You can ask AI, it will tell you it doesn't feel anything. Consciousness seems to be a tight recursive coupling which AI inference doesn't exhibit at the system level.
A labor union restricting who can be part of the Arbitration Enforcement admin team flies directly in the face of the principle that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit". It is turning Wikipedia into a protected guild, with a privileged class of administrators.
And if this drive to lock down control over Wikiedia succeeds, by framing opposition as "Big Tech", then Wikipedia is truly finished.
AI compute is a major emerging export industry that the U.S. could become the global leader in. Strong First Amendment protections, due process, and limits on arbitrary government control also make the U.S. uniquely well-suited for AI, unlike, let's say, manufacturing, where authoritarian states seem to have an advantage.
The U.S. has much stronger free speech protections than any peer. Have you seen the speech (chat) control laws being instituted in Europe in the last few years?
When owners try to lock down industries with government restrictions, we also oppose that. In this case, society as a whole is harmed by what the unions are demanding. It means everybody, including other workers, get less affordable goods and services. Greater affordability through automation is the sole means by which wages and purchasing power increase over time.
Abolishing 230 means no free speech, anywhere. Speech would need to be restrained, vetted, and approved by a platform, before it could be shared.
While much abusive speech can be blocked from being published with this sort of Prior Restraint, much more healthy, vital speech — that counters abuse — would be repressed by it, IMHO. See how litigation involving copyright law has been used by the Church of Scientology to silence critics, for example. The removal of 230 means platforms themselves could be targeted to efficiently censor large sections of the population.
And the basic principle of Prior Restraint flies in the face of the presumption of innocence that underlies conduct in a Free Society.
That's not true. It would stifle centralized platforms but it would not meaningfully impact those self hosting. So ActivityPub (ie self hosted Mastodon and similar) would be unaffected as would Bluesky with a self hosted PDS (IIUC). Further, paid hosting services for those would be unaffected for the same reason that we don't require section 230 to protect the car rental company if someone uses the vehicle to commit a crime.
I'm not advocating to repeal section 230 but honestly all I'm seeing here is upsides.
> That's not true. It would stifle centralized platforms but it would not meaningfully impact those self hosting.
IDK why you think this. 230 is brief; it doesn't distinguish between size of internet entities. It protects every site that hosts a comment section from bad-faith lawsuits by deep pockets who don't like that speech.
That's all it does. It doesn't provide cover for illegal activity or any of the other 1k things it gets accused of.
I don't think so. Section 230 only applies if you host other's content. If you are self hosting only your own content then it does not apply to you.
In case we have a misunderstanding, I wasn't describing the current common practice of rather large multi-user AP nodes. Rather I had in mind the idea of each user hosting his own instance, or at most perhaps exceedingly small multi-user instances for immediate family or a hobbyist group or similar. Those are all situations where section 230 currently offers approximately zero benefit to the operator as I understand it.
Agreed, it would make hosting a comments section where you solicit contributions from the world at large somewhat less appealing. However a self hosted federated social media protocol such as AP or ATProto isn't substantially impacted. Under such a model your blog can still have comments you just can't host those comments yourself unless you're willing to assume some amount of risk (probably not much in practice TBF).
As such I'm not convinced that anything of value would be lost. That said as I've stated in other comments I'm also not in favor of that.
>So ActivityPub (ie self hosted Mastodon and similar) would be unaffected as would Bluesky with a self hosted PDS (IIUC).
Only as long as you don't allow third party comments or run a multi-user instance. Then you're just as legally liable for that content as the centralized platforms.
>Further, paid hosting services for those would be unaffected for the same reason that we don't require section 230 to protect the car rental company if someone uses the vehicle to commit a crime.
Mixed metaphors aside, Section 230 is the law that "protects the car rental company if someone uses the vehicle to commit a crime."
If the car rental company is the platform, then prior to Section 230 (and after its repeal) they were and would be held responsible.
Section 230 just establishes that the party posting content is liable for that content, just as the person using a vehicle to commit a crime is responsible for that crime.
> Only as long as you don't [ do various things that no longer qualify as self hosting ].
Well yeah, that was exactly my point.
> Mixed metaphors aside
It wasn't a metaphor, I meant that quite literally. If you rent a car there is no section 230 protection and yet the company is not liable unless they knowingly aid you in committing a crime. Network service offerings aren't magically different. Selling something (in a sufficiently neutral manner) does not generally leave you with any liability for the customer's actions.
It's only when you start operating your own service that republishes user submitted content that section 230 suddenly becomes relevant (at least AFAIK). If you want an analogy I guess it would be like offering free use of your fleet of vehicles to strangers off the street with zero due diligence and then the law exempting you from liability for any subsequent actions of those strangers.
