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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7990 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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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.

Nuclear you can point to solid returns that would benefit the common consumer directly - less reliance on hydrocarbons, energy independence, cheaper energy.

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!'

So color me a skeptic. On Data Centers, not Nuclear. For fuck sake people, just use the magic rock and be done with it.

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.

In my day we called them R/C helicopters server farms

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You(and others) are making comparisons that Data Centers are just as important(if not more, from what I've seen people say) than Nuclear Power. And when I go digging around, that's the answers I typically find.

Brother, you accuse me of building a strawmen when all I'm doing is rooting around in your hayfield, looking for a point. Hell, you haven't even offered up a rebuttal. If you've got something in your pocket, I'm all ears.

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

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