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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24148 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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The median person who hates AI thinks a literal bottle of water is obliterated from the universe every time you query chat gpt for anything. Almost all of the concerns raised by the median anti-ai person are retarded propaganda produced by slopulists who, correctly, think of them as cattle that they can lie to with impunity in order to gin enough outrage to propel them into office, keep them supporting their slop rage social media account or because they're genuinely foreign spooks trying to retard our progress.

Actually, this exact perspective is the thing that the median person hates about AI. The water usage isn't the issue, the slop isn't the issue, the fact that AI doesn't produce any value for the median person and instead makes much of their life notably worse isn't the issue - the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.

I'm personally of the opinion that the AI ecology in its current instantiation is evil in almost every single way, but the biggest way it is evil is that it's a transparent attempt to destroy the lives of everyone who isn't a part of that ecology. It's a predatory economic model, and the prey is that median person that you have such derision for.

AI doesn't produce any value for the median person and instead makes much of their life notably worse

Maybe I'm not a "median person" but AI has definitely improved my life in many ways and has made it worse in roughly 0 ways.

Basically every social problem AI is claimed to cause was a massive issue pre-2022.

"Oh no the internet is full of retards, slop and advertising!!" is it 2005, 2015, or 2025?

I think that last sentence exactly shows why you're out of touch. I'm not complaining about the effects on internet culture. I'm talking about the extreme damage to our education system, where students use LLMs to complete the assignments that were created by LLMs and will be graded by the same LLMs, and the data shows massive loss in basic knowledge and critical thinking skills. I'm talking about the environmentally catastrophic data centers being erected over the protests of the people living there. Real harm to actual people in the Real World.

extreme damage to our education system

So your stance is that the US education system was doing fantastically in 2021? No pre-existing problems or awful trends?

students use LLMs to complete the assignments that were created by LLMs and will be graded by the same LLMs

This is so depressing. I agree with you here. I hate that this is happening.

I don't blame LLMs though. I use LLMs to teach myself new things all the time.

I blame the absolutely shit school system, which has been shit and wildly unable to adapt to anything my entire life.

environmentally catastrophic data centers

How are they bad? Can you actually substantiate this? What makes them worse than giant suburban tracts of sprawl?

Of course education has been bad for a long time, but the fact that it's bad doesn't mean AI isn't making it worse.

As for the data centers, there's a lot of independent reporting on this from people living near them on immediate harms. There's damage to groundwater that makes the local tap water undrinkable, there's constant noise levels in residential areas.

On a larger scale, data centers are now responsible for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and projected to rise. This paper estimates it at $25 billion in environmental damage per year.

There's also other more subtle impacts. For instance, the Utah data center project is expected to produce a heat island effect that would raise temperatures from 5 degrees during the day to up to 28 degrees at night, potentially preventing the dew point condensation effect and quite literally killing local ecologies.

All of these effects are being ignored in the name of progress, and the costs of these externalities are being paid by the people living in these areas who have no say in the matter.

The real downsides are things that would be true of any construction whatsoever, to give into them would be to just completely capitulate with degrowth ideology and only not return to the mud out of inertia.

There's damage to groundwater that makes the local tap water undrinkable

This could happen with the construction of any building, essentially the crew either accidentally interrupted a drilled well or just the blast of construction shook up the silt in the well water.

There's also other more subtle impacts. For instance, the Utah data center project is expected to produce a heat island effect that would raise temperatures from 5 degrees during the day to up to 28 degrees at night, potentially preventing the dew point condensation effect and quite literally killing local ecologies.

This is only in the valley itself where only the datacenter is. This is all "end civilization to save the spotted desert lizard style obstructionism. You'd find yourself in likeminded company with the people who threw everything at the wall to keep us from getting nuclear power.

If we operated on your apparent preferences we couldn't have even built the society we live in today, let alone improve one.

People caught up in slop anti-growth and anti-human ideologies are worse than people who aren't. You weren't born this way, you can stop being worse than people who are better than you instantly by coming to your senses. No one is forcing you to identify with a hateful dead end black pilled ideology who's arguments are soldiers because they have no actual arguments. In every way that matters you're no different to the communists who cope with their own failures and salve their egos by inventing conspiracies of the rich. And the most pathetic element of it is this pure bullshit demand to have your feelings coddled without there being any condescension. There is no way to be this careful about hurting your feelings without condescension, it's not possible.

"It's not any of the things I say it is, it's that you don't pretend to like the people saying ignorant bullshit trying to stop progress convincingly enough"

Give me a break.

Thanks for reinforcing my point! Somehow, in your view, it's impossible to disagree with your take on AI without being 'pathetic' 'anti-human' who can't 'cope with their own failures'.

