AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

Post by simonw » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 3:58 PM UTC

abathur wrote: post #174

simonw wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from that article: > U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021). Sounds bad! Now let's compare that to agriculture. USGS 2015 report: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2018/3035/fs20183035.pdf has irrigation at 118 billion gallons per day - that's 43,070 billion gallons per year. 163.7 billion / 43,070 billion * 100 = 0.38 - less than half a percentage p…

Agriculture feeds people, Simon. It's fair to be critical of how the ag industry uses that water, but a significant fraction of that activity is effectively essential. If you're going to minimize people's concern like this, at least compare it to discretionary uses we could ~live without. The data's about 20 years old, but for example https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%2... suggests we were us…

Post by esafak » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

rjzzleep wrote: post #24

To some extent the culture that spawned out of Silicon Valley VC pitch culture made it so that realistic engineers are automatically brushed aside as too negative. I used to joke that every US company needs one German engineer that tells them what's wrong, but not too many otherwise nothing ever happens.

Post by paulryanrogers » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 4:00 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #151

bee_rider wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely shouldn’t worry about bankrupting golf courses, they are not really useful in any way that wouldn’t be better served by just having a park or wilderness. Beef, I guess, is a popular type of food. I’m under the impression that most of us would be better off eating less meat, maybe we could tax water until beef became a special occasion meal.

> We definitely shouldn’t worry about bankrupting golf courses, they are not really useful in any way that wouldn’t be better served by just having a park or wilderness. Might as well get rid of all the lawns and football fields while we’re at it.

Post by rhetocj23 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

buellerbueller wrote: post #93

alyxya wrote: post #69

> Briefly, the argument goes that if there is a 0.001% chance of AGI delivering an extremely large amount of value, and 99.999% chance of much less or zero value, then the EV is still extremely large because (0.001% * very_large_value) + (99.999% * small_value) = very_large_value I haven't heard of that being the argument. The main perspective I'm aware of is that more powerful AI models have a compounding multiplier…

"The argument" ignores the opportunity cost of the other potential uses of the invested resources.

Post by wasabi991011 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #159

simonw wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from that article: > U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021). Sounds bad! Now let's compare that to agriculture. USGS 2015 report: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2018/3035/fs20183035.pdf has irrigation at 118 billion gallons per day - that's 43,070 billion gallons per year. 163.7 billion / 43,070 billion * 100 = 0.38 - less than half a percentage p…

I am surprised by your analytical mistake of comparing irrigation water with data-center water usage... They are not equivalent. Data centers primarily consume potable water, whereas irrigation uses non-potable or agricultural-grade water. Mixing the two leads to misleading conclusions on the impact.