https://roblh.substack.com/p/the-new-artillery-shell-factory-is Rob L’Heureux on how a new artillery shell factory failed: they put in a bunch of new automated lines all at once without testing the machines bit by bit to see if they worked on the metal in question. production went to zero; worker safety was a nightmare. the mandate to go “fast” was imposed by an executive with no manufacturing experience. this is the sort of thing that gives technology a bad name. yes, modernizing nearly century-old military manufacturing facilities is still necessary, and yes, the default way of doing business is slow and sclerotic, but what people outside manufacturing don’t understand is that no machine can be assumed to “just work” upon delivery. new manufacturing processes need to be developed by experiment. new vendors need to be qualified by testing. This isn’t Ikea. developing a new manufacturing process is like developing a new drug (another thing laymen don’t seem to realize is nontrivial, actually… i’m not sure what a truly relatable analogy for a pure finance/sales exec would be!)
https://jasmi.news/p/abdul-el-sayed-on-ai these quotes are kind of infuriating. the guy just thinks, “well, I don’t like AI, I don’t think my constituents like AI, so we won’t allow data centers.”
What’s missing in the discourse is capitalists making the case that it’s none of your business whether you like it or not. It’s between the sellers and buyers (of land, labor, software products, and so on.) You, as a bystander, should not get to shout “stop!” at what people do with their own property, just because you’re worried it’ll change your culture or put your job at risk. You do not even get to demand that people reassure you or sell you on the benefits of a deal. It is None of your Beeswax. It is Not Up To You. It is Not Your Money.
of course, legally, local governments do have the power to make these kinds of decisions, and I suppose they will. Nobody likes being told that stuff they don’t like is going to happen in their neighborhood.
But, frankly, I have to accept noisy neighbors, loud music in public spaces, ugly buildings, crappy movies and TV, and so on, because the basic human rules of interaction are that other people’s business is not up to me, and because my tastes are niche enough and my personality introverted enough that I couldn’t really expect to get my way by being a busybody. If you’re more of a “normie”, I suppose you never learn that lesson! But it is conspicuously unfair. When you don’t like something, you get to ruin it for the people who do; when I don’t like something, it’s my own problem.
we have centuries of legal tradition working out how to adjudicate conflicting preferences, and it doesn’t just boil down to a popularity contest! this is why property exists, so that some things are “mine” and not your place to interfere with, and other things are “yours” and not my place to interfere with!
but to this guy, “most people” don’t like a thing, and the people who do like it are “rich”, and that’s all there is to say.
I don’t understand your comment. If you want to use your property right to build something that’ll hurt a lot of people (like a nuke or an AI), society can override your property right, and that’s ok.
of course, but that is not the concern given in the interview.
“In this case, it’s: we’re going to build a data center. And they’re like, oh, so what’s it going to be? It’s just going to be this drone of a building that makes an odd sound all the time and sucks up all the electricity and could poison my water. Okay, what’s the trade-off? The buildout of an industry that everyone’s telling me — including the CEOs — is going to come for my job. So what is the upside? And you’re like, well, you can ask meaningless questions and queries to your ChatGPT. And people are like: I don’t want that, and it’s not worth it.”
Sounds right to me. People are against AI (for whatever reason) and are locally resisting. The more of this, the better. If this happens everywhere and AI becomes as politically toxic as nuclear power in its time, I’ll celebrate.
the quote seems very reasonable. how would you prefer these objections be stated? the first three are appropriate reasons to oppose a building project. the fourth is marginal, but with a bit of charity we can see it gesturing at something real.
is your objection just the inclusion of the fifth? i agree it carries an odd implication—that if gpt was more popular, there would be no objection—that this decision is made by status rather than law.
if the building were actually loud, raised electricity prices or caused electricity shortages, or polluted water, that would be a legitimate complaint, but those things are not true.
so that some things are “mine” and not your place to interfere with, and other things are “yours” and not my place to interfere with!
