Shakes
19hr ago
IIRC, this woman was already a serial fabulist who my aunt had caught before in other lies. It didn’t take much for the scales to drop when my aunt realized that the diagnosis was a little too convenient.
Shakes
1d ago
If she challenged the lie, they would have doubled down. When she repeated the lies, credulously, they thought a lot more critically about them.
I asked you a question about something you said, and you proceeded to defend a different statement. You then claimed that data centers do not have “solid returns that would benefit the common consumer directly,” and that nobody can come up with any. Now that I point out that this is an obvious strawman, you become hostile accuse me of bad faith.
This is ridiculous.
This is besides the fact that it appears you appear to misunderstand simile. At least, when people say “opposition to data centers is like opposition to nuclear,” it is not relevant for you to assert that nuclear is more important than data centers.
I’m happy to continue this conversation, but I’m confused as to whether: 1) You want to defend the notion that AI is useless 2) You want to defend the separate notion that AI is less important than nuclear 3) You want me to introduce some other opinion so you can argue against that instead of having to defend your own contradictions
Shakes
1d ago
Data Centers you point to with the returns that basically boil down to 'Big Businesses need it, LLMs are magic bro, trust me, we've got to beat China!'
> is it a strawman or an argument
> "it's a good argument sir"
> look inside
> it's a strawman
We wouldn't be having this conversation right now without data centers.
Shakes
1d ago
I think Trump picked an incompetent Secretary of the Interior in Doug Burgum
Burgum was previously the extremely-popular governor of North Dakota, whose reputation was so strong that he was floated by national media as a candidate for Trump's VP slot. He was considered a once-in-a-generation pick for DOI because his life spent in America's Interior, and his vision for what to do with it, are considered extraordinarily strong for a position that is usually passed-over by candidates of the first rank.
Your argument is that Burgum is an incompetent Secretary because one investigation into one failure didn't produce enough evidence to convince you. And what evidence there was you dismissed out of hand. Do you have any thoughts about Burgum's record of competence on oil drilling, wind policy, solar, wildlife refuges, Indian Affairs, national monuments? Well, Burgum is incompetent because user lollol thinks NPS rangers need bodycameras.
I think Trump picked an incompetent District Attorney in Jeanine Pirro
Jeanine Pirro was appointed District Attorney after Trump's first choice, Ed Martin, was forced to step down from nomination because of Thom Tillis. The position of US attorney for DC is a thankless job because the DC attorney's office is a viper's nest of career lawyers who are more aligned to the culture of Washington DC than conservative or Republican priorities. Jeanine Pirro was, at least, somebody who sacrificed quite a lot by aligning herself with Trump over the last 10 years and was, by all accounts, somebody who was actually interested in the meat-and-potatoes work of running the DC office.
Your argument is that Jeanine Pirro is incompetent because, on one case out of the hundreds on her portfolio, she dropped a case facing a 95% Dem Jury Pool Indictment she was forced to initiate because of political considerations made by her boss. Ever been handed a lose-lose situation before? Now, look, I'm no Jeanine Pirro defender, I think Trump's assessment that she choked is probably right, and I think she's wrong to back down and lose face and she'll be punished for it. But your theory, essentially, is that she must be incompetent because, on the only issue you bothered to look at, you didn't like what you saw. You admittedly don't even know very much else about her.
So maybe you see what I mean? When I summon TLP and his point about lazy omniscience. You don't actually care about the Reflecting Pool as such, you care about being right. You don't actually know much about the details of how this stuff actually works. But you're sure Trump must be incompetent, and you're willing to seize upon whatever first evidence you find to prove that you're right. And if it weren't that, it would be something else. Pirro backed down, so she must have been incompetent. But if she had kept fighting, that would also be proof of incompetence. Etc. etc.
Just to work down the list of other arguments, for the sake of completeness:
I think Trump is incompetent at enlarging his group of supporters
Trump was the first Republican to win the popular vote in a generation. You almost surely mean something more specific by this, maybe that Trump doesn't attract more high-quality people to his movement. But I'm sure that no matter who Trump attracted, you would come up with a definition for why they were a priori incompetent.
If there were more MAGA-aligned attorneys, he would have a better pick of the litter instead of Jeanine Pirro.
