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You are engaging in the "but you participate in society" fallacy. One can critique systems they are still interacting with, to suggest otherwise is just so in

You are engaging in the "but you participate in society" fallacy. One can critique systems they are still interacting with, to suggest otherwise is just so incredibly lazy.

rpdillon 29d ago
Not at all. The post being responded to completely failed to acknowledge any value brought by data centers to the general populous. That's disingenuous. To force the point: run me through the scenario where we turn off all the data centers. Consider how much more water we will have, how much less expensive electricity will be, and what other problems might arise.
- mawadev 29d ago
  [flagged]
  - rpdillon 29d ago
    What else might happen?
    - grubbusThewiz 29d ago
      [flagged]
      - rpdillon 29d ago
        Unlikely. I'm not sure where HN is hosted, but I think it's a bare metal server in a colo, not a data center. The childish behavior is disagreeing with how datacenters are being deployed and reducing that to "more is bad", and then stretching the position to "data centers bad". I'm begging the collective here to consider what they are really asking for, because our society, from the government down, is built on the cloud. Finding a healthy way to provide compute is important, and "data center bad" doesn't get us there. We need the solar/wind equivalent for hosting. The problem is data centers have efficiencies at scale that we can't achieve with more distributed solutions, but I'm not a specialist in that particular analysis.
        kfkfkckd 29d ago
        [flagged]
        grubbusThewiz 29d ago
        Your perception is its built on cloud. How much if that is true and how much of it is carefully constructed propaganda? Implanted and reinforced beliefs to make workers hustle to ensure the server fields produce enough crop this quarter. Most people on the planet are not tech people. Their world is not built on cloud at all but ensuring there is sufficient food and stuff to satisfy their biological needs. It's asocial terminally online tech workers who think the cloud is akin to strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity; so essential they are fundamental forces of nature themselves Hopefully you can get the obvious bias of your perspective; species of 8 billion is not propped up by a few million script kiddies
        rpdillon 29d ago
        I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters. The Trump administration pulled a bunch of ocean sensors, whose data was aggregated in the cloud, in an attempt to save money. Except, those sensors were not only providing research data on changes in ocean currents, but helping fisheries make predictions about yield. The administration backtracked because of this. There is a similar story with weather forecasting, and farmers being able to manage their crops. Let's not even get started on the economic impact worldwide of datacenters were not available to process stock and bond trades. New technologies seem optional, but once society passes some tipping point in their adoption, they no longer are. AI isn't there yet, but cloud computing is. I think I've given you far more than you're due in this conversation, so I'll stop here. In short, I think you're being dismissive, particularly when you try to frame my position as "society is propped up by script kiddies". Seems like a deeply inaccurate way of summarizing my points.
        bigbadfeline 29d ago
        > I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters. These things were with us and worked better before datacenters even existed. Datacenters are a mere convenience which is now used to force monopolization of compute while subjecting society to extremely risky, but unnecessary dependencies and centralization. You say we're already there? A good reason to start undoing it ASAP.
- Ydarbleoj 29d ago
  But that value is subjective. If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC, again, I might not have the ability to see what you see as positive. So, my take is that maybe the pro-DC side can do better at seeing multiple perspectives instead of acting like anything negatively said about DCs is a psychosis.
  - Sabinus 29d ago
    >If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC Those things are both a result of a failure of government, not the existence of data centres. If there are externalised costs the company wants to put on people then your government should extract them from the company as a condition of permission. Data centres are factories that turn electricity into heat and money. They're basically the nicest factories possible. There is no fundamental reason they need to harm people, any issues data centres cause should be easy to address as a fraction of the already massive sums involved.
    - DrewADesign 28d ago
      So if I build a heavily protested foundry that spews carcinogenic lead smoke into a residential neighborhood, it’s not my fault and the operation of my foundry is unimpeachable. It’s the government’s fault for not stopping me from doing it. Since the people affected are responsible for compelling government to limit business, businesses are not responsible for anything. Privatize the gains, then socialize the losses, then blame the government for not stepping in, and ignore the company actively undermining the public’s leverage in the process. Ok, got it. That makes complete sense. It’s decidedly not nihilistic justification for doing obviously unethical things in pursuit of profit.
      - Sabinus 28d ago
        The third paragraph of my comment already addressed this. A data centre is not a foundry. In a metal foundry some of the physical externality is intrinsic to doing the process. It's a continuous industrial chemical operation emitting smoke, metal fumes, VOCs, dust, sound etc. You can capture 99% of pollution, but you're still melting, casting, shaking out and finishing tonnes of hot metal and sand. Complete physical isolation is expensive and imperfect. With data centres, most local externalities are engineering choices. With enough money and sensible siting, you could plausibly build one whose effect on neighbouring residents is extremely close to nil. The biggest remaining externalities occur upstream in the electricity/water/grid system - and those are unusually amenable to being charged directly to the operator. If a local data centre is impacting you negatively it's a failure of your government because it didn't need to be that way. It's not an intrinsic part of data centre operation. They turn electricity into heat and money, a comparatively simple factory to have completely deal with its own externalities.
- heylook 29d ago
  They also didn't say whether or not they like electric lightbulbs. Or hot showers. Or clothes. Or the wheel.
- sophacles 29d ago
  One tylenol is good at reducing my fever. 20 tylenol will likely damage my liver and might even kill me. I'm not saying tylenol is bad. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just pointing out that your position is equivalent to opposing a person saying "lets no shove 20 tylenol down someone's throat" with the argument "but one has reduced the fever".

