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The moral panic over data centres is foolish

economist.com

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Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#171

Post by verdverm »

Grombobulous wrote: post #43
verdverm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "it works" mean in this context? Are we prioritizing short-term political wins at cost of long-term competitiveness? Why are non-Western populations so excited by Ai while the West is eating fud? I suspect the data center thing has become popular because it's been a long time since people have felt like they can effect change in government policy. Details and nuance are irrelevant, there are larger, underly…

Non-Western populations (really, talking about China here) do not live in a democracy. The government centrally plans where they build things like data centers and homes and there is very little the populace can do about it. You cannot own land in China, you can only lease it. You can't even really talk politics in China in anything close to the same way you're allowed to in the US. People in China are also generally…

I'm not sure where you are pulling that bitcoin statement from, presenting it as a quote, but it is not mine. My understanding is the gas turbine generators are the thing creating noise. We've had data centers for decades, noise is only a problem this year, so something new is going on, extrapolation from isolated incidents to broad brush strokes

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#172

Post by xboxnolifes »

bloaf wrote: post #132
xboxnolifes wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go look up articles from mid to late 2010s. There's where you will find frustration about golf courses, during the time where water restrictions were being put on residential lawns. Do not conflate the more recent, more successful campaign of anti-data-center sentiment with the non-existence of a past campaign against golf courses. It existed, it just petered out.

Look, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Either water consumption is a problem today, or it is not. If it is a problem, then golf courses are today a better target for people who want to solve the water problem than data centers. If water consumption is not a problem, then the data center's water consumption is not a problem.

I am not doing any such thing. You are pulling whataboutisms left and right, and I'm trying to get across that the lack of a successful campaign does not prove the lack of sentiment. You need to carefully pick which political battles to take and, more importantly, when to take them.

If you think the current data center installations have problems you want to be addressed, you don't also bring up golf course water usage, farmland water rights, residential lawns, factory runoff, and climate change effects on rainwater. You'd just be distracting from the conversation.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#173

Post by senordevnyc »

tzs wrote: post #143
bloaf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not seen a single politician calling for statewide bans on golf courses. Its pretty obvious here that people decided datacenters were bad first, then went looking for justifications second.

> I've not seen a single politician calling for statewide bans on golf courses. I've not seen a single state where anyone is trying to build a ton of new golf courses. There are around 140 being built in the whole country, and I think the most in any one state is under a dozen in Florida. There are more than an order of magnitude more data centers under construction with some states having more data centers under con…

No one would give a shit about two hundred golf courses being constructed in Texas.

Even with the massive data center build out, existing golf courses today use more water than all projected data centers globally are expected to use in 2030.

The water issue is completely farcical.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#174

Post by senordevnyc »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #172
bloaf wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Either water consumption is a problem today, or it is not. If it is a problem, then golf courses are today a better target for people who want to solve the water problem than data centers. If water consumption is not a problem, then the data center's water consumption is not a problem.

I am not doing any such thing. You are pulling whataboutisms left and right, and I'm trying to get across that the lack of a successful campaign does not prove the lack of sentiment. You need to carefully pick which political battles to take and, more importantly, when to take them . If you think the current data center installations have problems you want to be addressed, you don't also bring up golf course water us…

No, but someone yelling about data center water usage while clearly not giving a shit about the things that use way more water quickly make it clear that they’re either very ignorant, or this isn’t actually about water.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#175

Post by senordevnyc »

bdangubic wrote: post #134
bloaf wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Either water consumption is a problem today, or it is not. If it is a problem, then golf courses are today a better target for people who want to solve the water problem than data centers. If water consumption is not a problem, then the data center's water consumption is not a problem.

if we limit the number of data centers so that it cannot exceed number of golf courses in any zipcode in america than this is a solid argument, otherwise it is strawman

Why zip code?

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#177

Post by agentultra »

westurner wrote: post #138
westurner wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are also in a time when most people would prefer to use that water for drinking, washing, cleaning… basically anything except data centres. That is not what is indicated by consumer behavior. Though it isn't healthiest, people prefer sugar water and so the sugar water companies have been able to afford to acquire water rights and they have driven up the cost of water. Drilling holes through aquifers and not capp…

> We need to use AI to redevelop AI datacenters in order to cancel the harms. This is worth money. It is worth a lot of money to solve the AI data center sustainability problem. And, solving the AI datacenter sustainability would preserve the AI value multiplier in other sustainable process redesign efforts. > We need to use AI to solve for global warming. It's actually imperative; "Global warming will exceed 1.5-deg…

We already know how to solve for climate change. All that is lacking is political will. Not AI.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#178

Post by customguy »

Onavo wrote: post #79
agentultra wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both?

True but not campaigning against golf courses make anti data center campaigns look hypocritical. My personal criticism of data centers is mostly regulatory failure. The tech companies are choosing random ass states and stealing land from poor farmers instead of the traditional data center states like Virginia mostly because of tax breaks. The local government is just as if not more responsible for the issues with dat…

Might as well say you're a hypocrite for calling these people hypocrites but not others, and unless you criticize all things at the same time, which is impossible, it's all magically invalid.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#179

Post by _DeadFred_ »

bloaf wrote: post #49
agentultra wrote: post #22

> just about everything in modern life, from streaming Netflix to running a dishwasher, consumes water at levels that can be portrayed as wasteful by hair-shirt environmentalists. Ad-hominems in an Economist article. This reads more like an opinion piece than reporting. There are plenty of documented problems with water usage of data centres. Some can use it efficiently but it costs more to do so and many (most?) do…

If people really cared about water usage, they'd be trying to shut down golf courses instead of data centers.

If you really cared about people calling things out, you would be focusing on other topics than datacenters because people call all kinds of things out all the time. That fact you only care about data centers is telling.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#180

Post by pibaker »

skeledrew wrote: post #131
nateglims wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are non-Western populations so excited by Ai Are they excited? Or do they just not have political control at a local level?

I know in Singapore that they're pretty excited. They're teaching it in schools and the public is generally responding well, according to someone I know who's a citizen there.

> Or do they just not have political control at a local level?
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