Again, Pirro was not Trump's first pick because the Senate constrained him.
If there were more MAGA-aligned attorneys, maybe they can convict vandals even when the city sides 95-5 with the vandals (remember John Adams defending the murderers?)
Yeah, Trump just needs super lawyers with super law who are so good they can convince even Democrats who hate them to support them. Why hasn't Trump done this?
You can say all you want about Trump being a good builder and he makes good buildings, but that's not the same as being a good president.
No, the point is that in your rush to declare that Trump is "incompetent" you've hastily elided obvious domains in which Trump is very capably competent. Instead of constraining your broad strokes at all, by e.g. saying that Trump is good at building but bad at [something else], you've locked yourself into the very silly argument that Trump isn't good at anything. Now you're doubling down on that strange premise.
If the homeless numbers are down, where are they going? I don't see much news about low cost housing being built in DC.
Your argument now is that Trump is incompetent because he didn't fix everything everywhere all at once. Trump can't actually solve low cost housing in DC, at least, not without Congress or DC authorizing more housing within DC.
Maybe those homeless people you see "congregating on the bridges just within the Virginia boundaries" are exactly the former-DC-homeless. That's certainly one way to fudge the numbers.
Yeah that was my point. Trump can do everything in his power clean the city up, but he can't do everything in libs' power. One half of the political spectrum wants to kick the homeless out of parks, one half doesn't, the half that doesn't will shelter the homeless and say, "see, you can't kick the homeless out of parks, you must be incompetent!"
But there are criticism, and yeah, it's nothing to do with the incompetency regarding the Reflecting Pool.
Yeah, right, my argument (my observation really) is that there are a lot of people emotionally attached to Trump being wrong, therefore they will invent a reason why what he is doing is wrong, no matter what he actually does. It's in fact what you're doing in this very argument.
But just as much we can praise someone for trying, it is not mutually exclusive of how we can't criticize the incompetence with which it was carried out.
This is empty rhetoric. No matter what Trump did, you would find a way to criticize it, and then justify that by saying your just calling balls and strikes. It's not an argument, it's a rationalization.
Trump could have been "he's a fascist but at least he keeps the pool clean" Mussolini-style (even if in fact Mussolini never did get trains to run on time really), but he didn't, and so therefore the narrative was made and he will be podunked on it. So yes. Incompetence.
See what I mean? The pool was dirty before Trump cleaned it. But you don't want to give him any credit, so you have to contort this one-way construction where you would have given Trump credit, you would have been fair, but, alas... You've not even taken responsibility for your frame, you've just outsourced it to "the narrative".
So now that I've taken the time to address all of this point-by-point (which I will probably not do if we have future rebuttals), I want to come back to this:
You just made a bunch of assumptions about me then attacked that. You didn't even address my arguments, just attacked this imaginary me you have in your head. You've already lumped me into all the people that you detest and assumed the worst.
"Detest" is a strong word here, I don't think I said that, I'm sorry if I did, I don't hate you. And sometimes my remarks are aimed at "you" and sometimes at the imaginary rhetorical "you," which is an effective and valid way to construct an argument without rebutting every point-by-point, please-don't-take-it-personally.
However, at bottom, I think I have interacted with your point of view to a significant level and addressed it very thoroughly, no matter if some of the points I rebutted don't describe your position as you would make it, because I think the conclusion goes more or less like this:
You believe, a priori, that Donald Trump is incompetent. You would find any flaw Trump makes and use that to justify your criticism. It doesn't matter what the flaw is. If the pool breaks, it can't be from sabotage or vandalism, no matter how many people are cheering for that exact outcome. If the pool doesn't break, it must be too expensive. Or the contract was corrupt. Or it was a bad use of money. But you would never extend this criticism to your own group: I don't see any forthcoming mea culpa about how Obama was also incompetent, or how all presidents are incompetent and Trump is just the latest, or how many leftists criticizing the pool explicitly want to destroy it. No, you want to claim the neutrality of just calling balls and strikes as you see it, but that neutrality will never reach any conclusion that isn't what you wanted.
"The Buck Stops Here"? Trump is already having the pool fixed. But I don't think you're really interested in having the pool fixed. I think you're interested in being right.
