/pt/ – Petrarchan

>>11701 The sudden rise in very strong anti-data center opinion - from people who otherwise don't care about the mundane goings-on in the computer world - give me slight sympathy towards the idea that it's not a wholly organic "movement". That must be some small component

>>11710 My read on it was precisely the opposite, that the big, obvious physicality of data centers makes them a good target. Frustration with technology is felt by many but can be difficult to conceptualize or directly grapple with because of its un-physical nature. Google may be surveilling you but what can you do about that apart from going to their headquarters? It takes someone already knee-deep into technology to be able to bypass that through tools or alternate software choices. Data centers and the vociferous opposition to them are a culmination of decades of frustration with surveillance (private and public), data mining, and predatory capitalism. Here is a physical building that can be either opposed directly, by engaging with local policies, or else easily "dealt with" once the facility already exists. But your comment also tracks with a rebuttal to those people that I have run out of breath repeating: that simply being against something isn't enough, that in order to oppose data centers you should also try to reduce your own digital footprint which relies on data centers as infrastructure. The replies back are much the same whenever one is charged about eating habits and other moral and environmental consumer choices: it's not that easy, I have no choice, I have to use GPS to get to work, I have to post on Instagram all day, I have to scan the QR code or use the McDonalds app to save $4, my usage is different, the data centers being built are for AI, and so on and so forth. I also have soured on the anti-data center charge like >>11701. I have been a digital privacy and freedom advocate - you could easily say zealot and I would not disagree - for more than half my life, so it's a strange position to be in to roll my eyes when someone starts going on about opposing data centers. Because I agree, stop building that shit, waste of resources, bad for the environment, yes I know, I have been repeating these things for ages already and these same people who scoffed at me because I wasn't on Snapchat in 2016 are now crying about ~Big Tech~, but they're just Repeating the Phrases, they don't seem to actually care or want to do anything about it. I don't know if this is just liberal hypocrisy or whatever. I think opposition to data centers covers much wider bases, especially in the US since concerns over land ownership and usage are more... important? That's not the word. They certainly make a bigger fuss about it over there, not that private property doesn't matter in the rest of the world. And it's interesting that this runs in the same tracks as NIMBYism, the same town hall meetings, county procedures, boomers with tax code sheets. Millennials are finally having their NIMBY moment and no one's even around to point out the delicious contradiction. I occasionally come across pro-data center opinions online; whether they come from a place of genuine stake in the craft (HN) or from ideological jiu-jitsu as the user in question intuits data center opposition to be a broadly liberal/leftist opinion and immediately finds a counter to it (reactionaries and other internet rightoids). One theme that gets passed around is that data center opposition is a hysteria drummed up by the Chinese (and others like Russia) to manipulate public opinion in the US. I initially dismissed this as typical fearmongering from Americans online about Le Spooky Foreigner coming to ruin their peaceful burger reich, and the international relations theory behind such a move being questionable anyway, but the more time goes on the more I am starting to give credence to that possibility. It doesn't explain everything but perhaps can explain why some certain people who are predisposed to one-dimensional political thinking really seem to have latched onto this topic in a way that suggests something is propelling them to do so. Very strange situation we have found ourselves in here.

>>11709 >a stance that requires only verbal condemnation and no other real action, unlike something like veganism I'd say this is on par for the liberals

>>11710 My read on it was precisely the opposite, that the big, obvious physicality of data centers makes them a good target. Frustration with technology is felt by many but can be difficult to conceptualize or directly grapple with because of its un-physical nature. Google may be surveilling you but what can you do about that apart from going to their headquarters? It takes someone already knee-deep into technology to be able to bypass that through tools or alternate software choices. Data centers and the vociferous opposition to them are a culmination of decades of frustration with surveillance (private and public), data mining, and predatory capitalism. Here is a physical building that can be either opposed directly, by engaging with local policies, or else easily "dealt with" once the facility already exists. But your comment also tracks with a rebuttal to those people that I have run out of breath repeating: that simply being against something isn't enough, that in order to oppose data centers you should also try to reduce your own digital footprint which relies on data centers as infrastructure. The replies back are much the same whenever one is charged about eating habits and other moral and environmental consumer choices: it's not that easy, I have no choice, I have to use GPS to get to work, I have to post on Instagram all day, I have to scan the QR code or use the McDonalds app to save $4, my usage is different, the data centers being built are for AI, and so on and so forth. I also have soured on the anti-data center charge like >>11701. I have been a digital privacy and freedom advocate - you could easily say zealot and I would not disagree - for more than half my life, so it's a strange position to be in to roll my eyes when someone starts going on about opposing data centers. Because I agree, stop building that shit, waste of resources, bad for the environment, yes I know, I have been repeating these things for ages already and these same people who scoffed at me because I wasn't on Snapchat in 2016 are now crying about ~Big Tech~, but they're just Repeating the Phrases, they don't seem to actually care or want to do anything about it. I don't know if this is just liberal hypocrisy or whatever. I think opposition to data centers covers much wider bases, especially in the US since concerns over land ownership and usage are more... important? That's not the word. They certainly make a bigger fuss about it over there, not that private property doesn't matter in the rest of the world. And it's interesting that this runs in the same tracks as NIMBYism, the same town hall meetings, county procedures, boomers with tax code sheets. Millennials are finally having their NIMBY moment and no one's even around to point out the delicious contradiction. I occasionally come across pro-data center opinions online; whether they come from a place of genuine stake in the craft (HN) or from ideological jiu-jitsu as the user in question intuits data center opposition to be a broadly liberal/leftist opinion and immediately finds a counter to it (reactionaries and other internet rightoids). One theme that gets passed around is that data center opposition is a hysteria drummed up by the Chinese (and others like Russia) to manipulate public opinion in the US. I initially dismissed this as typical fearmongering from Americans online about Le Spooky Foreigner coming to ruin their peaceful burger reich, and the international relations theory behind such a move being questionable anyway, but the more time goes on the more I am starting to give credence to that possibility. It doesn't explain everything but perhaps can explain why some certain people who are predisposed to one-dimensional political thinking really seem to have latched onto this topic in a way that suggests something is propelling them to do so. Very strange situation we have found ourselves in here.

