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> I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.

I can imagine raising issues with a specific datacenter in a specific water-constrained location, but I agree that being vocally concerned about the teaspoons of water consumed to produce an AI response while being unconcerned with the thousands of gallons used to produce a cheeseburger seems like innumerate virtue signaling.

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Most people do not see data centers benefiting them in any way but do benefit from eating meat (because they like it). Also, this is an additional water consumption that in a time when water resources are already strained in many areas for all those other uses mentioned.

An analogy would be if you have $5000 a month on income but spend $4950 on rent, utilities, insurance, food, etc. then its not hypocritical to say that you shouldn't give an additional $200 to the local billionaire because that's only a small percentage of what you spend on rent. 'Hey man, if you can afford to live indoors, the least you can do is go into debt for local billionaire to become even more billionairy'

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