Shakes
1d ago
And, in my personal pet peeve, I'd seen more than a few people try to compare anti-data center people to anti-nuclear power, nevermind how moronic such an arguement is.
What's moronic about it? It sounds very easy to me. Nuclear could have been the next generation of energy but was constrained by regulations protecting the places where they would be built. "Data centers" could be the next generation of tech but are threatened by a movement that wants regulations to protect the places where they would be built. And in both cases it scans really simply as all mixed with more than a little bit of Luddism.
Shakes
1d ago
the discovery that she doesn’t actually like Michigan
I clicked through out of boredom and saw that one of her tweets was her dream that "the US amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts+Can+Mex+parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America". The coasts, Canada, and Mexico? That's so silly it's almost beautiful, I want to see the fantasy map.
Shakes
1d ago
An aunt of mine is essentially the only conservative academic at her small midwestern college. (Her erudition would rightly place her at a national college on talent alone, but, alas, she is a conservative; her academic husband failed even worse.) Among her many, many horror stories of how far academia has fallen, I remember the one where a colleague applying for tenure faked having cancer in order to boost her prospects. My aunt, when she suspected that the diagnosis was fake, realized that nobody would believe her. Faking a cancer diagnosis is so unbelievably deranged. Fake chemotherapy; fake shaving your head. It's so crazy that it is substantially more likely that the conservative must be lying. If she tried to convince her colleagues of the truth, they would assume that she was the crazy one.
My aunt's solution was to quietly make every one of her liberal academic friends think it was their idea first. She would, publicly, express nothing but the deepest sympathy for [Bridget]'s diagnosis. My aunt might make a remark in private like, "It's so unfortunate that Bridget's chemotherapy conflicts with her hearing again." And eventually, virtually every other academic on the tenure board came to my aunt and had a conversation like this: "Betsy, I know it sounds impossible, it's so unlikely, but, I've been thinking, have you noticed, Bridget, her diagnosis, is it possible she's exaggerating?" And my aunt would reply: "No, that had not ever occurred to me!"
Anyways, fabulists and serial liars are not new in the human experience so it's not even all that specific to Academia or the UK or leftwing circles. Academia especially is supposed to be a rarefied gentlemen's club where the select few who make it are granted a lot of deference. It will probably always be vulnerable to fabulists.
I will say, though, that I think leftwing and liberal attitudes about sex and race have created very fertile grounds for being preyed upon by fabulists.
Shakes
2d ago
If I were Mamdani I would let shoppers mob the store and simply make them do it in a semi-"controlled" way. The rush just prove what demand there is for State Grocery and how we need to expand the program, what a huge success. This argument will work on exactly the people it needs to work on.
Shakes
2d ago
How is it not vandalism to rip off a piece of a national monument? You have to reach into the pool to grab a piece, it's not just laying on the sidewalk raking with the leaves.
Shakes
2d ago
I find this to be the lowest form of commentary. Instead of making an argument you get to sit on the sidelines smugging that the other people making an argument look ridiculous. Without even having the courage to frame it as an argument to specific people that can then win or lose on its own merits.
At the self-appointed "only plan-truster on the Motte" I'll add then -- Trump himself didn't back down! Trump said that Pirro choked. The pope is still Catholic.
Shakes
2d ago
Yeah, that's the rationalization. They don't want the pool to fail as such, they want the pool to fail because of Trump. But then, next time, it will be because of Vance or *because of Rubio. And then when they're in charge of fixing the pool, there will be all sorts of other reasons why it can't be built: environmental review, DEI impact, it's not a good use of money when there are starving children in Africa, etc. etc. etc. There will always be some reason why, when they literally cheer for the algae, it's not literally cheering for the algae as such, it's knowingly self-ironic in the context of hoping Trump fails to clean the algae. And you're stupid if you don't understand the distinction. But the distinction is invented. The point is never about fixing the pool, the point is for them to be right.
Shakes
2d ago
This is a perfect example of why debasing yourself for a politician is never worth it.
This is just an argument for never getting into politics. If the goal is to feel as though you have never "debased yourself" then your only option is to be an irrelevant commenter like Billy Binion, always out of the fray and above it all.
