mechoman444

To stave off the fading of his own spirit, Mitch drew the life essence from one of his own kin, and so endured.

Yeah. Says the troll.

At this point, you’ve shown there’s nothing you can do to refute anything I’ve said. You have nothing constructive to add to the conversation. You can’t admit you might be wrong or acknowledge when you’ve been corrected, so you’ve fallen back on ad hominem attacks instead.

Soon you will be more powerful than the both of us.

The issue is that what is presented as a single rule is actually several different rules crammed into one sentence. It strings together multiple distinct ideas with commas, making it unclear where one prohibition ends and another begins. If each of those ideas is meant to stand on its own, they should be written as separate rules rather than bundled together under a single heading.

Secondly, “celebrating death” is an extremely vague concept. Many cultures celebrate death in one form or another. Hindus, for example, have traditions that celebrate the passage into the next life. Creole culture also has a long history of turning funerals into communal celebrations.

Moreover, what exactly constitutes a celebration of death? If someone feels happy that a particular person has died, they are not necessarily celebrating death itself. They are simply acknowledging that someone they disliked is gone and, in their view, that the world is objectively better off as a result.

So if I say, “I am happy that so-and-so died,” that is not, in and of itself, a morally reprehensible statement. It merely expresses an individual’s emotions. No one is obligated to like another person or to feel sadness when they die. Death itself is not a moral act; the act of taking a life is. In this case, the individual died naturally rather than as the result of anyone’s actions.

As a result, I see no compelling reason why death itself should never be celebrated, whether the sentiment is meant to admonish the deceased or to honor them.

Oh, you’d like it if I thought that, wouldn’t you? Tell me what else to think, Daddy; I’ve been a sloppy sophist.

I think that you might have some… skin in the game. :sunglasses: :no sunglasses: YEEEEOOOOWWW!!

This you?

It’s always a telltale sign when people can’t actually rebut anything I say and instead start throwing around words like “sophistry” without even using them correctly.

I’ve already told you that I don’t support AI data centers, that I have no great love for LLMs, that I agree there is already a surveillance apparatus in place, and that license plate scanners are used extensively for both law enforcement and marketing.

Instead, you keep pushing this idiotic conspiracy that there’s some nefarious plot to monitor people specifically through emerging AI technologies and the construction of AI data centers, when there is no objective evidence that this is true.

Then, when I present evidence supporting my position, you dismiss it by claiming it somehow isn’t evidence, or that I’ve manipulated my own words into making you believe something that isn’t true.

So yes, I called you an idiot. Because you’re acting like one.

You abandoned any chance of having a meaningful discussion the moment you stopped engaging with the argument and started acting like a sarcastic jackass.

Let’s see if I can get this across, because you seem to have one singular idea stuck in your head. Quite an accomplishment, considering how small that space appears to be.

Read this part carefully. We already have a surveillance infrastructure. It’s been in place for decades. It exists for law enforcement, and even more extensively for marketing. Can AI improve those systems? Yes. Will it? Probably. To what extent remains to be seen.

What I reject is the claim that privately owned AI data centers are being built as part of some grand conspiracy to spy on the public. They’re being built for one reason: money. Companies are investing billions because they expect a return on that investment, not because they’re secretly constructing an Orwellian surveillance network.

I already acknowledged that license plate readers and similar technologies exist. Then you responded with a story about a traffic camera incorrectly flagging a woman for having her cellphone in her lap. That doesn’t refute my point, it reinforces it. The surveillance infrastructure already exists. You’re arguing against something I explicitly agreed with.

Any system can be abused. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. None of that is in dispute.

And what exactly am I “shilling” here? Why do people keep making assumptions instead of reading what’s actually written?

I never advocated for building AI data centers, nor did I advocate for using LLMs. My point was simply that these facilities are not being built for the purpose of secretly spying on the public. If someone wants to monitor people, there are already far cheaper and more effective systems in place.

By that logic, car manufacturers build cars so they can be used in drive-by shootings rather than for transportation. That’s obviously an absurd way to infer intent from a tool’s potential misuse.

Since this will probably be ignored as well, here’s something that doesn’t fit your narrative: I’m actually against the construction of AI data centers. I think they’re an environmental and societal blight. But opposing AI infrastructure doesn’t require inventing conspiracies about why it’s being built.

I’ve addressed this license plate scanner thing way too many times.

This has been a known fact for decades, as you yourself mentioned. License plate scanners are already used everywhere. Home Depot is a particularly egregious example.

Which is exactly why I said there are much easier ways to track us than building AI data centers.

Did you actually read what I wrote, or are you responding to what you assumed I said?

You know you’re the second person to use the word sophist and not know what it means.

Is there some kind of qualification to be a lemmy user that people don’t know the definitions of words?

Also, I asked you a question. I have no desire this way or that what I want you to think.

Do you smell burnt toast currently?

I think when you say speculation, what you really mean is skepticism.

