FlailingAce

FlailingAce 4d ago

Of course education has been bad for a long time, but the fact that it's bad doesn't mean AI isn't making it worse.

As for the data centers, there's a lot of independent reporting on this from people living near them on immediate harms. There's damage to groundwater that makes the local tap water undrinkable, there's constant noise levels in residential areas.

On a larger scale, data centers are now responsible for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and projected to rise. This paper estimates it at $25 billion in environmental damage per year.

There's also other more subtle impacts. For instance, the Utah data center project is expected to produce a heat island effect that would raise temperatures from 5 degrees during the day to up to 28 degrees at night, potentially preventing the dew point condensation effect and quite literally killing local ecologies.

All of these effects are being ignored in the name of progress, and the costs of these externalities are being paid by the people living in these areas who have no say in the matter.

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FlailingAce 5d ago

I think that last sentence exactly shows why you're out of touch. I'm not complaining about the effects on internet culture. I'm talking about the extreme damage to our education system, where students use LLMs to complete the assignments that were created by LLMs and will be graded by the same LLMs, and the data shows massive loss in basic knowledge and critical thinking skills. I'm talking about the environmentally catastrophic data centers being erected over the protests of the people living there. Real harm to actual people in the Real World.

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FlailingAce 5d ago · Edited 5d ago

Since you didn't bother to Google it, I won't bother putting in too much effort either. Here's a link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/terdawn-deboe/2026/05/21/companies-fired-workers-for-ai-now-they-want-them-back/

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FlailingAce 6d ago

I guess you haven't been following this? Or know anyone who works in a big company?

Huge amounts of layoffs have occured predicated on the expectation of efficiencies from AI. Some such companies, once they discovered that AI did not improve efficiency, have been forced to rehire the people they fired, while others just used it as an excuse to cut down their workforce a la private equity, disregarding the long term health of the company. Either way, it's harming workers.

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FlailingAce 7d ago

You said

the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.

This is a statement about your feelings.

No, it's a factual matter that can be verified by observing the speech and behavior of that class of people. That's why I described your response as reinforcing my point, because you explicity stated your own contempt for the median person. I'm not sure how you don't understand this?

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FlailingAce 7d ago

Sorry, no. If you just go back and look, I originally responded to your claim that

The median person who hates AI thinks a literal bottle of water is obliterated from the universe every time you query chat gpt for anything.

by arguing that the median person's position on AI is essentially rooted in the (correct) belief that AI and tech bros in general are contemptuous of them and their concerns. This is not a 'slop' view nor is it a 'demand to have your feelings coddled'. It plays out in all areas of the AI ecology, from billionaires paying off city councils to build data centers that almost every constituent opposes, to companies firing large parts of their workforce because of 'AI efficiencies' that don't actually exist, to the degradation of our public education system by replacing teachers with AI tools that don't work... shall I go on? AI boosters are deliberately and with malice aforethought trying to destroy the lives of the 'median person' and treating that as just an unfortunate externality of their race towards godhood. It's the very definition of evil.

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FlailingAce 7d ago

Thanks for reinforcing my point! Somehow, in your view, it's impossible to disagree with your take on AI without being 'pathetic' 'anti-human' who can't 'cope with their own failures'.

I rest my case.

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FlailingAce 7d ago

This is a field where we are excelling, if America is going to right itself and bring about a new age of American prosperity this is it, this is the chance.

We have spent trillions of dollars on AI tech, not turned a profit, and not been able to build even a modest moat around the technology.

What if we had spent those trillions of dollars on literally anything else? We could have the best automated manufacturing in the world, or advanced medical technology, or any of a dozen other things that would bring actual prosperity to the nation as a whole.

You seem to be conflating 'we spent a ton of money on this' with 'we are excelling'. The whole point is that AI is a bad investment!

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FlailingAce 7d ago

The median person who hates AI thinks a literal bottle of water is obliterated from the universe every time you query chat gpt for anything. Almost all of the concerns raised by the median anti-ai person are retarded propaganda produced by slopulists who, correctly, think of them as cattle that they can lie to with impunity in order to gin enough outrage to propel them into office, keep them supporting their slop rage social media account or because they're genuinely foreign spooks trying to retard our progress.