Shakes
2d ago
This is just the nice rationalization they like to tell themselves. They’re not actively cheering for the pool to fail, see, they just want Trump to fail, and also want to make it likelier for Trump to fail, and they don’t especially want to fix the pool themselves, well, they would, but it’s complicated, it has to be done right, the contract process alone is very complicated… There’s always another reason why doing things is incompetent and sitting in the corner watching is wise. And the great thing about reasons is that there’s an infinite number of them.
This is why I bring up the TLP omnipotence/omniscience fantasy. They don’t want to fix the pool, they want to be right!
Shakes
3d ago
Sure, I’ll take a crack at it, it’s a beautiful night for an argument.
Have you been to Washington DC lately? Trump got the National Guard to clean up the worst of the homeless blight. Union Station looks beautiful right now. Trump got money to turn the fountains back on. They’re gorgeous, they hadn’t been turned on in decades. I was out with a friend near the Capitol at night and we were stunned. I’ve even heard liberals admit that Meridian Hill Park is more beautiful now, thanks to Trump.
There are still some problem spots. There’s a church downtown, I think it’s the one on I street and 5th Northwest, where the ministry lets the homeless congregate on their property in a tent city. Sometimes I’ve seen them congregating on the bridges just within the Virginia boundaries. Virginia doesn’t like them either, but they’re not under Trump’s control and won’t just do what he tells them.
Have you ever been to a Trump property? His hotels are genuinely very nice, his restaurants have good food, the service is excellent. The Trump Hotel in Vegas has a good claim to being the nicest hotel on the Strip. The Trump Hotel in DC has noticeably declined ever since they got turned into the Waldorf — both of the last two times I’ve been there the wait staff have hassled me over $300 because some man who sat at the same table as me walked away to some other side of the room and they wanted to close the table down. And Trump Tower in New York is a gorgeous building that genuinely turned the corner for Manhattan in the 80s. The last time I was there, which admittedly was a few years ago, huge swathes of it had to be closed down to security threats. There are always liberals who want to vandalize it.
So now we come to the Reflecting Pool. There were protesters holding up signs saying that between Trump and the algae, they were rooting for the algae. There’s a minor black market selling chips off the tarp, because people reached their hands in and got some. There are bars all over town where you can order drinks like a “Blue-Green Reflecting Pool Margarita”.
There is, in short, a whole class of people who are cheering for decay, they want to see things break because they get to gloat when it happens, and when it does happen they will deny any responsibility as they cheered it on.
I am now receiving a lecture in incompetence from those people.
Look, it’s actually not a blow to my ego if the pool guys did a shoddy job. That happens sometimes. It’s not like Trump personally drained the pool and laid down the tarp down. He’s just going to get some guys to fix it.
You probably see that as a failure because you’re not used to setbacks because you’ve never built anything.
It’s not like Trump interrupted the left’s stellar record of building things on time and under budget. Those fountains have been off for twenty years and the Reflecting Pool has been collecting algae for at least that long. What did Biden do about it? Bush? Obama spent multiples of what Trump has spent so far and didn’t get any better outcomes. But I don’t get treated to rants about how Obama was incompetent. All I’m hearing here are defenses of how Democrats had such integrity because they conducted go-nowhere investigations so they could get a TV spot about how they’re willing to criticize their president. Maybe if I went looking I could find examples of Republicans criticizing President Trump, I don’t know, it might be really hard.
So it’s Trump’s Fault because, why, exactly? He skipped the biddings process? The famous Washington DC bidding process that always produces great and cheap results on time? The great fantastic bidding process that makes sure no mistakes or setbacks are ever had? Yeah Washington DC works so well why doesn’t Trump follow the Washington DC process? If only we’d spent more money having more meetings everything would have turned out ok. Trump must be too incompetent to hire a contractor.
TLP had this great distinction about omnipotence vs omniscience. The man who chases omnipotence is out in the world acting. The man who chases omniscience sits in the corner watching smugly with the attitude that his “understanding” is actually superior. Trump didn’t follow the rules, which proves he’s incompetent. Because I know what the rules are, which I read in a newspaper just now, I’m actually more competent than Trump.
