWit BIP. This proposal was able to find a way to increase the block size without losing backwards-compatibility. This means that old software could continue to run on the network without needing to be upgraded and it would still remain on the same network whereas if you need an incompatible hard fork all the old nodes that don't upgrade get left behind. They basically end up on a separate network.We've seen that happen with the forks now but back in 2015, people just had not really witnessed this yet so they didn't actually know the dynamics. Everything was still very much theory. Now we actually have empirical data as to what this was and I think that unfortunately by the time that I was made aware, there were already some hostilities that existed between other people that weren't necessarily just technical.I mean there are just different differences of opinion and different things, different interests at play and not necessarily malicious. Just people that have different interests and I think that's part of the fundamental dynamics of Bitcoin is that there are going to be different players with different interests and there's checks and balances and that's the way that the system works.In this case I think that the system of checks and balances almost broke. It didn't break but the community did split. But maybe that was inevitable. I think if we look at history it's really hard to keep a large group of people together for a very long time and that's kind of why nation-states formed in the first place. We're kind of trying to find something better than that. It's extremely ambitious.
there is more I could quote but I'll leave it at that. Just watch the video.
So what I want to say with this is that it's actually pretty human to get "toxic" when it comes to things that are close to our hearts. When we truly believe in something, when we're "extremely ambitious", we tend to see every compromise (like SegWit2x) as an attack. When bitcoin becomes part of our identity, when we start to call ourselves "Bitcoiners", anything that is seen as antagonistic is met with hostility—if we let our emotions take over.
Now does that mean that if you're not toxic enough you don't care about bitcoin as some TBMists like to say as mentioned by @k00b in #420350?
Maybe, but I think that's a very simplistic view from these TBMists. It's essentially pushing our own personal biased views onto others which comes back to the aforementioned irony:
there's certainly an irony in having a panel about civil war when the entire point of the technology is for peace
I believe it's part of the unfortunate nature of something that tries to achieve what bitcoin tries to achieve: bitcoin is trying to change human nature by forcing us to agree on something. To find consensus. To possibly even break up nation states that formed around incompatible consensus on things.
I think these "toxic maxis" are missing the point: when they say "you're not toxic enough so you don't care about bitcoin", this can also be seen as an attack for the other side that might care as much about bitcoin, just in a different way that is not appreciated by such TBMists. Not everyone has to be a TBM just like them to feel the same about Bitcoin.
So in essence, what I personally see as TBM is a form of human expression: We want to express how important something is to us and we're not willing to compromise on it. Unfortunately, this results in what some people see as toxic. It definitely can be seen as toxic. But I want to stress that I don't think TBM is about being toxic—that's just the most common but unfortunate form and however unfortunate the term is. I mean, toxic is literally in its name.
I want to end this with mentioning that "toxicity" is also in the eye of the beholder as @TwoLargePizzas (what a great nym!) wonderfully explained in #350493:
The funny thing about being older and having more life experience is that you have a difference perspective. You see things a different way because you've already been there and done that.Some might call it wisdom. It doesn't mean you're more intelligent or have more knowledge about a particular topic but it does tend to mean you see through more bullshit.TOXIC is just a perception. Two different people can read the same thing and have different feelings about it. When I read something @DarthCoin wrote I don't always agree but I always try to consider why he's saying without dismissing it. I ask myself, what piece of the puzzle am I missing? I try to fill gaps in my knowledge by listening to people with more experience than I.The other thing that happens when you get older is that you realize how much time people waste trying to be nice to each other. Your recent breakup is a perfect example of this. Sometimes people are too afraid to say what they really mean. They think hurting people's feelings matters more than telling the truth. But the alternative wasting people's precious time on this earth. Spending years in a toxic relationship is much worse than being toxic with words.
I hope I made my point clear. I don't think so though. I am not even sure I understand my own point well enough to explain it to others. But writing this helped me to understand it better.
However, this has taken me long enough to write already, I am already too interested in your opinions to continue and I don't think I have the "toxicity" in me to continue with explaining.
But I have one final last piece of toxicity in me. I can end this with a famous Satoshi quote which some also might find toxic in this context:
If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.
Footnotes
Bist du'n Deutscher? 🧐😯😮😦😧