Yes, you're right, but again only in a formalistic sense. It is the semantics of the rules that matter, not their form. And the semantics can be changed arbitra

Yes, you're right, but again only in a formalistic sense. It is the semantics of the rules that matter, not their form. And the semantics can be changed arbitrarily in the way I described. I don't think my point is pedantic. Segregated witness is just this sort of change, one that preserves the form of the old rules while significantly reinterpreting their meaning. No, segregated witness doesn't change the semantics as drastically as, say, changing the effective cap on the final supply of monetary units. But that's beside the point—which is that it is wrong to think of soft-forking changes as intrinsically less significant or more acceptable than hard-forking changes. You can effectively change anything with either approach. To judge a change to the consensus rules, you must look at its semantics: whether it is implemented as a soft fork or a hard fork tells you essentially nothing. Yet a large chunk of the Bitcoin community seems to believe that soft forks should be preferred to hard forks as a matter of principle. That is nonsense.