So here’s something like a flow chart prediction of what will happen next:
-
Trump will hire contractors to fix the Pool again. If the first contractors are found to be at fault, the Federal Government will win back money, and liberals will say this proves Trump is incompetent. If the first contractors are not found to be at fault, liberals will say that Trump is lying and so he must be incompetent.
-
Once the pool is fixed, if it stays fixed, we will all basically move on forever. Liberals will never give credit for fixing the Pool, because the first time he fixed it it didn’t work.
-
If the pool is fixed and gets broken again, this is double proof that Trump is incompetent. In no way would this ever possibly suggest that anybody is trying to break it. If that were possibly true, Trump should be able to indict the vandals in a city that sides 95-5 with the vandals.
Because, at the end of the day, the people cheering for algae and homeless shelters in front of the churches, who will actively sabotage every attempt to clean anything up, will then deny that there could possibly have been any sabotage. The people who won’t build anything will explain why you can’t build anything. Well, actually, we can build anything, we just choose not to, we have to go through all this environmental review, contract bidding, community impact, it’s really complicated.
I’m dreaming of the anti-Trump future. Every town in America has a building permit for high-speed rail from California, and a grocery store run from New York. The fountains are all turned off so we can save money to fight climate change. Elon Musk’s wealth is confiscated so we can give it to someone who knows how to build things, like Barack Obama. And the Reflecting Pool is given over to the algae, in honor of the Piscataway, Pamunkey, Nentego-Nanichoke, and Nanticoke-Lenape tribes, whose land this originally was.
Shakes
3d ago
Now, Trump, i don't have a good understanding of how American politics work to comment much, but it seems that his policies are more of the same, executive orders to deport a lot of people, no real effort to bring down legal immigration. Things that can be very much undone in a future democratic government.
Trump deported a few million people in the last year and is ramping up the machinery to deport more. Legal immigration is also down as many of the pathways for fraud and abuse are being shut down. The population of the US overall became less foreign for the first time in 50 years.
Calling it "more of the same" and just "executive orders" I think undersells the achievement. There is nothing you can do that cannot be "undone in a future democratic government". There is no imagined superlaw that Congress could pass but isn't that would deport millions, in a way that a Democrat couldn't just ignore if he so chose. The law as it is is actually fairly robust already in giving the President lots of powers to deport. The laws that Congress could write, but so far have not, are necessary to go further than this, but this is already the most far anyone has achieved in a long time.
I say this because I think Trump is an important rebuttal. The world doesn't only swim left. Trump has been the most effective anti-left politician basically anywhere in the world in a generation. I hope that instead of dismissing him Europe thinks about him seriously and learns what they can, even if Europe has to adopt different postures or tactics as befits their own situation.
Shakes
5d ago
This is an ironic tone of voice, indicated in part by the “royal we”. However the fact that I don’t mean it earnestly doesn’t mean I don’t mean it seriously. This tone of voice is used to present a point of view ironically, that is, in the sense that the audience knows something outside what is being presented. This is done to contrast this point of view with my later rebuttal. The use of irony is made in total good-faith, and I believe I have accurately described a view many people have.
Many people do think of book-burning as one of the great evils. They see it as an attack on knowledge itself, as wanton destruction, as inherently selfish and evil. It also intensely evokes the memory of the Nazis, which implies to many (without even needing to be said) that book-burning is a sign of much deeper evil thinking going on.
Shakes
6d ago
I don't really disagree with any of this per se, and we're more or less on the same side with respect to the threat of migration. There are definitely larger matters at play than just the politics of the government of Spain. But conspiracy theories about the Israelis and the Americans -- and that's what they are, totally unsupported conspiracy theories -- will waste the efforts of the European and Spanish right. It feels like watching Lee prepare for Pickett's Charge, it's totally all wrong, it's going to fail disastrously. And the fantasy itself that America is behind it all will sap what political will remains, because it's a message that says there's little to be done except to keep watching the TV and hope for the best. This is in fact what I think the major problem is: Europe is losing the will to power, and will accept any fantasy that explains why it's correct for them to have done so.
you were sneering at
I wasn't sneering at all and meant everything I said very earnestly. Please consider that I mean what I say and with the best wishes for Europe and the right when you read the following:
but an argument that there is no conspiracy, and this is just an issue with the local government
What on earth are you talking about? "The local government?" The "local" government" is the sovereign government of Spain, a country currently managed by left-wing politicians who deliberately supported what is happening. "Bumbling around randomly"? Doesn't have the characteristics of a "single ideology"? What on earth are you talking about?