Anyway I'm not advocating to repeal it. Personally I think the issue is that social media operators editorialize via algorithm, abusing section 230 to dodge responsibility.
Most of the concerns are massively overblown. For instance, new regulations require data centers to bring their own power, so they're not drawing on the grid. They are deployed off-grid. With respect to water, the new trend is closed-loop water cooling, or using treated waste water, so that it doesn't have any continual draw on the local water supply. And even the legacy data center water cooling systems that draws on local water supply consumes less than 3% of what U.S. gulf courses consume. Every industry uses water. This idea that this industry is especially bad as a consequence of that is simply ignorant.
>If they just pay the full actual costs of what they are doing, most people would be fine with it.
I'm skeptical that this would have any impact at all. Considering how much less data centers pollute than other industries, relative to the economic value they generate, and the disproportionate amount of hostility they receive, I don't see any kind of empirical basis for the anti-data center movement. Most of those complaining about data centers don't even know about the new 'Bring Your Own Power Supply' regulations, meaning that this is just a pretense for their opposition, not the motivation for it.
>>For instance, new regulations require data centers to bring their own power, so they're not drawing on the grid. They are deployed off-grid.
I see no national regulation of actual usage (the proposed Hawley-Warren act would require only reporting. And even if some national legislation/regulation did materialize, off-grid power generation is a trend because of insufficient grid supply and throughput, and regulating grid usage does NOT solve the problems of off-grid power gen, which right now typically involves massive diesel or NatGas generators which are the actual source of massive noise and air pollution.
>>With respect to water, the new trend is closed-loop water cooling, or using treated waste water
Yes closed-loop water cooling is obviously better and it is good to see that trend. That does NOT solve the problem of massive water usage required for 5+ years of construction, e.g., in this town [0]
>>relative to the economic value they generate
Right now, that economic value is massively negative [1], possibly the greatest bonfire of money in human history. It MAY generate positive return, but just as with mini-/personal computers and the internet, end up being just the table stakes to run a business.
>>see any kind of empirical basis for the anti-data center movement
Start with the entirely plausible likely results of damaging society as social media has done — the exact mechanisms couldn't be predicted at the time, but certainly resulted in harm. AI is even more massively unpredictable, and in an already unstable society, there is little reason to not worry. I say that as a frequent and avid AI user who does find value in it. I absolutely cannot say fears are unfounded.
>>don't even know about the new 'Bring Your Own Power Supply' regulations
Those regulations are 1) at best, nascent, 2) are definitely incomplete, and 3) do not address the problems of bringing your own power, which is exactly what has trashed neighborhoods around data centers bringing their own power [2]; i.e., BYOP is part of the problem against which people are protesting. That is totally legitimate protest reasons; go read about it instead of pontificating from ignorance and false hypotheticals.
Most of these critisms would apply to ANY major industrial build out.
You can't bemoan America becoming an import nation that doesn't produce valuable goods/services that the world wants, and then sabotage every industrial build out that can fix that problem.
As for value, I was only talking about the product — in the GDP sense — that a data center outputs.
While bubble industries can lead to companies running loss leaders, the realities of the AI industry show enormous underlying supply side and demand side development.
The cost per token has declined at an exponential rate while LLM performance has skyrocketed. AI is also the fastest adopted good or service in human history. That is the most objective judge of whether it adds value to people's lives.
As for the risks, yes any new industry introduces new risks and so the temptation is to clamp down. But taking fewer visible risks can increase your total risk. We are already under constant threat from deterioration: aging, depreciation and decay. Entropy is the default. Action is what pushes back against it.
Very few people are actually sabotaging industrial buildout (there are a few who want to end that, but most do not); they are only insisting that what CAN be done to mitigate the ill effects IS done.
And this happens even in totalitarian China when pollution gets bad.
It isn't that hard, and it doesn't even cost that much overall, but it doesn't make the MBA bean-counters happy because it doesn't optimize for their criteria - dumping every cost possible on someone else.
* Pay for upgrades needed for the roads on which you quadruple the tonnage/day
* Pay for the upgrades to the grid you need to triple the power delivery to your site
* If you are going to do on-site generation, use the technology to contain or scrub your pollution and silence the noise
* Don't build on endangered species' habitats
Most of all, be public, don't try to make deals with officials behind people's backs. If you actually have a societal benefit to sell that outweighs the risks and burdens, sell it, and get people behind you.
But making deals and building in secret makes it obvious that YOU have no confidence in your ability to convince anyone of the benefits to anyone but you. No wonder people push back.
>>only talking about the product — in the GDP sense — that a data center output
Although I get value for my $20 Claude subscription, I'm really getting only value that VCs are putting money in my pocket. Until token costs decline far further and actual profit is produced, here's the real situation:
Two economists are walking in a forest and they come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."
"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"
"Rights" is not the point. You're correct that a country doesn't have to welcome you.
