6 ms·

We do. But currently we are choosing the Luddite way of doing things. Simply ignoring this fantastic technology is not a choice but economic suicide.

_vertigo 4mo ago
Interesting — so in your opinion every country must build out datacenters or be left behind?
- vessenes 4mo ago
  I'm not the original commenter, but I do think this is true, so I'll bite. Datacenters process data, but they do it in a particular location, and therefore are subject to local and national laws. It would be folly for a government to decide that some other country's laws and enforcement standards should be applied in absentia. Whether you love the singularity or hate it, you should whole-heartedly be advocating to have whatever datacenter your country will use be built on shore. In fact, you should also be whole-heartedly advocating for local frontier models / or at least locally managed open weights models for the same reason. But the datacenter is easy. Just build them. Your fellow citizens will use them. Why send all their data to some other country that might be a strategic adversary?
- dukeyukey 4mo ago
  To a point, yes. Otherwise you are at the mercy of whoever's compute you use.
vrganj 4mo ago
[flagged]
- perks_12 4mo ago
  Try Claude Code for a weekend. Maybe that clears up the confusion about how amazing AI can be. You can also take a look at North Korea as an example of a nation that decided the industrial revolution was one to sit out.
  - oblio 4mo ago
    I've used Claude Code for quite a bit longer and it's good, but the productivity benefits are wildly overstated.
  - vrganj 4mo ago
    I use Claude Code regularly. It's... fine. It makes some things faster. Other things, it needs more manual cleanup or intervention than it's worth. It's neat, for sure. But not exactly the steam machine.
- tomhow 4mo ago
  Omit internet tropes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dgellow 4mo ago
Your comments read as unhinged. Do you actually believe that HN audience of all places is composed of Luddite? People who are working in the tech industry but are somehow anti future because they are concerned by the ever growing energy demand from AI? How much are you ok to sacrifice to the LLM gods before you would start to question the technology?
- margalabargala 4mo ago
  Well, that depends. How much do you actually know about the Luddites, versus making assumptions vs their use as a pejorative in pop culture? The more our definition of "Luddite" becomes historically accurage, the more it is true that yes, the HN audience is composed of people like that.
  - dgellow 4mo ago
    My definition of Luddite doesn’t matter, the person I responded to clearly used it in a pejorative way to describe people who are resistant to new technologies (likely irrational)
  - stymaar 4mo ago
    > The more our definition of "Luddite" becomes historically accurage, the more it is true that yes, the HN audience is composed of people like that. Ah yeah, the people of HN, well known for burning down datacenters.
  - HelloMcFly 4mo ago
    Most uses of the word "Luddite" - and I'd venture to guess this one included - don't refer to the original aims of Luddites but the modern connotation of maximally pejorative "anti-technologists" in the broadest sense.
- stymaar 4mo ago
  > Do you actually believe that HN audience of all places is composed of Luddite? The core tenet of totalitarianism is pretending any opposing view is terrorism. You are either supporters of the system, or dangerous anti-social criminals who must be eradicated.
agentultra 4mo ago
The Luddite movement wasn’t opposed to progress or technology. They were demanding protections from exploitation by the capital class: abolishment of child labour, fair wages, social protection from job loss, etc. There was no labour law at the time. Destroying the machines was a way to gain leverage, nothing more. Ultimately the capitalists won that conflict. Many Luddites were murdered or jailed. And the history that was written tried to tell us that the Luddites were backwards peasants who didn’t understand technology and progress.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  I agree that the original Luddite movement has been mischaracterized, but you're also leaning toward mischaracterizing them in too friendly of a light. The Luddites were also guilty of violent acts and they were afraid to threaten or use violence to protect their interests. It wasn't a simple disagreement of evil capitalists versus saintly laborers. They cared more about protectionism for their personal businesses. They were also very clearly on the wrong side of history. We would not be better off if the Luddites had won and forced us all to be doing manual labor all day without the help of those evil machines they were destroying.
  - GeoAtreides 4mo ago
    OP: They were demanding protections from exploitation by the capital class: abolishment of child labour, fair wages, social protection from job loss, etc. [...] Destroying the machines was a way to gain leverage, nothing more. You: They were also very clearly on the wrong side of history.We would not be better off if the Luddites had won and forced us all to be doing manual labor all day without the help of those evil machines they were destroying. HN sophistry of the highest level. It's shit like this that made the sophists deeply hated back in the days (today too, i would add)
    - Aurornis 4mo ago
      You completely ignored the point of my post, the factual inaccuracies in the post I was responding to, and used the cheap trick of attacking words I didn’t say (literally the strawman fallacy) Ironic that you’re waxing philosophically about the quality of comments on HN while doing all of this.

