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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   19072 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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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 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.

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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