However, the US has been a prosperous country because it welcomes ambitious, hard-working, and skilled people from around the world. They immigrate, build inside the US and for the US, and the US economy grows. This is how the past several decades have worked, and restricting legal immigration would basically destroy this country, its economy, and everything that makes it a great place to live.
I'm a citizen of the US, and I 100% want more smart and hard-working people from around the world to come here and set up shop.
This is not true. It’s a pernicious lie that the United States has always been doors open, and this falsity makes discussing this topic increasingly impossible because it’s like there’s two different realities that aren’t reconcilable. The US became the economic powerhouse and world power it did during the most restrictive period of its immigration history. The amount of immigration over the last 30 years, and especially over the last decade, is completely unusual and unprecedented. I can go to neighborhoods in the city I grew up in where I played baseball as a kid and it is quite literally completely foreign. A lot of people, and you seem to be one of them, think that America’s immigration system is a cosmic vacuum cleaner that scoops up would-be Einsteins from around the planet and plops them in US cities where they churn out unicorns between writing an opera and running a 10k. This isn’t the case.
The percent of the US population that is foreign-born is about the same as it was before 1920.
To use your vocabulary, it is a pernicious lie to pretend that America's success from WWI through the WWII recoveries was due to immigration policies, rather than other major countries having their infrastructure destroyed and being forced to use the US as a key supplier due to rather large wars.
(and that's ignoring that US population had booms in there that meant that even though immigration was persisting, there was just a big increase in domestic births).
Though if we're going to adopt those immigration policies, perhaps we should also adopt the tax strategies, corporate regulation, and worker unions that accompanied that growth.
I'm quite fine with that. I drove through an Armenian neighborhood of LA and stopped for a meal at a restaurant whose name I could not comprehend and it was really, fucking tasty. Zhengyalov Hatz in Glendale, if anyone is wondering.
But yeah, this is the kind of stuff that makes the US awesome. "Would-be Einsteins" are far from the only flavor hard-working people who I absolutely welcome.
Cato is doing their usual thing here where they lie by omission.
>These foreigners, if not properly disposed of, will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.[1]
-Thomas Jefferson
The Founders had a conception of immigration that is completely at odds with the free for all that exists today, and Cato is partially responsible for people incorrectly thinking that the US was “literally built on the idea of immigration”.
Europeans who arrived, seized land, imported enslaved people, broke treaties, then later decided that later arrivals were the real problem? Those Europeans?
Would you prefer the United States didn’t exist or something? What is even the point of this comment. “Bad things happened in history, there was violence and war and conquering, woe is me” this is what you sound like. Profound, truly.
Did you roll a dice and pick one or are you actually familiar with Navajo history or something and that’s why you tried to use this retort as a way to imply you’re not allowed to have opinions on American immigration policy unless you’re from a Native American tribe?
> because it welcomes ambitious, hard-working, and skilled people from around the world
"From around the world" more like the "world tour" definition
They were welcoming mostly Europeans. First from WASP countries, then for more southern/eastern ones. And then from East Asia (I'll save the rant about the word "Asian" for another time)
Every piece of data shows some groups excel while some groups lag behind
(of course I haven't forgotten about other groups of people that came to the US but most of those didn't come willingly)
I didn't say it's a good policy. I just said it's not some moral failing to not allow immigration. The implication of all these criticisms of the Republican administration's policy on immigration is that if they oppose immigration, they're racist. I find this to be a very manipulative form of emotional blackmail that abuses the racism allegation.
The current Republican regime’s only pro-immigration policy is white South Africans. Your knee jerk defense to a point no one made is inconsistent with the facts
I'd have more sympathy for that view if it were straightforward regulations being passed that placed strict and objective limits on the process. However what we have in practice appears to be a campaign to spread fear and uncertainty via underhanded regulations while feigning ignorance.
It is a moral failing when many times the immigrants coming to the US are coming from countries destabilized by our direct or indirect involvement. Reaping the benefits of our colonization while washing our hands of any of the consequences is morally wrong.
I don't know how you would possibly quantify the U.S. impact on the stability of other countries. The historical default has been extreme instability. It's only in the last 200 years or so that nation-states as we know them have existed in most of the world. Before that, a lot of the world was ruled by warlords, petty kings, and empires fighting over territory.
So treating instability in these countries as mainly the result of U.S. involvement seems overly simplistic. Many U.S. interventions have contributed to instability, but many forms of U.S. involvement have also contributed to stability. Not to mention the enormous amounts of economic resources that come from the U.S. and enrich other countries through trade, investment, and remittances.
You can make a humanitarian case for immigration without reducing the causal history to "the U.S. destabilized these countries, so the U.S. owes them entry". The history is much messier than that.