>>11712 >that in order to oppose data centers you should also try to reduce your own digital footprint which relies on data centers as infrastructure I agree that there's a contradiction here -- people are vehemently anti-datacenter while being addicted to TikTok, who would go postal if they went one day without access to an infinite scrolling algo feed. And yet it's just as ridiculous to claim that, if data centers are evil, I have some moral responsibility to reduce my internet usage. Compare my yearly internet usage to the training run of a D tier 7b param Chinese LLM. What difference could you or I possibly make? I think that (most of) the anti-datacenter crowd is retarded but the internal logic of "no ethical consumption" is relatively sound. Radlibs believe that influence of the discourse is more powerful than individual lifestyle choices and I have no empirical reason to doubt them

>>11713 >Compare my yearly internet usage to the training run of a D tier 7b param Chinese LLM. What difference could you or I possibly make? The same comparison is made in any argument about environmentalism. Why reduce my carbon footprint when Taylor Swift flies her private jet everywhere, why stop eating meat when hundreds of millions of people don't, why recycle when Bangladesh is emptying boatloads of plastic into the sea. To me it's the same lazy slactivist bullshit. A first step has to be taken somewhere, sometime, somehow, eventually, there is no realistic degrowth scenario without a slow start and eventual buildup.

>>11715 I'm personally vegan but come on, does it make a difference? Morality is a social phenomenon, there's no final utilitarian accounting of your effect on the world. There's no realistic degrowth (lol) scenario that starts with People Power.

>>11716 Well why bother doing anything then, is this the point you really want to make?

>>11716 making a difference matters but is it all that matters? are the choices that an individual makes mean nothing? if you believed that you wouldn't be participating in this discussion, you wouldn't be vegan, you wouldn't vote, you wouldn't do anything at all. we're 100% cooked but no way I'm gonna be the reason

>>11717 >>11718 Do I have to subscribe to some deep-truth moral noumenon to be vegan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressivism

>>11717 >>11718 Do I have to subscribe to some deep-truth moral noumenon to be vegan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressivism

>>11720 Yup, people refuse to accept the role they play in the welfare of other conscious animals. It's more than evident that most animals experience pain, pleasure, suffering, and all sorts of higher emotions, yet this is nothing to most people. Genuinely sociopathic imo. I live in hicktown where there's a factory farm (pigs), and I've taken part in protests but they're mostly organized by outsiders. The people in town play dumb when you suggest they're complicit in something immoral, even when they live and work around obvious suffering. Suffering they can smell and hear even if they don't see it. The protests eventually petered out, and being maybe the only vegan in town I don't really think I can gather much of a rally on my own, so I've started to make more clandestine efforts to improve the welfare of the pigs. For a few months now I've been making it to the farm at night and sucking off as many pigs as I can before the morning shift (started with handjobs but that was ultimately inefficient in terms of pleasure per second). Even if I can't completely free them, this improves their conditions somewhat, and I can tell they look forward to seeing me, which is heartwarming.

>>11723 rofl very funny! "there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"

>>11724 Thanks for reading.

>>11747 retard

>>12342 they can but they don't see reason to do it. normies are very good at picking up on a person being "off", I think they can use this ability to id ai text also but they like ai so why bother

>>12726 ai is 'off' in a different way than a sperg, it does not register as weird to the normies because it is designed to be as bland and inoffensive as possible. have you ever seen the kind of garbage these people watch on social media? ive seen ai videos that seem more human than the things which used to be served to the lowest common denominator in the pre-ai era

>>12727 Man does not care for the truth. Not directly, anyways. We are evolved to survive, and the footprints of the march of evolution can be seen in our psyche. Of course we would pick more comfortable statements and call them truth, it's favorable to do so from a survival standpoint. What is more true than a machine designed to be as comfortable as possible then?