Actually, this exact perspective is the thing that the median person hates about AI. The water usage isn't the issue, the slop isn't the issue, the fact that AI doesn't produce any value for the median person and instead makes much of their life notably worse isn't the issue - the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.

I'm personally of the opinion that the AI ecology in its current instantiation is evil in almost every single way, but the biggest way it is evil is that it's a transparent attempt to destroy the lives of everyone who isn't a part of that ecology. It's a predatory economic model, and the prey is that median person that you have such derision for.

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FlailingAce 9d ago

Oh good we're back to 'I'll ignore literally everything you said because I have no response to it'. And then you wonder why so many Protestants have a negative view of Catholics.

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FlailingAce 10d ago

I don't know who you think you're arguing with about 'denying the fatherhood of God'. That's a radical position that I certainly don't hold.

I also, again, think we should honor Mary - probably higher than any other person, save perhaps John the Baptist ("among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist" Matt 11:11). However, Catholic dogma requires me to believe things about her that I think are clearly false.

First, that she was conceived free from sin, and indeed never sinned at all. From Catholic Answers: "However, Mary was “saved” from sin in a most sublime manner. She was given the grace to be “saved” completely from sin so that she never committed even the slightest transgression." The article then goes on to argue that even though Romans and 1 John clearly teach that 'all have sinned', that Mary could be an exception since Jesus was also an exception. In other words, Mary was just as holy as Jesus. An insane argument in my opinion, but that's how Catholics have to justify their dogma! Besides all this, Jesus specifically rebukes Mary in the gospels. There's also no reason whatsoever to believe that Mary was conceived free from original sin except for the idea that Jesus needed a womb free from sin - but 1) God could make the womb sinless at the point of Jesus' conception, or any manner of other arrangements, and 2) this argument leads to infinite regress, because if Jesus needed a sinless womb, then Mary would need one too, as would her mother, and grandmother, ad infinitum. The whole thing is patent nonsense and directly contradicts clear biblical teaching.

I can go on, since most of the Marian dogmas are likely false, but that should give a basis for further discussion if you're interested.

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FlailingAce 10d ago

Sooo you don't have a response to the concerns about Mary?

Why are you on this website if you're not interested in defending your positions? Asserting without evidence that anyone who disagrees with you must be the same as James Talarico is not a defense.

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FlailingAce 12d ago

As an ex-Catholic, the concern has always been 1) false doctrines about Mary that are considered obligatory dogmas and 2) adoration of Mary that rises to the level of worship, which is due to God alone. Nobody has ever said the problem was 'honouring Mary too highly'. I don't understand why Catholics are so universally arrogant and wrong whenever I encounter them online.

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FlailingAce 28d ago

Russian confirmed losses are unusually low.

Where are you getting that from? I just read today that Russia lost more personnel than they recruited for the fifth straight month. Those are Ukraine's estimates but they're far from 'unusually low'.

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FlailingAce 30d ago

I actually don't mind this result. As far as Trump's corruption goes, this is more or less justifiable.

What I cannot accept is his behavior to enrich himself and his family through crypto scams and pay to play, even going so far as to pardon clear-cut criminals because they donated to his campaign. That stuff boils my blood. He used to say 'drain the swamp' but seems to have pivoted to 'become the swamp'.

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FlailingAce 30d ago

Yup, that's pretty much where I was at before I read the linked article. However it now seems to me that both the scale and the completely unabashed nature of corruption in the Trump admin is in a league of its own.

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FlailingAce 1mo ago

I don't think corruption is valent anymore to most people. To generalize the views I tend to see: if you're on the right, you don't believe all the mainstream media lies about Trump, or alternatively you tolerate Trump's misbehavior because we NEEDED him to save our country; if you're on the left, you already assumed Trump was the devil so this kind of thing is just another drop in the pond.

But I actually had my mind changed on this recently. I don't know if we have any other Tangle readers here? They posted an extensive piece on Trump's corruption a few weeks ago that kind of opened my mind to the extent of what this administration is up to. Article here. I'd be curious to hear what other Trump supporters' thoughts are on it. I've noticed since reading it that my emotional response to Trump has become more negative, and I think I'm more open to left-wing commentary on the Trump admin. Was this what i needed to de-program me from MAGA brainwashing? Only time will tell.

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