Read_947 - On Overconfidence

— Jimmy Song's essay on BIP-110: the core argument is that nobody can predict the second and third-order social consequences of consensus changes because Bitcoin is a dynamic system, making overconfidence dangerous regardless of which side you support.

— The Taproot case study: despite expert predictions about its use cases (social recovery, privacy, multi-sig), the actual adoption was inscriptions and ordinals—outcomes no one foresaw—demonstrating that technical knowledge does not predict human behaviour.

— The distinction between technical feasibility and economic incentive: steganography may always be possible, but changing the cost, rules, and friction around data storage changes *what users actually do*, not just what's theoretically possible.

— Centralization risk of false certainty: pretending to know unknowable consequences mirrors the hubris of centralized systems and legislatures; humility and decentralized choice (UASF) are preferable to policy mandates backed by unfounded confidence.

— The block size war near-miss: big blockers could have stopped SegWit with a user-rejected soft fork had they understood node dynamics; success was contingent on their ignorance, not certainty.

— Policy vs. consensus: Guy favours decentralized, policy-based filtering over consensus changes because each carries irreversible risk; ossificationism and humility about unknown unknowns should guide Bitcoin development.

— Scrutinize declarations of certainty about BIP-110 (or any network upgrade) that claim to know downstream user behaviour or social outcomes; technical correctness does not predict adoption or consequences.

— Consider the policy approach over consensus activation for addressing spam: running your own node and filter rules gives you agency without betting the network on predictions that history shows are often wrong.

— Recognize that past failed predictions—Taproot's actual use case, SegWit's adoption patterns, even the block size war outcome—should temper confidence in any side's claims about BIP-110's effects; remain skeptical of both the "sky is falling" and "this solves it" narratives.