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>NIMBYs often refuse to accept practically any change, regardless of the benefits. This isn't limited to data centers being sited nearby: You see it in issues a

>NIMBYs often refuse to accept practically any change, regardless of the benefits. This isn't limited to data centers being sited nearby: You see it in issues as petty as new pickleball courts. We also saw it for new power plants long before modern AI was a factor. This isn't new. I'm not saying you, personally, are a NIMBY, but it's undeniable that they exist. It's not personal, but I can tell it's touched a nerve. No, see you're doing it again - there maybe a handfull of people opposed to all change. Usually it's some people don't want a particular thing, and a different group of people who don't want another thing. Dismissing them all as a single unified group of people opposed to all change is a disgusting contempt for everyone who disagrees with your comfort no matter what it may cost them personally. > Back this up with facts. Raise the bar. > etc We've seen thousands and thousands of jobs cut and people laid off for AI. Those people are bearing the cost of your personal desire for a little bit of comfort. We've seen towns lose electricity contracts and the residents forced to scramble and pay higher costs because of the possiblility of datacenter contracts. This hurts a lot of people who were already at the edge of being able to afford basic life. Sure, more generation may not need to pollute the atmosphere, but in the current moment it sure seems like the more generation in practice it is generators spewing exhaust into neighborhoods. This is happening right now, and it hurts people. Im not opposed to AI. I'm opposed to the rush to get there at the expense of people who aren't benefiting from it. I don't care if some handful of people don't realize profits immediately, or if some small percentage of people don't get to have a slightly easier job. The dismissal of these people's concerns as "just a made up group I call nimby's" being unreasonable is deplorable. It's an utter lack of regard for solving the problems in a reasonable way because you want your toy right now. The idea that we can add new datacenters because they aren't the biggest problem and only make the issues people are facing a little worse... well it's literally saying "lets make everything even worse for people since its already bad for them" and is just sick. Choosing to push for new toy factories right now that worsen peoples problems instead of an approach the makes the world better for others is in fact inflicting damage in the name of your amusement.

otterley 2mo ago
> Dismissing them all as a single unified group of people opposed to all change is a disgusting contempt for everyone who disagrees with your comfort no matter what it may cost them personally. That may be your personal interpretation of it, but it's not my intent. > We've seen thousands and thousands of jobs cut and people laid off for AI. Those people are bearing the cost of your personal desire for a little bit of comfort. > We've seen towns lose electricity contracts and the residents forced to scramble and pay higher costs because of the possiblility of datacenter contracts. This hurts a lot of people who were already at the edge of being able to afford basic life. I'll ask again for data and evidence, particularly evidence that people who were "laid off for AI" were both 1/actually laid off for AI (as opposed to some other root cause) and 2/unable to get new jobs, and that 3/people were forced into bankruptcy because their electricity bills went up solely in mere anticipation of new datacenter buildouts. If you can't provide it, I'm not going to continue with this conversation. I refuse to engage with people who claim knowledge with absolute certainty but who can't back their claims up. There's a lot of reasonable worry about these possibilities, to be sure, but whether the worst has come to pass is, to my knowledge, still very much subject to debate. AFAIK nobody's quality of life has been significantly altered because a data center was stood up in an industrial or agricultural zone nearby. Happy to be proven wrong though.
- sophacles 2mo ago
  You're moving the goal posts and your true nature is leaking. You get to decide what too much suffering is for others, because you won't have to face any of it and monstrously will continue to refuse to care about how your chasing a shiny toy hurts other people. Losing a job due to AI is suffering, it causes hardship and stress. 1. Oracle, Block, Ford, Cloudflare, Salesforce and others' CEOs have explicitly stated that they did layoffs because of AI 2. This isn't needed for "causes suffering" but since the jobless rate is growing and job growth is low or negative the last year or so, there are people who can't get a job because the candidate pool has grown. Even if a laid off person can get another job, it certainly contributes to someone being left out of work. Furhter even if they can get another job - do you have evidence that the new job is equivalent or better to the one they lost? 3. I never claimed bankruptcy. You're trying to say that people struggling to make ends meet having to struggle harder to reach the same result isn't a problem since they aren't bankrupt. It's an absurd position because bankruptcy isn't the definition of hardship. Furhter I never claimed the worst has happened. I'm trying to prevent the bad, not just "the worst". Your seeming position is "if its not the worst outcome, its not bad, who cares that we hurt a lot of people since we could have hurt them worse". Again, it's a deplorable position and the type of thing you should wish for yourself and your children before you wish it on others.
  - otterley 2mo ago
    When I look at issues like this, I balance benefits against costs, like any reasonable person should, and I try to do so as neutrally as I can. Using emotionally-charged verbiage like "chasing a shiny toy" and "deplorable" isn't helping your case and makes you sound frankly unhinged. There are substantive, realizable benefits from using AI. Over the past few days alone, it has played a significant role in helping me both identify and fix a thorny issue in a major open source project that 1/will see a fix soon that every user will benefit from and 2/will unblock a major initiative at my company. It has also greatly assisted me in my personal and professional life in other ways, like improving my communications (directionally, modulo AI slop that's still a problem), planning vacations with my family, and doing home improvement projects and my hobbies. > Oracle, Block, Ford, Cloudflare, Salesforce and others' CEOs have explicitly stated that they did layoffs because of AI They've said so, which I fully admit, but I don't believe them. AI is a convenient pretext that makes their investors happy, and it's a preferable excuse to some audiences over admitting they hired the wrong people or embarked on the wrong initiatives. Where AI taketh, it also giveth: there are new jobs, too. Competent SREs and service architects, at least, are busier than ever. > the jobless rate is growing and job growth is low or negative the last year or so How much of that is attributable to AI? How do you know? > I'm trying to prevent the bad, not just "the worst" You can't always prevent the bad. Every technological development has caused some jobs to be lost or some people to be inconvenienced or displaced, from the Industrial Revolution to "computers" (who were once human beings). When there is unquestionable value in these changes, they're simply unstoppable, and society is unquestionably better off as a whole. Perhaps not immediately, but in the long term. Yes, this sometimes puts a toll on the individual. We should support them when this happens via a social safety net. But we shouldn't try to halt progress instead. It's like trying to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