The problem is that “could happen” is doing an enormous amount of work here.

Almost anything could happen. The existence of a capability isn’t evidence that it’s the intended outcome or even the most likely one. It’s reasonable to discuss risks and how technology can be misused, but it’s a mistake to treat possibility as probability.

The world is usually far less spectacular than the elaborate scenarios people imagine. Most of the time, the explanation is simply incentives, competition, bureaucracy, and companies chasing profits, not a coordinated march toward some grand end state.

We should absolutely be wary of surveillance, anti-competitive behavior, and excessive centralization. Those are real concerns. But once the argument becomes “they’re building infrastructure that could someday be used for X,” you’ve entered speculation. Capability alone isn’t evidence of intent, and it certainly isn’t evidence that such an outcome is inevitable.

So you think that “I don’t like this” is an opinion worth even discussing?

I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion. I think it’s barely an opinion by the narrowest and most technical definition of what an opinion even is.

Your opinion is just stupid. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have it or that it isn’t valid. If you personally like your opinion, that’s fine. I’m just saying that, in my opinion, your opinion is stupid.

“Do you think your opinion is cool?” No, I don’t. You don’t have some cool, edgy opinion. It’s just, “Wahhhh, I don’t like tattoos because I’ve arbitrarily decided not to, and I stick to it because it makes me feel special and unique compared to the majority.”

Dude, not liking something for entirely subjective reasons isn’t really an opinion, it’s a preference.

An opinion would be, “I don’t think anyone should get tattoos because…” followed by actual reasons. I’d still think you’re wrong, but at least that would carry more weight than simply whining about something you’ve personally decided not to like.

In a perfect world this sounds fantastic, but it will most certainly be exploited.

You know… Because people.

This headline is sensationalized for clicks.

A 5% non-controlling equity stake is not “nationalization.” Words have meanings, and this isn’t the correct one.

Nationalization generally means the government takes ownership or control of a private company or industry. A small, non-controlling financial stake doesn’t accomplish that. If anything, it’s a form of public investment intended to let taxpayers share in potential financial upside, not government control over the company.

You can certainly argue whether it’s good policy. You can argue it’s a step toward greater government involvement in private industry. Those are legitimate discussions. But calling it “nationalization” is simply inaccurate.

This kind of exaggerated framing is becoming far too common on Lemmy. Every issue gets dressed up with the most emotionally charged headline possible because outrage drives engagement. It doesn’t inform people; it just reinforces existing biases and degrades the quality of discussion.

We should be better than clickbait headlines and loaded terminology. If we’re going to criticize a policy, let’s criticize what it actually is, not what makes for the most sensational title.

Edit: removed em dash. Anyone else having the auto correct put in em dashes!

20 and 33 for me.

The ice cream sandwich and icee Popsicle.

They’re already like that though. Which is fine. Let them burn out.

The only issue Pandora’s box is open and there’s no way to close it.

If open AI or one of its competitors go out someone will step up and fill the void.

I took a deep breath before writing this. Just so you know. I understand what I’m getting myself into. Again.

But no. They’re not.

This is conspiracy thinking dressed up as insight.

They’re not spending hundreds of billions of dollars building AI data centers because they secretly want to create a “digital prison.” They’re building them because they expect them to generate hundreds of billions in future profits. It’s an investment in compute infrastructure, not some grand surveillance plot.

If governments or corporations want to surveil people, they already have far cheaper and more effective ways of doing it than constructing massive AI clusters.

Posts like this don’t inform anyone or encourage serious discussion. They just replace evidence with paranoia and drag the quality of the platform down.

Bad faith?

That is an amazing claim coming from somebody who is literally arguing in bad faith.

You already have a predisposition and bias against AI.

You read my comment and immediately thought, “He’s defending AI because he’s calling me out on my bullcrap.” I’m actually not. I’ve been making two points: you don’t know how AI functions, and you don’t know what copyright is.

AI models don’t use their training data to reproduce that training data verbatim. Therefore, the training process itself is not copyright infringement. Using publicly available material to train AI is not illegal, nor is it inherently morally reprehensible.

If companies are stealing data to train their AI, then they are breaking the law and should be punished and prosecuted for it.

I do not support that in any way. I also do not support the construction of massive AI data centers. They’re a blight on society.

You’re upset because I called you out for being stupid. Instead of responding to my arguments, you called me a fart eater and threw around words like “sophistry.”

And then you say I’m the one arguing in bad faith.

What a hypocrite.

This right here is a testament that literally anything can be funny.

I’d like to point out that this isn’t capitalism, nor is capitalism telling us this.

To be clear, I don’t necessarily support capitalism in its current state, but let’s call it what it is: a corporatocracy written by oligarchs, which is far, far worse than capitalism.

Also, depending on who’s looking at it, this is either a complete failure of the federal government or a complete success, which is a whole other ball of yarn.