23 ms·

This degrowth anti-technology mindset just does not make sense to me, and I think it's mostly astroturfed from TikTok.

goda90 22d ago
What part confuses you? The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply? The water, light and noise pollution? The threat to jobs? The threat to truth and transparency? The threat to privacy?
- flanked-evergl 22d ago
  > The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply The only threat to stable and affordable electricity supply is government regulations. The idea that we will from here on just have degrown and decline is insane. I'm not up for that. Which means we will always need more electricity, so time to get building more power plants. There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have As for water supply. Data centers barely make a blip on the water usage. > The water, light and noise pollution? The only one of these which actually has any validity is noise pollution, and the US has one of the lowest population densities of any country in the world, and data centres don't need to be close to population centres. > The threat to jobs? CEOs saying they are laying people off because of AI is not the same as anyone losing their job because of AI, but even if that was the case, it's about as smart as not using an electric drill to save jobs. > The threat to truth and transparency? AI does not only not threaten truth and transparency, it makes it easier to find the truth and to circumvent transperency restrictions. > The threat to privacy? It's not.
  - vrganj 22d ago
    > The only threat to stable and affordable electricity supply is government regulations That is straight up not true. Theres currently a threat due to the imprudently started war in the Middle East, there will be more once rivers start drying up and hydropower becomes unreliable or nuclear power plants can no longer be cooled. > Which means we will always need more electricity, so time to get building more power plants. There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have This is an ideological dogma smuggled in as a self-evident truth. Please do make a point, not just an unsupported declaration.
    - flanked-evergl 22d ago
      > That is straight up not true. Theres currently a threat due to the imprudently started war in the Middle East The US does not use crude oil from the Gulf to generate electricity. The US could scale electricity production at least 100 times without needing to import anything from the Middle East. > there will be more once rivers start drying up Rivers will not be drying up because of data centers.
      - vrganj 22d ago
        > The US does not use crude oil from the Gulf to generate electricity. And yet, reserves are at historic lows. Markets are weird, huh? > Rivers will not be drying up because of data centers. That wasn't the claim made, rivers will be drying up because of climate change (they are already!), which is a threat to energy supply. Data centers will accelerate said climate change, but that's not even relevant to disprove your previous assertion of regulation being the only factor. I'll also note you still haven't justified your core ideological assertion you tried smuggling in earlier in any way.
  - goda90 22d ago
    > There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have There are bounds to the Earth's capacity for our consumption. We won't be prosperous if ecosystems collapse.
    - budman1 22d ago
      Dyson Sphere is the end game. Once you capture and use all of the sunlight hitting the earth, what do you do?
      - goda90 22d ago
        On our present course we're probably not going to reach Type I on the Kardashev scale, let alone Type II, because of collapse. We need to embrace long term planning instead of short term profits if we want to avoid that.
        flanked-evergl 22d ago
        Of course we won't make Type I on the Kardashev scale if we abandon technological progress like AI. "Long-term planning" has never once given us a quantum leap in technology. Having humans "plan" AI evolution is dumb. This stuff is happening. You can cry about it, but nothing you do will stop it from happening. The best you can do is stop it from happening in your country, and the only result will be that your country will become completely insignificant within a couple of years.
- ButlerianJihad 22d ago
  > stable and affordable electricity and water supply Look, I think you misspelled "demand" there. It's an understandable error; those keys are so close together. Data centers present a demand on resources. A demand that wasn't there previously. You hook a DC up to the grid, and it will demand more electricity from existing generation capability. The DC proposals, without provision for their own generation, present extra demand. So yeah, unless the supply of those resources can be commensurately increased in some way, the DCs will present extra demand on what we already have, and that means someone, somewhere, will have less available.
  - jayGlow 22d ago
    if there is extra demand then typically more infrastructure is built to increase supply. we were able to increase it to meet the power consumption demands of manufacturing its only recently that we actually stopped improving our capacity. Increased demand here would actually drive us to increase our capacity instead of stagnating.
ozlikethewizard 22d ago
I'm sure the luddites got all their ideas from TikTok aye? At least were not at this point yet: "Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the Luddites were suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
- flanked-evergl 22d ago