I'm not sure that immigration policy is relevant to libertarianism because a nation in some sense is like private property. So one could argue that the people of a country have a collective right to restrict who enters their borders. Transversing a nation's airspace would be a different story. I think if a nation blocked other nations from using its airspace for transversal it would be a violation of other people's rights, by abusing, essentially, private property exclusivity.
That's just a way to rationalize policies that are obviously anti-liberty. Is the Texas/Mexico border my property? Really? All of it? And isn't abuse of private property anti-liberty anyway? You literally just said it is.
Countries do prevent other countries from using their airspace, by the way.
Preventing people from encroaching on your nation is fundamentally no different than preventing people from trespassing on your property. It's not anti-liberty, since we don't have an inherent right to any land on earth. That right to occupy a piece of land, to the extent that it exists, emerges through homesteading and the principle of First Possession.
As for U.S. territory, yes, you can make a case that it's the collective property of American citizens who then decide how the property will be governed through their elected representatives. How is that anti-liberty?
Through what right do countries exist and have rights and those rights transfer to their citizens? What causes me to have a right to control the Texas/Mexico border?
A political community can make a claim over a territory because it builds institutions that build and defend it. It's not identical to homesteading, but it's similar. Think of private property and national sovereignty as different layers of ownership that emerge through similar principles.
It is plausible that the original non-avian theropod dinosaurs which gave rise to avian theropod dinosaurs like modern birds were more vision-oriented predators than mammalian predators.
That would have favored eyes built for sharper vision at the expense of higher metabolic demands.
The different evolutionary track may come from the fact that theropods stood upright on two legs, so they could scan farther across the landscape. Also, they were active during the day. Early mammals, by contrast, were mostly nocturnal, so hearing and smell mattered more than sharp vision.
Interestingly, humans have some of the best vision in the animal kingdom and humans are both upright standing and diurnal, i.e. active in the daytime.
Which means the Jurassic Park tyrannosaur that could only see things that moved was probably seriously inaccurate (also in reality it probably had feathers).¹
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1. While checking Wikipedia to confirm my belief about feathers, I found that the consensus among paleontologists was that tyrannosaurs had superb vision, better than humans, in fact.
It is theorized that they had vision like eagles or possibly exceeded that of eagles that enabled them to see prey at great distances. Then using their legs optimized for locomotion, they would chase them down.
It feels like most people mix the two things up: excellent vision and predatory response. An eagle can absolutely see a mouse hiding in the bushes, not moving. But a moving prey is what triggers their predatory response. Plausibly… they probably don’t attack a non-moving mouse because it could be a dead mouse.
Human vision evolved for different things. Our ancestors were tree-dwelling and optimized for depth perception, social cues and color acuity. So it’s just a different strategy.
I suspect that the movement is more than just a predatory response factor. It is also used as an indication that there is something to give attention to. The eagle may be able to see the motionless mouse if it focuses on it, but it doesn't know to focus on it unless it detects the motion to draw attention to that area of its visual field.
It really hit me moving to Australia, most of the mammals are nocturnal (Kangaroos were the ones that caught me most by surprise) - most (if not all) of the reptiles are diurnal - got to have that sweet sweet sun to warm the blood.
Many mammals have become nocturnal in order to avoid humans.
In Central Europe, most of the big game (boars, deer etc.), but also foxes and hares have become nocturnal. The great exception is the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl, where they all have reverted to diurnal life and tourists will quite often encounter something like a fox walking right in the middle of a road, looking at them with curiosity.
Everywhere else, that would be sign of rabies, but there, it is the original normal behavior.
Laws like this superficially seem good because it's not nice when online games shut down without a patch but they have the harmful effect of eliminating the long tail of — you could say — low quality offerings, that don't offer these features
It's better to have more offerings on the market, even low quality ones, than fewer. Limiting the low quality offerings does not result in high quality ones naturally emerging to substitute them. It just leads to fewer offerings.
There are two things I think that low quality offerings are good at doing. First, they're good at experimenting with new features. If it's very cheap to try a new feature, because the cost of deploying a new game is quite low and you're basically pumping out a bunch of marginally valuable games, then new features get iterated on more quickly. That eventually flows back up to the better quality games. The second benefit is that it meets some niche needs, where a certain player wants something that's very unusual or otherwise non-existent on the market. And this 5x9 half-baked game provides it. Again, it's very few people who want this feature, but there are a huge number of features like that. It's a very long tail.
I moderate an online community and we introduced democratic rulemaking and people kept proposing and then voting in rules to restrict this or that kind of post because it was low quality or distracted people or whatever and eventually the forum became so much less usable because of the cumulative effect of all these small restrictions. That effect of making the forum less usable was most pronounced on newcomers, who didn't know all the rules and basically couldn't break in because of the barrier to understanding how to generate content that complied with the morass of restrictions.
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