_vertigo 4mo ago

Interesting — so in your opinion every country must build out datacenters or be left behind?

vessenes 4mo ago
I'm not the original commenter, but I do think this is true, so I'll bite. Datacenters process data, but they do it in a particular location, and therefore are subject to local and national laws. It would be folly for a government to decide that some other country's laws and enforcement standards should be applied in absentia. Whether you love the singularity or hate it, you should whole-heartedly be advocating to have whatever datacenter your country will use be built on shore. In fact, you should also be whole-heartedly advocating for local frontier models / or at least locally managed open weights models for the same reason. But the datacenter is easy. Just build them. Your fellow citizens will use them. Why send all their data to some other country that might be a strategic adversary?
dukeyukey 4mo ago
To a point, yes. Otherwise you are at the mercy of whoever's compute you use.

vrganj 4mo ago

[flagged]

perks_12 4mo ago
Try Claude Code for a weekend. Maybe that clears up the confusion about how amazing AI can be. You can also take a look at North Korea as an example of a nation that decided the industrial revolution was one to sit out.
- oblio 4mo ago
  I've used Claude Code for quite a bit longer and it's good, but the productivity benefits are wildly overstated.
- vrganj 4mo ago
  I use Claude Code regularly. It's... fine. It makes some things faster. Other things, it needs more manual cleanup or intervention than it's worth. It's neat, for sure. But not exactly the steam machine.
tomhow 4mo ago
Omit internet tropes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dgellow 4mo ago

Your comments read as unhinged. Do you actually believe that HN audience of all places is composed of Luddite? People who are working in the tech industry but are somehow anti future because they are concerned by the ever growing energy demand from AI? How much are you ok to sacrifice to the LLM gods before you would start to question the technology?

margalabargala 4mo ago
Well, that depends. How much do you actually know about the Luddites, versus making assumptions vs their use as a pejorative in pop culture? The more our definition of "Luddite" becomes historically accurage, the more it is true that yes, the HN audience is composed of people like that.
- dgellow 4mo ago
  My definition of Luddite doesn’t matter, the person I responded to clearly used it in a pejorative way to describe people who are resistant to new technologies (likely irrational)
- stymaar 4mo ago
  > The more our definition of "Luddite" becomes historically accurage, the more it is true that yes, the HN audience is composed of people like that. Ah yeah, the people of HN, well known for burning down datacenters.
- HelloMcFly 4mo ago
  Most uses of the word "Luddite" - and I'd venture to guess this one included - don't refer to the original aims of Luddites but the modern connotation of maximally pejorative "anti-technologists" in the broadest sense.
stymaar 4mo ago
> Do you actually believe that HN audience of all places is composed of Luddite? The core tenet of totalitarianism is pretending any opposing view is terrorism. You are either supporters of the system, or dangerous anti-social criminals who must be eradicated.

agentultra 4mo ago

The Luddite movement wasn’t opposed to progress or technology. They were demanding protections from exploitation by the capital class: abolishment of child labour, fair wages, social protection from job loss, etc. There was no labour law at the time. Destroying the machines was a way to gain leverage, nothing more. Ultimately the capitalists won that conflict. Many Luddites were murdered or jailed. And the history that was written tried to tell us that the Luddites were backwards peasants who didn’t understand technology and progress.

Aurornis 4mo ago
I agree that the original Luddite movement has been mischaracterized, but you're also leaning toward mischaracterizing them in too friendly of a light. The Luddites were also guilty of violent acts and they were afraid to threaten or use violence to protect their interests. It wasn't a simple disagreement of evil capitalists versus saintly laborers. They cared more about protectionism for their personal businesses. They were also very clearly on the wrong side of history. We would not be better off if the Luddites had won and forced us all to be doing manual labor all day without the help of those evil machines they were destroying.
- GeoAtreides 4mo ago
  OP: They were demanding protections from exploitation by the capital class: abolishment of child labour, fair wages, social protection from job loss, etc. [...] Destroying the machines was a way to gain leverage, nothing more. You: They were also very clearly on the wrong side of history.We would not be better off if the Luddites had won and forced us all to be doing manual labor all day without the help of those evil machines they were destroying. HN sophistry of the highest level. It's shit like this that made the sophists deeply hated back in the days (today too, i would add)
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    You completely ignored the point of my post, the factual inaccuracies in the post I was responding to, and used the cheap trick of attacking words I didn’t say (literally the strawman fallacy) Ironic that you’re waxing philosophically about the quality of comments on HN while doing all of this.