  "The luddites were right" seems like an odd position to have on HN.
  - unrented7977 22d ago
    The vast majority of people who think the Luddites were wrong have no idea what they actually stood for
  - Starman_Jones 22d ago
    Why? The hacker ethos is all about understanding systems as they actually are; not as the people at the top want them to be. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s pretty clear that the Luddites were right; the industrialization of weaving did destroy their profession, and, contrary to the opinions of the political leaders, this had a direct, negative impact on society for many decades. The curious-minded hacker should not ignore that reality, even if they think the circumstances are different this time.
  - blitzar 22d ago
    "The tech bros were right" doesnt exactly have a great track record.
  - digitaltrees 22d ago
    HN isn’t a monoculture. And the Luddites weren’t against tech. They were against the avoidable harm by thoughtless adoption of automated looms. Their argument was distorted and smeared much like is happening here. Hackers used to be counter culture and want to push power down to individuals. If anything this techno fascist push to merge big tech with government while steamrolling humans is not hacker culture. We should home brew data centers for open weight models and open labelled datasets.
vrganj 22d ago
Why would people possibly not want something that uses up water in times of constant draught, uses up energy in an energy crisis and pollutes the air and contributes to climate change in times of climate catastrophe, all so a few already way-too-rich dudes can become even richer? It just doesn't make sense! Surely they were manipulated to hate progress!
- jayGlow 22d ago
  I always hear about how concerned everyone is about water usage from data centers, however I haven't heard any of these people mention the amount of water we lose to leaking pipes. we lose 3x the amount of water to leaking pipes as data centers would use so if they're so concerned about water usage wouldn't fixing those be higher priority?
  - watwut 22d ago
    Bad faith argument. There are places with water shortages and other places with leaking pipes. The datacanters consuming water in place with drought is issue. Leaking pipe next to a lake is not.
    - jayGlow 22d ago
      That's great news that California no longer has a water shortage, I was under the impression they were in a drought but since the have leaking pipes that can't be the case! Besides that I've seen people complaining about water usage from data centers in the great lakes region so it's absolutely not something limited to drought stricken regions. https://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/ https://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/ https://www.wateronline.com/doc/california-drought-crisis-billions-of-gallons-of-water-are-lost-to-leaks-each-year-0001 https://www.wateronline.com/doc/california-drought-crisis-bi...
chasd00 22d ago
You’re going to get modded down but you’re right. Go look at these sites in Google Maps compared to datacenter sites that already exist and have existed for a decade.
meltyness 22d ago
are you confident the demand for massive ai datacenters peppered everywhere isn't just some financial gambit? wouldn't you ask for consequences and side-effects that are socially desirable, even if the facility brings no wealth to the immediate area (either as a consequence of being owned by a remote corp, or by the investment failing completely).
- flanked-evergl 22d ago
  > are you confident the demand for massive ai datacenters peppered everywhere isn't just some financial gambit? yes.
trollbridge 22d ago
It’s not “de growth”. I want sustainable growth, which to me means: - no NDAs signed with elected officials who then stonewall the public and hide behind them - paying the same prices for water and electricity that I pay - paying the same property taxes and income taxes that I pay - building in a fashion that doesn’t leave area residents stuck with bigger electric bills and water bills All of these things can be done. I have a tiny data centre. I get no sweetheart deals on the above tho bf s.
digitaltrees 22d ago
It’s not degrowth. It’s anti monopoly, anti wealth concentration. Anti tax avoidance. Anti price on water and electricity. Anti raising the ambient temperature of a community. Let’s put the data center in Palo alto or Atherton.
- budman1 22d ago
  Not being from silicon valley, I am not sure of the communities mentioned. But may I suggest we put it right next to Zuck's house? How about in SamA's back yard? They are noisy buildings, designed to turn electricity into heat. And provide a small number of jobs.
  - digitaltrees 22d ago
    Those are their neighborhoods
- Tangurena2 22d ago
  In my state, when a data center needs a lot of new electricity generation, the way utilities are regulated, the existing customers pay for the new generation capacity. The new customer doesn't get the bill. Bills at the state legislature that would have changed this were effectively stopped by lobbyists.
AnneTrotter 22d ago
How is this degrowth? Individuals who had a nice neighborhood now living next to the noise and pollution equivalent of an airport running 24/7 have a point that it sucks. Households complaining that their power flow is getting cut off but the data center isn't have a point. People whose water sources are carefully measured due to drought and loss of replenishment being worried have a point. Growth can be done carefully and well, or it can be cancer. The current data center boom is not being done carefully and well. How you do things matters a lot.

