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Long time listener, first time caller.
The war on AI datacenters (and normal ones as a bit of collateral damage) has been going on for a little while now, with those opposed fiercely fighting a lot of these projects pretty much wherever, whenever. It seems to be one of the most bipartisan issues facing the country right now and those who are pro-datacenter have been effectively politically slaughtered. As of a few days ago though, there seems to have been a small little flash point in the thing. I haven't really seen a thread here about this (although definitely could have missed one), and I'm actually a little surprised at it since I do think this is probably one of the biggest culture wars in America of this year. Anyway, curious thoughts on this, etc
From what I can tell, the flashpoint was yesterday when Axios reported (and later posted) a letter from the Ohio RNC to AI companies effectively calling being pro-datacenter politically radioactive. It kinda exploded at this point over Twitter and later Greg Abbott put a thing out about it yesterday after enacting a pause earlier this month. Basically the only one who didn't respond in a politically obvious way was Trump in a presser who was quoted as saying "if I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center." I think this quote right here might be the worst strategic blunder since the Iran War. If I were the DNC, the clip would be on every station in the country
The reaction to these things are incredibly understandable. Their argument effectively goes "they use our water and electricity, provide a service to enhance the surveillance state and the interests of Big Tech, their proponents openly admit that they're gonna take your job, they bully communities, and they don't even pay taxes either, all the while poisoning the communities they leech on with pollution and noise." Personally, I'm honestly quite surprised that political radioactivity is the biggest thing that has happened so far. This seems to be an issue that unites people regardless of political party or affiliation...
...probably because it's being correctly seen as a existential threat to people's lives and livelihoods. Polling against datacenter construction is incredibly poor, arguably being worse than coal or nuclear power plants (yeah I know, different surveys). I think this, if I were to pin a spark on this (there are many), it's the story of the Memphis xAI datacenter and also the lawsuits against Solon Township to effectively bully them into allowing the project. Communities, seeing what happened there and politically, have somewhat backtracked quite a bit where before they were much more open to it. Some of those that haven't are proactively enacting outright bans
If this culture war has one side, who is the other? Silicon Valley, billionaires, etc, seems to be the obvious answer here.
Both Altman and Amodei screwed up public perception big time, although I don't think it's 100% their fault. I imagine though this is basically because they're put in a double bind. If it isn't absolutely economy ending for every other company, the trillions pumped into their valuation will vaporize faster than you can say "AGI," but people tend to believe (correctly so) when someone threatens them (and have especially checkered pasts as both these guys do), that their threats are genuine, so when those PR puff pieces trickle down to the public at large.
The All In guys have tried to pin this on Amodei in particular, but I think some people just see that as them talking their book
They've tried to label the opposition as "China," but that clearly doesn't make much sense given that the problems are genuine. Cremieux has tried to take up the mantle on the issue, but I think people see his arguments are seen as specious and as relying on theoreticals that don't match observations on the ground, and this has I think backfired
Expect to see more bans and moratoriums happening across the country. Will be interesting to watch. Thoughts?
Anti-datacenter people are barely sentient. It's the fiery hot center of the populist brain rot of America. There aren't any arguments on the level of decoupled and rational justifications, it's all either complete misinformation that the CCP wish was a psyop because it would prove them far more capable than they are or friend enemy distinction with barely even a fig leaf of being about the actual building on the actual ground. I apologize for any doubt I had for Elon Musk's orbital data centers, the cold vacuum of space is clearly more hospitable than anywhere the american voter can influence.
Really? You can't conceive of a single rational argument people might have against data centers?
You have some feelings, evidently. I don't disagree with the direction of your argument. But this is pure flailing boo-outgroup and weakmanning. This kind of flaming verbal grenade doesn't invite discussion, it's just saying "I have an opinion and fuck you if your opinion is different." It's really hard to build any kind of discussion from that.
