Nick Szabo  🔑

I'm asking — do you think there are no cases where "blockchain rules should be broken"?

It should be a very expensive thing to do, e.g. require a traditional lawsuit.

Agreed — and I think that the general unpleasantness of lawsuits is probably the right analogy for the (desirable) political, social, and technological messiness for a hard fork.

But that still leaves open the question of what criteria the community should use to even begin considering such a fork. Even what you just said there is more of a concession than what most immutabalists are willing to give (see this thread, for example)

If we all (subconsciously?) assume that situations that merit forking is a "we'll all know it and agree that's it's bad enough when we see it" sort of situation, I suspect we're in for a rude awakening when push comes to shove.

That's the worst sort of utterly ambiguous wet law -- the ultimate kind of "rule of man" instead of rule of law. Why are you trying to make an ideal out of the worst of the worst?

It is ambiguous & wet , but on some base-line level it's going to be unavoidable, no? Blockchains can minimize social/ wet interference & make doing so "expensive", but (I think we agree) this "interference" will occasionally be necessary

No, it's very avoidable. Take a look at how by far the most successful blockchain, Bitcoin, is governed. Its success comes from its ruthlessly minimized argument surface. Ruthlessly enforced scope avoids your pernicious result.