Hmm if this is similar to the hitchhiker’s paradoxon, then one would expect to wait 5 min for the next block by intuition, which is wrong and we have to wait 10 minutes. But i do not get why the intuition should be wrong by a factor of 4x (20 mins) instead by a factor of 2x (10 mins).
Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
121–128 of 128 posts
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also the reason why most people are less popular than their average friend is, even though they are (on average) as popular as the average person! Since popular people are on everyone's friend list, but unpopular people are only on a few friend lists, your friend list is biased toward popular people. Mathematical explanation of why Facebook makes you depressed.
As someone that has more friends('popular'), its all a matter of effort. I go out every weekend, I talk to everyone, I ask everyone for follow up contact info. Yeah I get turned down probably 50% of the time, but its a numbers game. Sometimes you meet incredible people, but its taking that first step that matters. Anyway, if you want to meet people, always go to events you are invited to, meet people. No one remember…
That's not what the OP is talking about. Trying re-reading his comment.
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#123The article on the "hitchhiker's paradox" that this links to made this much more clear to me (as well as being shorter): https://the8layers.com/2016/10/30/how-long-will-you-wait-hit...
This reminds me of headwinds in airplanes. You might think that on average, wind cancels out. Sometimes you have a tailwind, sometimes you have a headwind and over time it will all average out. This is not the case. On average, wind reduces your groundspeed. The short of it is you spend more time in a headwind, so you spend more time experiencing the bad than good. There's also the fact that even a direct crosswind s…
This isn't what the poisson distribution tells you.
You will, on average, wait 10 minutes. If you hitch hiked that road 1000 times, you'll have waited 10 minutes on average.
But that doesn't mean you won't wait longer that 10 minutes on a given wait. In theory, you're waiting time will follow an exponential distribution, so you could wait 1, 10, 50, or even 1000 minutes (although quite unlikely)!
But again... On average, you'll be waiting for 10 minutes from car to car.
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, with a consistent cross wind of course you'll have to spend energy fighting it, but if you don't fight it and halfway it changes, you'll end up at your destination in the same time as you would have otherwise, no?
Sure; if you can predict the future, and the future happens to be that the crosswindws will oppose each other, then you can just set your heading and get there. However, if the wind doesn't shift you are now taking even longer to get there because you'll have to turn to go straight upwind once your destination is directly upwind from you.
This crazy world you describe applies in a different axis! Vertical movement of air happens on a much smaller scale, so it tends to cancel out as you fly through it. If you climb in the updrafts and descend in the downdrafts, you only make it worse. Better to ride it out.
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#125Bitcoin mining = "Guess a random number between 1 and 5" If the network guesses too fast due to more cumulative guesses per second, the target number increases. Interesting historical antidote, in early November of 2017 there was an event where it became more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash. During that time about 60% of the miners left BTC Core in unison to focus on BTC Cash. Transactions for BTC Core started taking…
I never understood why the people behind Bitcoin Cash didn't "manually" lower the difficulty at the forking block. This would've been a strong incentive for miners to mine the fork and could've been good publicity. Instead most people didn't bother to mine the least profitable fork which had the same difficulty as the "main" chain. That resulted in a few chaotic days where almost no blocks were mined before the diffi…
They did modify it
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because you spend some of your forward speed flying into the wind to keep the desired ground track. Imagine an airplane that flies 100mph. You want to fly north, but you have a 90pmh crosswind from the east. You have to point almost directly into the wind just to keep from getting blown off course. You can turn a little to the north, and you'll go very slowly. If you instead have the wind come from the east, you…
Sure, with a consistent cross wind of course you'll have to spend energy fighting it, but if you don't fight it and halfway it changes, you'll end up at your destination in the same time as you would have otherwise, no?
The US air traffic control system is setup as a series of highways in the sky. You generally can't just fly in whatever direction you want (with the exception of general aviation).
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#127TLDR: Since blocks that take a long time to mine fill up more wall-clock time, if you pick an arbitrary instant of wall clock time, you're more likely to be in a "slow" block than a fast block. Specifically, you expect to wait 2x the average.
Okay but i expect to wait 5 min on avg. so due to the paradoxon it is 10 min not 20 min
Re: Why Is It Taking 20 Minutes to Mine This Bitcoin Block?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not correct. That's the opposite of the correct reason. Consider a simple (not-exactly-Poisson) set of blocks: 20x1minute intervals, plus 1x10minute interval. The average interval size is (20x1min + 1x10min)/21 = ~1.4min A random moment in time is twice as likely to be in a fast blocks as in the slow blocks. But average wait time (given a uniformly random start times) is (20min 0.5min + 10min 10min)/30min = 11…
I think there are some misunderstandings here: First of all, when the GP says "you are more likely to be in a slow block", it means "you are more likely to be in a slow block, relative to how many blocks there are". In your example, if you pick a block at random, you have 1/21 chance of being in a slow block. If you pick a block by choosing a moment in time at random, you have 1/3 chance. It is obviously not true tha…
Splitting a long block into two shorter (but still long) blocks doesn't make you less likely to be in the covered interval, but does reduce the average weight time.