The moral panic over data centres is foolish

what surplus are you talking about? do you expect free wealth handout to people? that's not how capitalism works. You don't get rewarded for doing/contributing nothing. Capitalism provides you the opportunity to work and build something without being limited by the state or authority.

The water can be a closed system.

But that's more expensive to operate.

So most of them don't do it.

Show me actual statistics that a supermajority of new and proposed datacenters either are currently using (for new), or plan to use, with clear financial projections for how (for proposed), closed-loop cooling systems, and I'll consider conceding this point. Until and unless someone can do that, you can point to the option of such systems until you're blue in the face, but it's meaningless.

How is this any different to the invention of the cotton mill?

You don't get to pick and choose what productive technologies to adopt. You either adopt them, or you'll be paying the countries that do and you'll still lose your domestic industry to competition.

> We are also in a time when most people would prefer to use that water for drinking, washing, cleaning… basically anything except data centres.

And those people are stupid or to be charitable "ignorant."

Full stop.

I'm not trying to be an ass here, I mean it genuinely. Those people are ignorant at best. Email runs on datacenters, Google runs on datacenters, netflix needs them. Delta airlines uses data centers to route flights and host their massive amounts of data (and so do all the other operations out there). The NWS is using super computers (and big data) to predict the weather. The good, the bad, everything runs on giant clusters of data centers, compute, and power. How many datacenters host the most popular steam games and movies? Indeed, the very message of "Data Center BAD!" is hosted on data centers. You think this wild anti-progress ideology could exist in a world without them? Of course not.

Our modern life is enabled by these damn near miraculous technical tools and the people screaming about water or anything else are seldom against the things that they like. Plenty of people shit-talk data centers then go fly to Paris on vacation. Plenty of the same people water their lawns and drive to work when they could walk. In my experience, "DATA BAD" is just code for "AI BAD" - they're really against AI. You talk to these people, and the same thing always comes up, "well, AI is bad for artists" or "AI is going to take over all the jobs" or something along those lines. It's always some scifi fueled Yudkowskian fever dream or fear of losing their jobs or "Elon/Bezos/Gates/Whoever = BAD!" Very little of it is based in any sort of actual evaluation of the world.

And I'm not necessarily arguing with them on these guys being jackasses. But the world is not just a black and white thing typically, and the complaints about all of these changes (and that's what all this is, a fear of the new and complaints about change) are reactionary grasps yearning for a prior era. It's terminally (and ironically) online people complaining that they can no longer find meaning in an increasingly competitive work place. It's fear!

I've now seen this with many people I know. I've seen this in a huge amount of online spaces. I've seen it in the real world. This is "millenials getting conservative but not realizing it." It's people being afraid of change. Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem. People being unwilling or unable to adjust to change and it is at it's core a conservative mindset despite the liberal (not leftist mind you) costume it wears.

Logic and reason aren't going to convince these folks of anything, they didn't get to their views with logic, they're not going to logic their way out of them. It's modern liberalism's version of climate denial, and it's literally a reactionary way of viewing the world.

To your point, very few of these people are likely to read the economist and think "whoa, I was wrong." You're spot on there - but I also don't think that people know where their water comes from, their food comes from, their power comes from, their Net Flix comes from, their medication comes from, or really anything else. They're thinking "I DON'T LIKE X, X NEEDS Y, THEREFORE Y BAD!" That's it typically.

The radical leftist position should be "seizing the means of computation" and "man the barricades, this is OUR data center now!" Not, "WE NEED BETTER LAWS TO PROTECT PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE SPACE OF IDEAS TO PROTECT JOBS MAKING LOGOS AND WRITING AD COPY!" This is millenials getting older and confusing reactionary nostalgia for "a better world."

The "leftist" take is "we should seize the means of computation" not "we should protect intellectual property rights!"

The hate for data centers is a liberal thing, not a "leftist" take. Although, being against golf courses should be supported by everyone. Golf courses suck.