otterley 2mo ago

> Dismissing them all as a single unified group of people opposed to all change is a disgusting contempt for everyone who disagrees with your comfort no matter what it may cost them personally. That may be your personal interpretation of it, but it's not my intent. > We've seen thousands and thousands of jobs cut and people laid off for AI. Those people are bearing the cost of your personal desire for a little bit of comfort. > We've seen towns lose electricity contracts and the residents forced to scramble and pay higher costs because of the possiblility of datacenter contracts. This hurts a lot of people who were already at the edge of being able to afford basic life. I'll ask again for data and evidence, particularly evidence that people who were "laid off for AI" were both 1/actually laid off for AI (as opposed to some other root cause) and 2/unable to get new jobs, and that 3/people were forced into bankruptcy because their electricity bills went up solely in mere anticipation of new datacenter buildouts. If you can't provide it, I'm not going to continue with this conversation. I refuse to engage with people who claim knowledge with absolute certainty but who can't back their claims up. There's a lot of reasonable worry about these possibilities, to be sure, but whether the worst has come to pass is, to my knowledge, still very much subject to debate. AFAIK nobody's quality of life has been significantly altered because a data center was stood up in an industrial or agricultural zone nearby. Happy to be proven wrong though.

sophacles 2mo ago
You're moving the goal posts and your true nature is leaking. You get to decide what too much suffering is for others, because you won't have to face any of it and monstrously will continue to refuse to care about how your chasing a shiny toy hurts other people. Losing a job due to AI is suffering, it causes hardship and stress. 1. Oracle, Block, Ford, Cloudflare, Salesforce and others' CEOs have explicitly stated that they did layoffs because of AI 2. This isn't needed for "causes suffering" but since the jobless rate is growing and job growth is low or negative the last year or so, there are people who can't get a job because the candidate pool has grown. Even if a laid off person can get another job, it certainly contributes to someone being left out of work. Furhter even if they can get another job - do you have evidence that the new job is equivalent or better to the one they lost? 3. I never claimed bankruptcy. You're trying to say that people struggling to make ends meet having to struggle harder to reach the same result isn't a problem since they aren't bankrupt. It's an absurd position because bankruptcy isn't the definition of hardship. Furhter I never claimed the worst has happened. I'm trying to prevent the bad, not just "the worst". Your seeming position is "if its not the worst outcome, its not bad, who cares that we hurt a lot of people since we could have hurt them worse". Again, it's a deplorable position and the type of thing you should wish for yourself and your children before you wish it on others.
- otterley 2mo ago
  When I look at issues like this, I balance benefits against costs, like any reasonable person should, and I try to do so as neutrally as I can. Using emotionally-charged verbiage like "chasing a shiny toy" and "deplorable" isn't helping your case and makes you sound frankly unhinged. There are substantive, realizable benefits from using AI. Over the past few days alone, it has played a significant role in helping me both identify and fix a thorny issue in a major open source project that 1/will see a fix soon that every user will benefit from and 2/will unblock a major initiative at my company. It has also greatly assisted me in my personal and professional life in other ways, like improving my communications (directionally, modulo AI slop that's still a problem), planning vacations with my family, and doing home improvement projects and my hobbies. > Oracle, Block, Ford, Cloudflare, Salesforce and others' CEOs have explicitly stated that they did layoffs because of AI They've said so, which I fully admit, but I don't believe them. AI is a convenient pretext that makes their investors happy, and it's a preferable excuse to some audiences over admitting they hired the wrong people or embarked on the wrong initiatives. Where AI taketh, it also giveth: there are new jobs, too. Competent SREs and service architects, at least, are busier than ever. > the jobless rate is growing and job growth is low or negative the last year or so How much of that is attributable to AI? How do you know? > I'm trying to prevent the bad, not just "the worst" You can't always prevent the bad. Every technological development has caused some jobs to be lost or some people to be inconvenienced or displaced, from the Industrial Revolution to "computers" (who were once human beings). When there is unquestionable value in these changes, they're simply unstoppable, and society is unquestionably better off as a whole. Perhaps not immediately, but in the long term. Yes, this sometimes puts a toll on the individual. We should support them when this happens via a social safety net. But we shouldn't try to halt progress instead. It's like trying to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.