What part confuses you? The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply? The water, light and noise pollution? The threat to jobs? The threat to truth and transparency? The threat to privacy?

flanked-evergl 22d ago
> The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply The only threat to stable and affordable electricity supply is government regulations. The idea that we will from here on just have degrown and decline is insane. I'm not up for that. Which means we will always need more electricity, so time to get building more power plants. There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have As for water supply. Data centers barely make a blip on the water usage. > The water, light and noise pollution? The only one of these which actually has any validity is noise pollution, and the US has one of the lowest population densities of any country in the world, and data centres don't need to be close to population centres. > The threat to jobs? CEOs saying they are laying people off because of AI is not the same as anyone losing their job because of AI, but even if that was the case, it's about as smart as not using an electric drill to save jobs. > The threat to truth and transparency? AI does not only not threaten truth and transparency, it makes it easier to find the truth and to circumvent transperency restrictions. > The threat to privacy? It's not.
- vrganj 22d ago
  > The only threat to stable and affordable electricity supply is government regulations That is straight up not true. Theres currently a threat due to the imprudently started war in the Middle East, there will be more once rivers start drying up and hydropower becomes unreliable or nuclear power plants can no longer be cooled. > Which means we will always need more electricity, so time to get building more power plants. There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have This is an ideological dogma smuggled in as a self-evident truth. Please do make a point, not just an unsupported declaration.
  - flanked-evergl 22d ago
    > That is straight up not true. Theres currently a threat due to the imprudently started war in the Middle East The US does not use crude oil from the Gulf to generate electricity. The US could scale electricity production at least 100 times without needing to import anything from the Middle East. > there will be more once rivers start drying up Rivers will not be drying up because of data centers.
    - vrganj 22d ago
      > The US does not use crude oil from the Gulf to generate electricity. And yet, reserves are at historic lows. Markets are weird, huh? > Rivers will not be drying up because of data centers. That wasn't the claim made, rivers will be drying up because of climate change (they are already!), which is a threat to energy supply. Data centers will accelerate said climate change, but that's not even relevant to disprove your previous assertion of regulation being the only factor. I'll also note you still haven't justified your core ideological assertion you tried smuggling in earlier in any way.
- goda90 22d ago
  > There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have There are bounds to the Earth's capacity for our consumption. We won't be prosperous if ecosystems collapse.
  - budman1 22d ago
    Dyson Sphere is the end game. Once you capture and use all of the sunlight hitting the earth, what do you do?
    - goda90 22d ago
      On our present course we're probably not going to reach Type I on the Kardashev scale, let alone Type II, because of collapse. We need to embrace long term planning instead of short term profits if we want to avoid that.
      - flanked-evergl 22d ago
        Of course we won't make Type I on the Kardashev scale if we abandon technological progress like AI. "Long-term planning" has never once given us a quantum leap in technology. Having humans "plan" AI evolution is dumb. This stuff is happening. You can cry about it, but nothing you do will stop it from happening. The best you can do is stop it from happening in your country, and the only result will be that your country will become completely insignificant within a couple of years.
ButlerianJihad 22d ago
> stable and affordable electricity and water supply Look, I think you misspelled "demand" there. It's an understandable error; those keys are so close together. Data centers present a demand on resources. A demand that wasn't there previously. You hook a DC up to the grid, and it will demand more electricity from existing generation capability. The DC proposals, without provision for their own generation, present extra demand. So yeah, unless the supply of those resources can be commensurately increased in some way, the DCs will present extra demand on what we already have, and that means someone, somewhere, will have less available.
- jayGlow 22d ago
  if there is extra demand then typically more infrastructure is built to increase supply. we were able to increase it to meet the power consumption demands of manufacturing its only recently that we actually stopped improving our capacity. Increased demand here would actually drive us to increase our capacity instead of stagnating.

