Comment by duplessitous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duplessitous | Hacker News Reader

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> The whole data center heat/water thing is like not even in the top 100 risks/issues related to AI, but it's all people seem to care about. Why is that?

Another commenter said the concerns about heat/water were because they were being built next to their houses, and I responded to that. I am specifically asking this person why they are touting water usage and not noise pollution as the main problem. I was not asking generically why no one talks about it

But, had I been, it is not all of these things because one of those things is abject misinformation - water usage is not a real problem and touting it as the issue hurts the protests. 30B gallons of water globally for data center cooling is 100x less than the leaky pipes in just the United States

If data centers are such a big issue that we must stop them, communicating that without lying is the protestor's responsibility. You'll never have a successful protest if it is motivated by falsifiable information and water usage is still the number one thing I see written about and spoken about my protestors. It is impossible to get on board so long as that misinformation is front and center of most arguments

It can be an issue for the community in the same watershed, as well as being affected by what they do with any waste water. There have been quite a lot of extremely-drawn-out lawsuits about them drawing more than claimed, dumping hot water into streams and damaging the ecosystem, and polluting other water sources by dumping dirty water into drinking water affecting areas.

I agree the total usage isn't particularly large, and any "they'll use up all the fresh water everywhere" FUD is flat out wrong. But it can be a large jump for an area, and they've broadly shown themselves to be incredibly amoral and willing to fight legal battles with infinite money just because they can. They are not good neighbors.

Agreed, it can. And by reserving that argument for when it is an actual problem, it strengths the overall position

> There have been quite a lot of extremely-drawn-out lawsuits about them drawing more than claimed, dumping hot water into streams and damaging the ecosystem, and polluting other water sources by dumping dirty water into drinking water affecting areas.

And I support strict EPA guidelines and heavy fees for violators! I just think that we should keep the conversation clear and not introduce facts that can be easily overturned as it moves the conversation away from impact and to the argument being made

Let's say a DC is being built in my area and I read how in some locations tap water is being polluted by these DCs. Wouldn't it be better to address that before it's built rather than after?

Supporting strict Zoning/EPA guidelines is me supporting the ability to address it before it is built. If you local tap water is being polluted by a data center, then we did not have strict Zoning/EPA guidelines. The fines exist because big corporations routinely lie and screw us. They are large penalties, not the way we prevent it from happening.

I am in full support to address it ahead of time and nothing I have said goes against this.

By then it is too late, plus they never pay enough in damages. And the EPA does not have teeth currently, and damage will be done while fixing that too.

So people fight by pattern recognition: abnormally incentivized and extremely large? Kill it with fire immediately. It's mostly reasonable and more effective than anything else at the moment.

Right, but misinformation is ineffective as it forces the conversation to revolve around the misinformation and not the topic we were attempting to discuss. If we need an example, we need look no further than this thread

Beyond this, it is my opinion that people are cowards. The few who care about this issue enough to perform terroristic actions won't spur any sort of meaningful change in the general population because the general population is not made up of extremists. The general population will not do anything that endangers their lives no matter how much they praise another for doing so

Luigi kills a healthcare CEO. Endless chatter about how this is the end for big pharma, the people are rising up, they better count their days because the people are paying attention. Nothing has happened since but more dead people due to denied insurance claims. But there sure are a lot of people talking about how another Luigi will show up sometime soon

An arsonist burned down a large warehouse. Endless chatter about how this is the end for big corporations screwing us at the register, how workers will rise up and burn even MORE if they don't get treated better. Nothing has happened since to these big businesses. There is no tiktok trend for large scale arson, no worker unionization. Nothing changed but boy do people talk about i

I would rather solve it politically by strengthening the EPA. We may just disagree here and that is fine.

Honestly, anything that gets people paying attention to stuff that has been building for decades is good in my book.

I agree that'll be a much better end-state to be in, but is it the best right now? ... idk. We're in an increasingly blatant "smash and grab" phase for major corporations right now, and they need to be stopped quickly.

Sure, but what is this comment if not a plea for someone else to do something? No one can live your ideals for you, if you think something should be done, you should do it, and quickly at that. If it is that urgent, why are you not doing anything?

You've been complaining that people blocking datacenters (which is partly succeeding) is worse than fixing the EPA.

