Yes, and a lot of the rationalizations are contradictory. For example:
Changing super-linear curves to full-linear represented a huge change in rationale and has had a significant impact on the system.
Reading the new version of the whitepaper, this reasoning/change/impact isn't apparent. It makes things feel a bit disjointed. The original, while people may have disagreed with certain elements of it, was at least coherent.
not a huge change, IMO. downvoting and superlinearity were always intended to be somwhat reduandant to oneanother. At least, thats the impression i got from the original whitepaper. I know you blame linearity for a lot of steem s woes, but i don't agree with you that its the cause of a lot of the problems to which you attribute it.
a far bigger change is the philosophical take on inflation. Its fine to say "inflation is no big deal, fire up the printing presses" and its also find to say "moneysupply control is super important and we have to keep inflation in check."
But to start out saying "inflation is no big deal fire up the printing presses!" print yourself up a bunch of money, then as youre rubbing your hundreds of million steem on your titties say "oh we changed out mind. money supply matters now no more inflation" seems a little dishonest.
To go a step further and instead of saying "oh we changed our mind" just implying that its always been the policy by publishing an unannotated whitepaper well , that seems a step beyond 'a little dishonest'.
This isn't exactly accurate. I don't blame linearity for the woes. I blame linearity for making spamming and other abuses more lucrative - and therefore more attractive. The ability to relentlessly spam is another issue altogether which is not caused by the linear rewards algorithm.