You are engaging in the "but you participate in society" fallacy. One can critique systems they are still interacting with, to suggest otherwise is just so incredibly lazy.

rpdillon 29d ago

Not at all. The post being responded to completely failed to acknowledge any value brought by data centers to the general populous. That's disingenuous. To force the point: run me through the scenario where we turn off all the data centers. Consider how much more water we will have, how much less expensive electricity will be, and what other problems might arise.

mawadev 29d ago
[flagged]
- rpdillon 29d ago
  What else might happen?
  - grubbusThewiz 29d ago
    [flagged]
    - rpdillon 29d ago
      Unlikely. I'm not sure where HN is hosted, but I think it's a bare metal server in a colo, not a data center. The childish behavior is disagreeing with how datacenters are being deployed and reducing that to "more is bad", and then stretching the position to "data centers bad". I'm begging the collective here to consider what they are really asking for, because our society, from the government down, is built on the cloud. Finding a healthy way to provide compute is important, and "data center bad" doesn't get us there. We need the solar/wind equivalent for hosting. The problem is data centers have efficiencies at scale that we can't achieve with more distributed solutions, but I'm not a specialist in that particular analysis.
      - kfkfkckd 29d ago
        [flagged]
      - grubbusThewiz 29d ago
        Your perception is its built on cloud. How much if that is true and how much of it is carefully constructed propaganda? Implanted and reinforced beliefs to make workers hustle to ensure the server fields produce enough crop this quarter. Most people on the planet are not tech people. Their world is not built on cloud at all but ensuring there is sufficient food and stuff to satisfy their biological needs. It's asocial terminally online tech workers who think the cloud is akin to strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity; so essential they are fundamental forces of nature themselves Hopefully you can get the obvious bias of your perspective; species of 8 billion is not propped up by a few million script kiddies
        rpdillon 29d ago
        I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters. The Trump administration pulled a bunch of ocean sensors, whose data was aggregated in the cloud, in an attempt to save money. Except, those sensors were not only providing research data on changes in ocean currents, but helping fisheries make predictions about yield. The administration backtracked because of this. There is a similar story with weather forecasting, and farmers being able to manage their crops. Let's not even get started on the economic impact worldwide of datacenters were not available to process stock and bond trades. New technologies seem optional, but once society passes some tipping point in their adoption, they no longer are. AI isn't there yet, but cloud computing is. I think I've given you far more than you're due in this conversation, so I'll stop here. In short, I think you're being dismissive, particularly when you try to frame my position as "society is propped up by script kiddies". Seems like a deeply inaccurate way of summarizing my points.
        bigbadfeline 29d ago
        > I think you're vastly under-estimating the extent to which power grids, water systems, and global supply chains and manufacturing rely heavily on datacenters. These things were with us and worked better before datacenters even existed. Datacenters are a mere convenience which is now used to force monopolization of compute while subjecting society to extremely risky, but unnecessary dependencies and centralization. You say we're already there? A good reason to start undoing it ASAP.
Ydarbleoj 29d ago
But that value is subjective. If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC, again, I might not have the ability to see what you see as positive. So, my take is that maybe the pro-DC side can do better at seeing multiple perspectives instead of acting like anything negatively said about DCs is a psychosis.
- Sabinus 29d ago
  >If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC Those things are both a result of a failure of government, not the existence of data centres. If there are externalised costs the company wants to put on people then your government should extract them from the company as a condition of permission. Data centres are factories that turn electricity into heat and money. They're basically the nicest factories possible. There is no fundamental reason they need to harm people, any issues data centres cause should be easy to address as a fraction of the already massive sums involved.
  - DrewADesign 28d ago
    So if I build a heavily protested foundry that spews carcinogenic lead smoke into a residential neighborhood, it’s not my fault and the operation of my foundry is unimpeachable. It’s the government’s fault for not stopping me from doing it. Since the people affected are responsible for compelling government to limit business, businesses are not responsible for anything. Privatize the gains, then socialize the losses, then blame the government for not stepping in, and ignore the company actively undermining the public’s leverage in the process. Ok, got it. That makes complete sense. It’s decidedly not nihilistic justification for doing obviously unethical things in pursuit of profit.
    - Sabinus 28d ago
      The third paragraph of my comment already addressed this. A data centre is not a foundry. In a metal foundry some of the physical externality is intrinsic to doing the process. It's a continuous industrial chemical operation emitting smoke, metal fumes, VOCs, dust, sound etc. You can capture 99% of pollution, but you're still melting, casting, shaking out and finishing tonnes of hot metal and sand. Complete physical isolation is expensive and imperfect. With data centres, most local externalities are engineering choices. With enough money and sensible siting, you could plausibly build one whose effect on neighbouring residents is extremely close to nil. The biggest remaining externalities occur upstream in the electricity/water/grid system - and those are unusually amenable to being charged directly to the operator. If a local data centre is impacting you negatively it's a failure of your government because it didn't need to be that way. It's not an intrinsic part of data centre operation. They turn electricity into heat and money, a comparatively simple factory to have completely deal with its own externalities.
heylook 29d ago
They also didn't say whether or not they like electric lightbulbs. Or hot showers. Or clothes. Or the wheel.
sophacles 29d ago
One tylenol is good at reducing my fever. 20 tylenol will likely damage my liver and might even kill me. I'm not saying tylenol is bad. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just pointing out that your position is equivalent to opposing a person saying "lets no shove 20 tylenol down someone's throat" with the argument "but one has reduced the fever".