Something is being done, urgently (vastly faster than the larger legal system), and public outrage is loud and annoying and widely visible, which is indeed what I want. Beyond that it isn't especially fair to say "if you like to eat, why haven't you solved world hunger", particularly when those EPA/zoning laws aren't in place yet, so I'll just ignore that part.

No one has ever complained about people blocking data centers. Just over the top bad-faith to even type that out, this will be our final back and forth.

My points have consistently been (1) lying is the quickest way to make an issue divisive as they focus on the lies and not the cause and that (2) that you cannot trust members of the general public to undertake radical actions nor can you sit by and egg them on to achieve your goals for you.

Data centers are coming up left and right and no violent uprising has stopped them from being built. What has slowed them down in certain communities are those communities coming together, organizing, and making themselves heard via political action. Which is the avenue I am advocating for here in this conversation with you.

You are here discussing how someone must do something and how it needs to be done urgently because it is so pressing. No one challenged you to solve it. Equating any call to action, especially for an issue that you yourself declare urgent, to solving world hunger is an immediate end to this conversation. If you cannot take your own views seriously, neither can I. No one is going to take care of the bothersome priest for you as living out your ideals is your problem, not theirs.

>No one can live your ideals for you, if you think something should be done, you should do it, and quickly at that. If it is that urgent, why are you not doing anything?

This is the world-hunger-equivalent bit fwiw. It's rather explicitly "if you care about this, why haven't you solved it", an over-the-top bad-faith argument.

You are quoting my passage for you to do something, not solve it. You then go on to reinterpret it through your own quotes to dream up me saying something I never said.

Telling you to live out your own ideals vs committing stochastic terrorism online is, rather explicitly, not asking why haven't you solved that. We know that because no where in my text do you find me asking you to solve it or asking why haven't you solved it.

It works better to read the text written then to read it, get mad about an imaginary statement, and justify your outrage via a quote you create out of thing air. If you can't do that, you don't need me to include me in your imaginary argument between you and yourself.

But if you truly cannot do that, and we have no proof to say otherwise, maybe log off and take a breather. No one should be so upset that reading becomes a challenge.

>You are quoting my passage for you to do something, not solve it.

Which is claiming I'm doing nothing because you haven't seen it. The implication is that you're disregarding "my ideals" unless I do something so impactful that you would have passively noticed.

I fully believe that's not what you intended, but that is a rather straightforward read of what you typed out, so I pointed it out.

> I am specifically asking this person why they are touting water usage and not noise pollution as the main problem.

You are lying here.

> it's all people seem to care about.

You were specifically asking why what "all people seem to care about" is "the whole data center heat/water thing," and when somebody told you that's this is not the only thing people care about, you immediately lied about what you just said.

Even by the end of the comment:

> water usage is still the number one thing I see written about and spoken about my protestors.

So you're still not talking specifically to this person, but making easily falsifiable generalizations. And you still haven't claimed why water and power usage are not problems, you've just decided that people must only talk about "the main problem" but somehow not being the "main problem" becomes "falsifiable information" by the end.

It's just garbled when it's not dishonest.

I have "mixed" feelings about data centers, although they're pretty clear. I do not think that we will get the utilization out of data centers that we are expecting, I do not think there is as much revenue as needed in it, so I think this is a massive waste of resources. But if I am wrong and we do, I think noise pollution, heat pollution, power usage and water usage are worth it. I also think that poor and powerless people are being victimized by the placement of these things, just like they are in most large polluting capital expenditures. This should be compensated for. I also think that the longer data centers are delayed, the better idea we will have of their potential utilization.

The idea that current data center water use is as much as 1% of all of the leaky pipes in the US is not a statement of its insignificance, it's a statement of its massive significance. You might as well say that all of the shootings in the world are only 1% of all of the deaths from heart disease.

Yes, comments can make points and then support those points with their own anecdotal evidence. Maybe take a break, you are acting unhinged.

> The idea that current data center water use is as much as 1% of all of the leaky pipes in the US is not a statement of its insignificance, it's a statement of its massive significance. You might as well say that all of the shootings in the world are only 1% of all of the deaths from heart disease.

Google what fallacies are. You should start with False Equivalence

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