When people say "decentralized" they usually also mean "large number of small nodes" where each node enjoys security by obscurity and marginal node does not significantly alter network capability.
So UN security council (5 major-power nodes) is not what they have in mind.
Conversation
Replying to
I don't think it's quantitative, but rather qualitative - decentralized means that anyone can run the code and verify everything, given ambiently available hardware. Node count is a distraction at best.
1
Replying to
Agreed, but most people use the term in the sense I mentioned. The openness is not a defining feature, just a desirable one in some cases.
Replying to
I think they just mean that there's no procedural/protocol/political obstacles to the addition or subtraction of nodes.
Replying to
Decentralized means that there’s no economically/politically feasible way to shut something down and keep it down. Masturbation, for example.
Security by obscurity is something totally orthogonal to it.



