The applications are not tangential, they're an irreplaceable tool the hyperscalers relied on to get us where we are now. Pollution is bad but it's a different story if it's curing cancer vs making nudes of female politicians. This is like the fundamental principle of effective altruism, which everyone in tech industry leadership used to justify their negative externalities on the way up. Now that they're being asked to show results it's out the window.

I mean, that's the good faith argument anyways. I suspect you don't actually care, and just also believe in South African white genocide etc.

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BeetleB 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Pollution is bad but it's a different story if it's curing cancer vs making nudes of female politicians.

Completely disagree. That sort of reasoning is why plenty of African Americans were forcibly moved from their own properties in the 20th century. "The land will be put to great use!" (And in a lot of cases, it was - still wrong).

	▲	jackb4040 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		(I also disagree, I'm just using it to argue with the guy above claiming it's irrelevant) Within your metaphor, the person I'm replying to would say "I did nothing to stop the land theft because I found it annoying how people made irrelevant arguments about what the land would be used for". Really calls into question if their real position is what they say it is.