I can invent some, like the exercise of trying to invent reasons to believe in flat earth. But nothing I invent will be something they actual believe and what they actually believe makes them enemies of our civilization. At some point you have to interact with the degrowth luddite in front of you rather than some invented Yuddite that has been genetically engineered with an inability to think 4 seconds and realize that AI won't be stopped just because the data centers aren't able to be built locally. What they actually believe, as demonstrated by the OP are insane theories about water loss, that actually nothing should ever be built again, damn the economy(also they are very mad about the bad economy and deinitialization[they would of course have voted against industrialization in the first place given half a chance]), or fracking style fake videos of tap water that lights on fire. There are of course going to be some instances of datacenters, like all infrastructure, being rushed and poorly planned/constructed and they'll pretend that this represents all data centers.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter, they wrote the bottom line first and are reasoning backwards. This is clear. They hate tech, progress and change. To ascribe to them a rational arguments would be to lie about what they believe.
I know people who genuinely oppose data centers for real reasons. I think their reasons are mostly incorrect, and sometimes I argue with them, but they do really believe these things, they are not lying about their opposition, and they are not (all) degrowth luddites.
It's becoming entirely too popular hereabouts to just lead with "My position is right, and people opposed to my position are all bad faith liars who don't actually believe what they say they do, they are just NPCs who hate Western civilization and God and sunlight."
It's a very satisfying thing to believe. It makes it easy to caricature your enemies as unthinking orcs who can be dismissed as evil stupid liars. You don't have to steelman everybody, but when I can see with my own eyes that yes, people actually are angry about data centers for real reasons, I know you summarily categorizing them all as "barely sentient" is just venting anger at your outgroup. And when I note certain people taking a side that I think is mostly comprised of bad-faith liars, and I have to charitably assume some of them are sincere, I feel no guilt at all in telling you to do the same thing.
I'm not accusing them of lying, I'm accusing them of being full blown in the middle of moral panic. Like someone raving that D&D is an initiation into a secret satanic cult. The internet is flush with arguments against their insane ramblings, ironically a query to free chatgpt will rebut all the claims with many sources. They don't care and are immune these arguments because the arguments aren't the point. I'm not generally a fan of bolverism but what do you do when the afflicted sees your D&D starter box and start howling in a way that no offer to let them examine the contents can quiet?
I can embarrass a bad faith liar by rebutting their points, but those in a moral panic? They don't spread their ideas by making good arguments. Nothing anyone says to the OP with convince them that Datacenters are not only fine but a sign that our nation finally has the will and energy to build things again. It's not even about them as individuals, it's a sickness that I'm helplessly watching consume my society. The woke surge followed by the Trump backlash and now a socialists backlash to the backlash. I'm losing faith that the fever will break and that we don't have a fatal auto-immune disease.
I don't know what the cure is, but I do know telling people who have already heard it a thousand times that datacenters do not obliterate water from the universe won't do it because I've witnessed too many times that they'll nod along, change to a different point and 5 minutes later you'll catch them repeating that datacenters are going to cause droughts.
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There are plenty, but they aren't the true objections, @aquota is correct to point this out and doesn't deserve the angry red response.
He could have used polite motte-speak, such as «they are operating mainly off of cognitive bias instead of evidence-oriented Bayesian updating.»
From "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" by Paul Roberts:
And from "Rationality and the English Language" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:
One of the worse things about The Motte is how the moderation pushes people into writing verbose, obfuscated, bloodless posts in order to avoid getting punished for being uncivil or writing a low-effort post. Words words words should not be a requirement of a good comment.
You are missing the point. We don't tell you you can't say someone is a fool and instead you should say they are expressing views that some people might regard as foolish. We are saying that you cannot just equate "I think you're wrong" with "You're a fool." Some people are indeed fools, but the bar for calling people names that dismisses any need to actually engage with them is high, by design.
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What it gains you is an explicit admission that your opinion is an opinion, not an immutable fact of the universe. This is actually very helpful for keeping a clear head during the heat of disputations.
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Na, I'm guilty of this one. Can't accuse people of being barely sentient. a couple too many old fashions last night celebrating the wife's birthday left me without the patience to put it more softly.
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It's amusing that you project "anger" as hard as you can, when I am very rarely angry. Occasionally annoyed. Mostly tired.
By your own admission, there are plenty of rational arguments. It should be obvious that some people actually believe those arguments.
You may believe that most people objecting to data centers are bad faith conflict theorists, and unlike you, I won't pretend I've surveyed them to have an educated guess how true that is, but since unlike you I am not a bad faith conflict theorist, I will continue to enforce the rules here, which are that if you want to assert your ideological opponents are 100% wrong, evil, and lying, bring evidence ("my seething hatred" is not evidence) or dial it down.
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