Nick Szabo  🔑

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.

Enforced scope avoids the result in "form," but not "content." Content policy can't be enforced given the nature of pseudo- anonymity. This is sort of thing I think is basically inevitable — Bitcoin (or any other chain) hasn't really been tested in this way yet.

... what I have in mind is very high profile, very malicious parties getting their hands on Bitcoin (via valid transactions) and doing very high profile, malicious things with it.

But now you are talking about end user behavior, not the coding and ratification (upgrade) process. Completely different things.