Hacker News: whimsicalism

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:17:51 +0000

I think there is a big difference in mechanisms between non-linearity and non-monotonicity, but I don't have bandwidth to reply in more detail.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 23:26:06 +0000

> And it’s not like non-meat is fine - the corn industry uses a blinding amount of water, as do almonds, etc.

Switching from meat to non-meat unequivocally lowers your GHG and water footprint and there's really no room for quibbling on this unless you are switching to a diet of exclusively almonds

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 23:18:50 +0000

This is what I mean about not understanding the second order transitive labor that goes into fulfilling people's wants.

Making supply chain routing software cheaper, improving it for less money → all of these things directly make the products in grocery stores cheaper.

"Further financializing food production seems like a bad thing." →

Why assume rather than approaching with curiosity? Commodity futures are, again, critical to global supply chains and food markets. Farmers in eastern Europe actually look at futures markets to determine when and if to plant their harvest, cargo ships that transport your food buy futures in oil & gas so that they can have stable fuel costs to provide you with your food, etc. etc. Speculating on the future gives rise to the corrections necessary for providing things that people want in the future.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Data centers raise nearby temperatures by up to 4 degrees in Phoenix"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:28:33 +0000

I think that low externality things people are willing to pay for should be presumptively allowed unless there is strong reason otherwise. We are much too involved in the 'legislating individual activities' and not nearly enough in the 'tax wealth and redistribute' side of things.

> We're just two guys on the Internet, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Post-2020, the internet is real life. Internet native thought has proven to be a powerful force in the physical world. I remember laughing at the absurdity of 4chan posters in high school. I will not make the mistake of taking internet ideology lightly again.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:25:44 +0000

democracies will not vote for this. even in California, politicians run on policies like $500 gas rebates for anyone owning a gas powered vehicle

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:13:06 +0000

HN guidelines also say something about flamebait but I guess you read past that part :) cheers, obviously not going to continue replying to you

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:53:46 +0000

i think we both know that this is not what i meant

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:49:48 +0000

I live in a place with sufficient books that I know how to understand the written word, but I understand not everyone replying to my comments is so fortunate.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:44:24 +0000

maybe i'm working on software for supply chain routing. maybe i'm making a commodity trading bot that more accurately prices wheat futures. AI helps with both of those things.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 21:02:20 +0000

i don't agree, i think you are just describing a measurement problem, we have a clear mechanistic understanding of why 'anything above zero' would be bad, and are able to measure this in sufficiently large populations for larger drinkers. the effect size is smaller and thus unmeasurable above the noise floor for one glass a night, but the mechanistic story is clear.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:51:52 +0000

I do not believe for one instance that people are coming from a legitimate concern around planet-burning and reaching their conclusions about AI vs. reasoning backwards from wanting reasons to be anti-AI. Very few people I've met seems willing to make one iota of earnest personal sacrifice for avoiding actual in-real-life planet-burning industries.

Actively pisses me off hearing climate rationale for opposing something so relatively inconsequential while the house is on fire from pre-existing industry that is grandfathered in.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:49:41 +0000

I think people should be allowed to do things, generally. If it's not worth it, the people doing it will go out of business (and quickly, at these prices). I think it is likely more worth it than you realize.

We're not talking about criticizing, we're talking about bans.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:46:43 +0000

where there is a demand for results, academia will meet the supply

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:45:25 +0000

This is technically explicitly a rule violation. Yes, yes we've been hearing it for years but it is much more true in the past 2-3 years than anytime in the past imo.

Frankly, it's a shame that the only high quality discussion I can find is on gross platforms like 'the everything app' or more obscure forums.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:27:12 +0000

i think this sentiment comes from a deep misunderstanding of how our modern society is the product of transitive satisfaction of wants. the developers churning out agent work on supergigaultramax effort are fulfilling the transitive preferences of people like supply chain managers, etc. who are in turn fulfilling the transitive preferences of a school teacher for cheap groceries, who are in turn....

This is how economies work and the alternative strategy of enumerating morally correct wants/needs and assigning the correct price from on-high has been a demonstrable failure. It is a cognitive failure of humanity that this strategy is so intuitively appealing to us.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Data centers raise nearby temperatures by up to 4 degrees in Phoenix"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:24:01 +0000

> The figures I've been seeing are something like half of all current private construction projects are data center related these days and it's the biggest single sector of construction in terms of money spent.

You view this as a measure of data center construction, I view this as a measure of how challenging we've made it to do absolutely anything in the US unless there are massive stacked financial incentives in favor of it.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:22:17 +0000

i don't think either of the first two things are generally true (usually tax positive, new usecases generally raise property value).

it sounds like you just want to ban American industry altogether, we've quietly let extreme conservatism sneak up on us in the US it seems.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:20:23 +0000

what if rather than enumerating the list of allowed/disallowed economic activities based on some moral criterion, we just tax the rich and redistribute it. i kinda thought this is what we spent the entirety of the 20th c. litigating but maybe i'm mistaken

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:18:35 +0000

"i can't eat a cargo container so it's useless" -guy who can only see one level up the chain of abstractions that allow him to fill his belly.

New comment by whimsicalism in "Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers"

whimsicalism — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:17:45 +0000

It's trumped up, pretty obviously. We basically low-growthed our way into a default sort of NIMBYism by the mid-90s and now there is pressure to build anything again and we are seeing the reaction.