Comment by broken-kebab
14 days ago
"We can't trust them" is the foundation of practically every conspiracy theory, though, from times immemorial. I remember people protesting against cell towers, and it was exactly what their arguments were built around: "We don't believe this thing won't fry our brains". It was the same before with electrical lines, and I guess steam power had its share too. Not telling a concerned citizen is obliged to trust everyone, marketing & propaganda were part of "underlying reality" for centuries at least. But frankly, you made it sound like it's a novel thing, a dark omen of evil AI times, or something.
The difference being that AI companies are destroying all sorts of stuff, and cellphone companies didn't - they just provided cellphones.
Society did decay because of cellphones but it wasn't anything to do with the cellphone companies. The towers always were exactly what the cellphone companies said they were.
The difference in attitude between cell phone conspiracy theories and data center conspiracy theories is almost entirely driven by the media reporting on them. The media (correctly) identifies people worried about cell phone radiation affecting their health as crackpots. But because the Anglosphere media establishment itself is threatened by the tech industry at large, it not only fails to report on anti-datacenter sentiment among uninformed people as similar crackpottery, it amplifies basically-inaccurate negative memes about data centers such as their water use.
They allow the "infrasound" people go unchecked even though they are basically the same as the tin foil hatters.
You raise a good point. I was raised in the 1980s and 1990s. Every few months there were interviews and investigations on a local news programme about how using a mobile phone might cause brain cancer. Or living near above ground power lines caused all kinds of imaginary illnesses. From what I can see, most of those crazy people moved on to a new conspiracy theory. I cannot remember the last time that I saw any serious media coverage of either issue from my childhood.
This is an example of the same problem as the article; you're treating trust as entirely unrelated to reality. It can get out-of-step, but that's not the only possibility, and it's not the one we're facing here.
The problem with conspiracy theories is not that they're based on a lack of trust, but that they're not rational. Sometimes a lack of trust is perfectly rational.
Cell towers don't actually fry your brains. Steam powered trains don't move so fast you suffocate. However, the big tech CEOs are absolutely going to take your data and use it against you. They are going to build data centers that harm your community. The fear here is reasonable and evidenced.
This isn't unique to AI, but AI is the current iteration of the same problem. Sometimes people distrust outsiders because they're star-bellied sneetches, but sometimes they distrust them because they're the British empire. You can't treat all distrust as unreasoning.
>problem with conspiracy theories is not that they're based on a lack of trust, but that they're not rational.
Rationality isn't some sort of absolute parameter, it's determined wrt available information. And with information coming from outside it's certainly an issue of trust.
FWIW such unconditional claim as "DC will harm your community" is a shiny example of this, as you don't even care to talk about a particular DC, and obviously cases (community problems, and interests, and the way a DC placed or build) can vary a lot. Apparently, you just don't believe them at all, don't you?
>You can't treat all distrust as unreasoning.
I don't. I just noticed that arguments you believe are central are very stretchy, and can 'prove' anything, including conspiracy theories.
> Rationality isn't some sort of absolute parameter, it's determined wrt available information
The available information is very clear that cellphone towers are not mind control and that the current leaders of the tech world do not have the best interests of people in mind.
We don't need to talk about a particular DC, because that's beside the point: people have very legitimate reasons to oppose them on principle.
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