I know that power in practice is far more complicated than just, "the local government," that Spain is often at the mercy of larger and more powerful sovereign organizations, but come on.
was written and read by people at the tops of government and corporate power, which may not involve "Jew Power" but definitely has something to say about replacing the native European population
Yes, the people "at the tops of government and corporate power" who want to replace the population of Spain are in fact involved in running the government of Spain! Good grief. Why do you need a conspiracy at all to explain anything at all? It's not a secret, there are powerful politicians putting their names and faces to what is happening, smiling.
Having written all that, I can kind of squint and imagine that what you're saying is that the center of this Open Borders cult is not in Spain. So it's much more than just a Spanish problem. But that still doesn't really address my point: It is also a Spanish problem! The Spanish people actually have significant power to stop this. And they will squander that power if they chase conspiracy theories about the Americans and the Jews. You can fire the Prime Minister and you can impeach the Judges but you can't just sit around waiting for the fall of Rome.
Shakes
6d ago
Did Israel and/or America make Spain's Supreme Court annul huge sections of their Immigration Regulations a few weeks ago? Did America tell Spain to spend less on its military so it couldn't defend its borders? Did Israel Spain's left-wing government?
Shakes
6d ago
My thoughts on this turn in two main directions right now:
This is one of the most important issues in the world, if not the single-most. There is an infinite supply of "asylum" seekers ready come to the first-world from the third. It can overwhelm governments, social services, law and order, middle class citizens, the basic functioning of society. It will fundamentally transform the West, which would mean the end of the kinds of lives we are all used to living.
It will not be allowed to happen.
I think there are a lot of well-meaning Westerners who are abetting this destruction. I think this is functionally identical to mainstream Democrat policies, such as the huge border surge that happened under Biden. I think there are a lot of posters here who endorse these outcomes, or who would allow them to happen out of a fear that the alternatives are worse. I think I have a lot of friends who think that e.g. this might be bad, but also it's more important that we stop Donald Trump or pay attention to train policy.
I really want to gently implore a lot of people to take a serious look at Ceuta and consider how to stop this. I think this is the result of policies that are totally mainstream, certainly endorsed by the leftist government currently running Spain. Because if moderates and leftists can't answer this problem, the result won't be simply more Donald Trumps. It will be people far, far more extreme taking power to do whatever they feel is necessary. It will involve a lot of turmoil and suffering. And it can actually still be stopped.
I also want to say I think the Spanish right, from what I can see, is totally out to lunch. The Israel conspiracizing is very bad and very stupid. I have seen worse floating around online -- that this is actually a plot by the Washington-Rabat-Tel Aviv axis to take control of the Straits of Gibraltar. That Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are plotting to carve up and dismember Spain. That Israel and THE JEWS are behind this. (Again, this stuff has very good odds of seizing power if more mainstream parties refuse to do anything about it.)
I don't think Israel has anything serious to do with this. I think Israel politicians and personalities have a very disastrous talent for bad PR, like an entire country raised on Fox News norms of crying in the town square.
Likewise, Michael Rubin is a total nobody. The American Enterprise Institute has some prestige, but they are not actually on the levers of power anywhere. Washington is full of these kinds of institutes. The closest they get to power is generating novel theories for people with actual power to use as bargaining chips. So Spain says that it's not going to support NATO initiatives and Marco Rubio can respond, well, what if we said you're actually occupying Ceuta? And stuff in that vein.
What I'm starting to see however is a troubling tendency for the European Right to blame America for all its problems. It's America's fault. There's nothing we can do, we're just a small vassal state of the Great American Satan. I think it's a cry of impotence. If the problem were diagnosed as being the fault of Spain's government, there's a lot that could be done to solve this problem. But if it's America's fault, the right can continue its permanent exile because it has no real power, and therefore no real responsibility. An entire generation that wants to doomscroll forever. I think it's disgusting.