ozlikethewizard 22d ago

I'm sure the luddites got all their ideas from TikTok aye? At least were not at this point yet: "Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the Luddites were suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites

flanked-evergl 22d ago
"The luddites were right" seems like an odd position to have on HN.
- unrented7977 22d ago
  The vast majority of people who think the Luddites were wrong have no idea what they actually stood for
- Starman_Jones 22d ago
  Why? The hacker ethos is all about understanding systems as they actually are; not as the people at the top want them to be. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s pretty clear that the Luddites were right; the industrialization of weaving did destroy their profession, and, contrary to the opinions of the political leaders, this had a direct, negative impact on society for many decades. The curious-minded hacker should not ignore that reality, even if they think the circumstances are different this time.
- blitzar 22d ago
  "The tech bros were right" doesnt exactly have a great track record.
- digitaltrees 22d ago
  HN isn’t a monoculture. And the Luddites weren’t against tech. They were against the avoidable harm by thoughtless adoption of automated looms. Their argument was distorted and smeared much like is happening here. Hackers used to be counter culture and want to push power down to individuals. If anything this techno fascist push to merge big tech with government while steamrolling humans is not hacker culture. We should home brew data centers for open weight models and open labelled datasets.

vrganj 22d ago

Why would people possibly not want something that uses up water in times of constant draught, uses up energy in an energy crisis and pollutes the air and contributes to climate change in times of climate catastrophe, all so a few already way-too-rich dudes can become even richer? It just doesn't make sense! Surely they were manipulated to hate progress!

jayGlow 22d ago
I always hear about how concerned everyone is about water usage from data centers, however I haven't heard any of these people mention the amount of water we lose to leaking pipes. we lose 3x the amount of water to leaking pipes as data centers would use so if they're so concerned about water usage wouldn't fixing those be higher priority?
- watwut 22d ago
  Bad faith argument. There are places with water shortages and other places with leaking pipes. The datacanters consuming water in place with drought is issue. Leaking pipe next to a lake is not.
  - jayGlow 22d ago
    That's great news that California no longer has a water shortage, I was under the impression they were in a drought but since the have leaking pipes that can't be the case! Besides that I've seen people complaining about water usage from data centers in the great lakes region so it's absolutely not something limited to drought stricken regions. https://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/ https://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/ https://www.wateronline.com/doc/california-drought-crisis-billions-of-gallons-of-water-are-lost-to-leaks-each-year-0001 https://www.wateronline.com/doc/california-drought-crisis-bi...

chasd00 22d ago

You’re going to get modded down but you’re right. Go look at these sites in Google Maps compared to datacenter sites that already exist and have existed for a decade.

meltyness 22d ago

are you confident the demand for massive ai datacenters peppered everywhere isn't just some financial gambit? wouldn't you ask for consequences and side-effects that are socially desirable, even if the facility brings no wealth to the immediate area (either as a consequence of being owned by a remote corp, or by the investment failing completely).

flanked-evergl 22d ago
> are you confident the demand for massive ai datacenters peppered everywhere isn't just some financial gambit? yes.

trollbridge 22d ago

It’s not “de growth”. I want sustainable growth, which to me means: - no NDAs signed with elected officials who then stonewall the public and hide behind them - paying the same prices for water and electricity that I pay - paying the same property taxes and income taxes that I pay - building in a fashion that doesn’t leave area residents stuck with bigger electric bills and water bills All of these things can be done. I have a tiny data centre. I get no sweetheart deals on the above tho bf s.

digitaltrees 22d ago

It’s not degrowth. It’s anti monopoly, anti wealth concentration. Anti tax avoidance. Anti price on water and electricity. Anti raising the ambient temperature of a community. Let’s put the data center in Palo alto or Atherton.

budman1 22d ago
Not being from silicon valley, I am not sure of the communities mentioned. But may I suggest we put it right next to Zuck's house? How about in SamA's back yard? They are noisy buildings, designed to turn electricity into heat. And provide a small number of jobs.
- digitaltrees 22d ago
  Those are their neighborhoods
Tangurena2 22d ago
In my state, when a data center needs a lot of new electricity generation, the way utilities are regulated, the existing customers pay for the new generation capacity. The new customer doesn't get the bill. Bills at the state legislature that would have changed this were effectively stopped by lobbyists.

AnneTrotter 22d ago

How is this degrowth? Individuals who had a nice neighborhood now living next to the noise and pollution equivalent of an airport running 24/7 have a point that it sucks. Households complaining that their power flow is getting cut off but the data center isn't have a point. People whose water sources are carefully measured due to drought and loss of replenishment being worried have a point. Growth can be done carefully and well, or it can be cancer. The current data center boom is not being done carefully and well. How you do things matters a lot.