sztorc isn't concerned that Augur will fail (does he, or his multiple, sockpuppe/single-post/throwawy accounts, really look like he's acting from a place of good will and good intentions?"). He's worried Augur will succeed without him - not only without him but precisely because he's not involved.
He knows the crowdsale is critical in establishing reliable reporters with a strong financial incentive to report reliably. He wants to try and cripple Augur in the crib. He doesn't talk like a concerned, impartial academic. He doesn't offer constructive advice. He behaves like an envious competitor - I mean literally. A petty man trying to take down the competition with innuendo and unsusbtantiated claims unvetted by authoritative, impartial third parties.
He's counting on your laziness and ignorance of Augur's extensive track record of words and actions on github, twitter, blog, reddit and other posts where they consistently do what they're going to say they're going to do and do what they say. Can anyone seriously look at the github activity streams and the online demo alone and argue Augur's not a serious project? Ridiculous.
Believing sztorc means ignoring the lengthy history of what Augur's said and done and their transpacency. We know who each of their developers are and we can all see what each of them are doing on github. Heck, I dont think we know anything about Sztorc's team. Who's his developer?
Augur guys seem to be out in the open exhaustively answering any and all questions every day of the week, including Sundays, for weeks/months through every channel out there. We'd better hope they dont fail because if they do, you really expect qualified people to be attracted to this scene? Keep this up, and It'll be like US politics - used car salesman and dregs only.
As someone who wants prediction markets to happen, I find Sztorc's behavior despicable and kinda insane. I mean, doesn't he want to make sure prediction markets happen? If we all want prediction markets to happen, isn't it better to have two different approaches than to have just one?
Doesn't he believe in the Wisdom of the Crowd? The whole point of prediction markets is that no one person has a monopoly on the truth about everything all the time. Why cant Sztorc just focus on building his Truthcoin project and let Augur focus on their Augur project and let the code and its performance tell the story of which works and which is better instead of wasting time and energy with he-said/she-said on Reddit. Utterly stupid.
ah...but maybe Sztorc wants it this way.