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by inglor_cz 65 days ago
In free societies, bans should be the last weapon of choice. By default, any activity should be allowed, many of the allowed activies should be regulated and/or taxed, but outright bans should be very well justified.

Otherwise you will end up with a chaotic-authoritarian system banning whatever the current Zeitgeist feels icky about, which in the era of social networks means twenty different things each year.
1 comments
petre 65 days ago
It's a free state. Like the Swiss banned minarets in Geneva the Mainers should be allowed to vote to ban datacenters. AI bros can always opt to build their stuff elsewhere, like Texas or Abu Dhabi.
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inglor_cz 65 days ago
I was talking about a free society. You changed that into a free state.

State X may be free in the sense that there is no military occupation or outright dictatorship, but that does not mean that its society values freedom highly. There are degrees to "lived freedom", and being too ban-happy is on the (for me) bad side of the spectrum.

Imagine a very religious society, something like a Puritan state, or a Wahhabist colony, where the faith itself imposes significant restrictions on everyday life of an individual and all laws are derived from religion. Would you call it a free society? What about the few non-believers who live among them, what level of freedom do they enjoy (except the freedom to move away, if they have the means to do so)?

This is not a simple boolean variable.

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tt24 65 days ago
That’s not what a free society is.

That’s like saying “Mainers should be allowed to ban speech they don’t like, and private sex acts they find offensive”. Your view of what constitutes freedom is nonsensical.

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petre 65 days ago
Your examples are both unconstitutional (see Lawrence v. Texas for the second), so no, there are limits. Also the majority of sane individuals would not bother to vote on that kind of stuff to meet a qualified majority, not in a democracy and not without a massive brainwashing campaign (which should be banned btw). Also, as others have pointed out, this is not a ban but a moratorium. AI bros just have to wait until the hype cools down to build data centers in Maine, or build them elsewhere.
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