look, i use llms for some work and for some hobby projects, but lets not pretend like the companies behind the llm bubble would ever fight fair. that would be naive to an extreme.

this is after a strong push for clean energy options like a nuclear plant, solar, and wind by, well everyone, even rural communities who don't want the ambient pollution of those gas plants. but given this 'demand' for data centers, that transition to clean energy is all but abandoned. each of those turbines have an estimated lifetime use of 25-30 years [3] so we'll be emitting multiple times the amount of carbon we do today until at least the 2060s and all of it funded predominantly by taxpayers

if you're not a believer in what people now call 'communist' politics such as believing that anthropogenic climate change is real, public health initiatives save lives, and vaccines are effective then I suppose you'd find this all very good and silly

regardless, claiming anti-data center organizing comes from astro-turfing is exactly the opposite of what's happening. if you went to a single hearing or were engaged with your local community politics, you'd see as much

[1](https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/utilities/georgia-power...) [2](https://energyandpolicy.org/georgia-psc-incumbents-majority-...) [3](https://rmi.org/resources/you-might-be-paying-for-a-worthles...)

Maybe they remember all the promises during the 90s fiber glut that cost them billions in taxpayer funds and only resulted in thousands and thousands of miles of fiber still unused (and often even lost and forgotten!) to this day, and don't want a repeat?

Maybe they aren't the braindead zombies you propose and are in fact just regular humans not stupid enough to be utterly sucked into the bubble religion so many AI fanatics are babbling in tongues about?

Maybe they look at things like Flock and palantir and other overt fascism and want to stop the evil. Some people aren't masochist freaks and don't want to be forced to participate in the sick little fetish all the AI sycophants try to abuse them with. Could it be that?

I tend to agree with your sentiment, I think datacenters are getting more shit than they deserve, but there are better arguments to be made.

With patience, love and a bit of humor. X

My general thought is, what’s the argument for placing them in populated areas to begin with? Why dedicate land use for it in Nashville? Wouldn’t putting it 40 miles outside town work just as well? Why don’t we create development zones specifically for these things? In Dallas we have a similar thing for our distribution hub, it’s south of downtown kind of in the outskirts and in an economically struggling area. Same for industrial areas, it’s usually something that’s zoned to a particular area so residential neighborhoods aren’t really affected. It’s not land where the community may benefit more by literally anything else (sometimes even a Walmart is better than a datacenter). I assume that’s where this is all headed, cities need to roll out their long term vision of where datacenters fit into their city, if at all. Until then, it’s all these small battles and the information used by opponents doesn’t really matter. If enough people don’t want it, it should probably go somewhere else. This is not serving any community benefit so I don’t see any reason why it has to exist where the developers want it to.

Expecting rational opposition is actually irrational. They just don’t want it. The why is varied and probably based more on emotion than anything else.

Since more precision remedies are off the table, all that's left are gross mechanisms like bans and eminent domain.

Nobody sane would accede to admitting a new community member who is a priori immune to local laws.

However that doesn’t mean that people don’t have real grievances, even if misplaced.

There is not a concerted effort to build thousand upon thousands of stockyards across the globe.

Stockyards wont increase the planets reliance of oil, since green technologies don't scale that fast. Same planet that feeling the effect of climate change quite clearly.

All for close to zero upside for the surrounding community. At least the stockyard would have given you cheaper meat. What are data centers going to give? Discount tokens?

That's why your stockyard does not have the same pushback.

You are correct. But the cause is not so mysterious. From 9/11 to the War on Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis, a decade that was supposed to inaugurate the American century turned America against its own elites. And for good reason.

There are still American elites who think despite what has transpired over the past two decades, and what has just transpired in Iran, that regular Americans are going to stand behind them should a conflict over Taiwan erupt. The West is failing because its leaders are a collective disgrace. The writing has been on the wall for some time now. People knew George Bush was an idiot in 2000. People know Trump is an idiot now. Biden was asleep at the wheel. Obama was tepid.

America has been coasting on the achievements of a class of leaders and contingent circumstances for generations. The generation that could claim to have earned superpower status has long passed. It's amazing how quickly countries can fall. We've seen it before, right here in America. The founders, whatever their faults, were an amazing bunch. Within mere generations the country was mired in fratricide. It is not clear the world we got in which Lincoln persevered was the most likely outcome. Eventually a society's luck runs out. Look at the pages of history. No mythology of America can suffice. We aren't better than the generations of people all over this Earth who have suffered before. I predict it will get far worse before it gets better.

Luckily China also has problems. This is not a question of domination. America needs to deal with its own problems and stop projecting our fears to people abroad who most of us don't even understand. On balance, China hasn't done anything to the average American but give them cheap products. Sinophobia is just a repeat of the same fear-mongering, "war on terror" racketeering scheme. And people aren't buying it anymore. I'm also not sure I believe in the idea AGI is a zero sum or a first past the post game. America needs to clean house. Then our people might have the collective faith required to build a better future. Until then, expect more of this downward trend.