If there is any American money behind this at all, it is probably the same complex of unaccountable NGOs laundering money and political power that it has been over all the rest of the world. I don't believe that there is a secret government document titled, "Our Plan to Overwhelm Spain with Jew Power". Quantum of Solace was more realistic. It's not a serious proposal. And thinking along those lines will alienate exactly the allies Spain needs to solve its problems.
This reminds me of the Iran War, which is a whole other conversation I don't want to really get into on this thread. But in addition to all the reasonable positions both sides (yes, I think some of the criticisms made of my arguments that I disagree with are still sane), I think there is a lot of really bad conspiracizing. Total internet nonsense. Iran is emerging stronger than ever, it's going to invade Kuwait soon, the American navy is at the bottom of the sea. It's like something half-intelligible cobbled together by AI. I bring this up to suggest that I'm noticing a trend.
You said something very unusual and, when I asked for elaboration, proceded to defend a different statement.
Now you want me to defend my position when I have not advanced any.
Ok.
Here are some things I use AI for every day:
Here are some things I know my friends have used AI for:
Here are some things I have seen AI being used for on the internet:
These are all multi-billion dollar industries. Translation alone is probably $100B+, dare I say even more if people get over the privacy concerns and we have babelfish auto-translation wearables.
Nobody has been able to explain any benefits of AI to you? What on earth are you talking about?
I’m not even sure what a charitable explanation looks like. Maybe you just got out of a coma? Maybe all your previous interlocutors couldn’t speak English? Maybe you are blind and use text-to-speech and have missed a lot of news?
You didn’t just stop there. You said that data centers themselves have no benefits for regular people. Need I point out that we would not be having this argument without data centers. Data centers are not some new category of invention. They are large networks of computers specialized for processing data. We would not have militaries or banks without data centers. We would lose a lot of industry and a lot of farms.
Now, if the statement is just that nuclear is more important than data centers, well, that’s debatable, that’s fair, I can squint and I can see the case. Energy is pretty important. Nuclear would probably be even more transformative if it hadn’t been limited by so much regulation. Nuclear and data centers, it’s hard to say which is more important, the water or the glass.
Now not all of these changes have been positive, and if you want to we can debate whether the good outweighs the bad. (I lean toward the good.)
And there has been a lot of hyperbole about what AI is ultimately capable of up to the belief that it could destroy the world. (I say not.)
And there are a lot of practical problems that merit a lot of caution, and I don’t like the way AI art makes everything uglier either.
But if your position is that AI has done nobody any good and nobody can explain to you how it has… I’m not even sure how to parse that. I think the most charitable explanation has to be that you’re just strawmanning, because that makes a lot more sense than the ignorance otherwise required. There are wars being fought on intelligence produced by AI, financial markets are being optimized by inputs from AI, satellites in space, computer chip factories, farming schedules, weather forecasts.
You are benefiting from AI in hundreds of small ways right now even if you don’t touch a chatbot.
If we went back five years and described this technology people would call it fantastical. It’s changing the way we understand language and thought itself, this is before we get robots and self-driving cars and satellites to blanket the earth in WiFi. The worst AI slop applications are wildly more impressive than what was thought possible even a few years ago. Science fiction.
And now that we have a miraculous machine that can turn dirt into thought we have a political movement that wants to stop this because they don’t like data centers.
Actually I don’t think that’s it at all, I think they’re just worried, with a lot of justification, and data centers are just how you attack this thing that’s changing everything.
Unfortunately, though, all that’s going to do it make this world-changing technology more expensive, and therefore rare, and therefore concentrate its power in the hands of the few.
It turns out it’s a property of math, you string enough transformers together with enough data and computers can translate into arbitrary languages and draw pictures and write code and do math. There’s not really any stopping it, the question is whether we can harness this change for good or will passively sit and let it change us for the worse. Because the genie’s not going back into the model.
Anyways, I hope that the above goes some way toward clarifying my position, which I hope is not too bloomer or too doomer. But when I hear that you can’t think of anything good to come from AI, I wonder if you’re doing yourself a disservice, because all that belief is conditioning you for is passively accepting or even resisting changes that you could actively harness to your own great good.
More options
Context Copy link