I rest my case.

Certainly it's possible to disagree with my position. But you've not disagreed with it, you've explicitly said the problem isn't my position, it's the rhetoric used, it's your feelings. I have a number of takes on AI that I think have very reasonable foils, I've gone over them at length. If you want to engage with them then please do so. But if your demand is that I show respect for slopulist liars who have contempt for the truth then I refuse.

Sorry, no. If you just go back and look, I originally responded to your claim that

The median person who hates AI thinks a literal bottle of water is obliterated from the universe every time you query chat gpt for anything.

by arguing that the median person's position on AI is essentially rooted in the (correct) belief that AI and tech bros in general are contemptuous of them and their concerns. This is not a 'slop' view nor is it a 'demand to have your feelings coddled'. It plays out in all areas of the AI ecology, from billionaires paying off city councils to build data centers that almost every constituent opposes, to companies firing large parts of their workforce because of 'AI efficiencies' that don't actually exist, to the degradation of our public education system by replacing teachers with AI tools that don't work... shall I go on? AI boosters are deliberately and with malice aforethought trying to destroy the lives of the 'median person' and treating that as just an unfortunate externality of their race towards godhood. It's the very definition of evil.

to build data centers that almost every constituent opposes

NIMBYs fighting against progress is good when it's against something I don't like

to companies firing large parts of their workforce because of 'AI efficiencies' that don't actually exist

This sentence literally contradicts itself. Either AI works and companies are getting more efficient (this is a good thing, your food is harvested by tractors not men with a scythe). Or AI doesn't work and then it's not the reason layoffs are happening.

Layoffs happened before 2022...

the degradation of our public education system by replacing teachers with AI tools that don't work

Ah yes, as we all know, the American school system was in FANTASTIC shape pre-2022, and once chatGPT was released it all came tumbling down...

shall I go on?

Please do!

to companies firing large parts of their workforce because of 'AI efficiencies' that don't actually exist,

If the efficiencies don't exist, it follows that the layoffs can't possibly be AI's fault.

I guess you haven't been following this? Or know anyone who works in a big company?

Huge amounts of layoffs have occured predicated on the expectation of efficiencies from AI. Some such companies, once they discovered that AI did not improve efficiency, have been forced to rehire the people they fired, while others just used it as an excuse to cut down their workforce a la private equity, disregarding the long term health of the company. Either way, it's harming workers.

Or know anyone who works in a big company?

Of course I know him. He's me.

Huge amounts of layoffs have occured predicated on the expectation of efficiencies from AI.

It's a fig leaf to lay off the, frankly speaking, terrible workers who got over hired during covid exuberance in the early 2020s, or otherwise for floundering businesses to shed workers in a bid to become profitable.

Some such companies, once they discovered that AI did not improve efficiency, have been forced to rehire the people they fired,

I'm not aware of any companies begging fired employees to return a la DOGE. Examples?

Since you didn't bother to Google it, I won't bother putting in too much effort either. Here's a link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/terdawn-deboe/2026/05/21/companies-fired-workers-for-ai-now-they-want-them-back/

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You said

the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.

This is a statement about your feelings.

by arguing that the median person's position on AI is essentially rooted in the (correct) belief that AI and tech bros in general are contemptuous of them and their concerns.

To be extremely clear, the number of people contemptuous of the random Americans who is worried about automation getting rid of their jobs is a rounding error. All the heads of the labs have written and spoken extensively about a need to make sure these people are taken care of. The contempt is for the people who spout out obvious bullshit and try to stop development entirely.

You said

the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.

This is a statement about your feelings.

No, it's a factual matter that can be verified by observing the speech and behavior of that class of people. That's why I described your response as reinforcing my point, because you explicity stated your own contempt for the median person. I'm not sure how you don't understand this?

because you explicity stated your own contempt for the median person.

The median person who hates ai. this is a very different distribution from the median person who doesn't have social media induced black pill brain worms.

This whole thread feels like every conversation I've seen about AI.

The really sad thing, to me, is that it doesn't change a thing even if it changes everything; the winners will still spit and step on the losers forever and they'll invent whole new losers if they run out. The underclass correctly intuit that their overlords hate them and would rather they be replaced, as they would prefer to never pay the underclass again. The overlords correctly intuit that the underclass wants what they have and is likely willing to put them into wood chippers to do it.

The previous mechanism was offshoring of physical labor, the new mechanism will route intellectual labor to the data centers. There's a more interesting conversation to be had about how offloading the intellectual labor to machines makes everyone collectively dumber, but that conversation might be even more fraught. Thinking is hard, learning is harder.

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