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by jack_pp 14 hours ago
how many datacenters / computers are there running millions of hours of computer games? Why is escaping reality and damaging climate with compute better than using LLMs?
1 comments

Because it's more fun?

Being serious this is a silly line of reasoning. Maybe they are both bad? It's like asking why is it bad to light a forest fire when there is a forest fire already burning.

I take issue with the cognitive dissonance too though. HN became very hostile to Bitcoin but took no issue with people gaming on PCs and consoles that were consuming more and more electricity each year. Now everyone is silent on all fronts because LLMs make their job easy and gives them something new and interesting to play with.

Exactly, people like to cherry pick. Do we need facebook, do we need instagram? Do we need on-demand always available 4k streaming?

The singularity argument makes more sense than the environmental one.

Short of all of us living like the amish, we're hypocrites for pointing out one "waste" over another.

Yeah I don’t know if I come to the same conclusion as you.

There is no probabilistic way to determine if the singularity will be a positive or negative for humanity. Climate change is a net negative for humanity.

Regardless it’s clear what course we are on.