For example, if Alice has a house in which she and her children sleep, it is not Bob’s place to put up giant lights and noise-making equipment next door, because this would interfere with Alice’s and her family’s use of their property. Even if Bob owns the land next door, Bob’s right to use that land for anything he chooses end at the property line. The rules around effects of Bob’s actions that extend into Alice’s property, or into public space — sound, light, smoke, runoff, road traffic & hazards, etc. — are a legitimate subject of law and regulation, in which Alice’s and her family’s rights are significant.
“I don’t like Bob’s datacenter next door because it does creepy AI stuff out in the economy” is a very different objection from “I don’t like Bob’s datacenter next door because it’s loud and brightly lit, which disrupts my kids’ sleep, which makes my kids sick, mean, and stupid.”
Yes this. I’m not a legal expert but I think the legal system has figured out better boundaries about what’s “mine” and “yours” (including legit nuisances like what you described) than the naive rhetoric in the article, which boils down to “I don’t like it, so why should I allow it?”
that’s intentional. (It’s of course valid for you not to like it, but I was in fact questioning the need for bystanders to like deals like data center construction. “tone deaf” and “contemptuous” are exactly what it would sound like if someone were making this point.)
I think this kind of thing would’ve been more appropriate in the 2000s or so, when the issue at stake was somewhat less that the powerful people are just going to shove their preferences down everyone’s throat, norms be damned, and there was still more civility going on.
links 8/24/26: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/08-24-2026
https://ameliorate.app/ collaborative discussion tool. i find it maybe a little too feature-heavy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot wild if true
https://roblh.substack.com/p/the-new-artillery-shell-factory-is Rob L’Heureux on how a new artillery shell factory failed: they put in a bunch of new automated lines all at once without testing the machines bit by bit to see if they worked on the metal in question. production went to zero; worker safety was a nightmare. the mandate to go “fast” was imposed by an executive with no manufacturing experience. this is the sort of thing that gives technology a bad name. yes, modernizing nearly century-old military manufacturing facilities is still necessary, and yes, the default way of doing business is slow and sclerotic, but what people outside manufacturing don’t understand is that no machine can be assumed to “just work” upon delivery. new manufacturing processes need to be developed by experiment. new vendors need to be qualified by testing. This isn’t Ikea. developing a new manufacturing process is like developing a new drug (another thing laymen don’t seem to realize is nontrivial, actually… i’m not sure what a truly relatable analogy for a pure finance/sales exec would be!)
https://jasmi.news/p/abdul-el-sayed-on-ai these quotes are kind of infuriating. the guy just thinks, “well, I don’t like AI, I don’t think my constituents like AI, so we won’t allow data centers.”
What’s missing in the discourse is capitalists making the case that it’s none of your business whether you like it or not. It’s between the sellers and buyers (of land, labor, software products, and so on.) You, as a bystander, should not get to shout “stop!” at what people do with their own property, just because you’re worried it’ll change your culture or put your job at risk. You do not even get to demand that people reassure you or sell you on the benefits of a deal. It is None of your Beeswax. It is Not Up To You. It is Not Your Money.
of course, legally, local governments do have the power to make these kinds of decisions, and I suppose they will. Nobody likes being told that stuff they don’t like is going to happen in their neighborhood.
But, frankly, I have to accept noisy neighbors, loud music in public spaces, ugly buildings, crappy movies and TV, and so on, because the basic human rules of interaction are that other people’s business is not up to me, and because my tastes are niche enough and my personality introverted enough that I couldn’t really expect to get my way by being a busybody. If you’re more of a “normie”, I suppose you never learn that lesson! But it is conspicuously unfair. When you don’t like something, you get to ruin it for the people who do; when I don’t like something, it’s my own problem.
we have centuries of legal tradition working out how to adjudicate conflicting preferences, and it doesn’t just boil down to a popularity contest! this is why property exists, so that some things are “mine” and not your place to interfere with, and other things are “yours” and not my place to interfere with!
but to this guy, “most people” don’t like a thing, and the people who do like it are “rich”, and that’s all there is to say.
I don’t understand your comment. If you want to use your property right to build something that’ll hurt a lot of people (like a nuke or an AI), society can override your property right, and that’s ok.
of course, but that is not the concern given in the interview.
“In this case, it’s: we’re going to build a data center. And they’re like, oh, so what’s it going to be? It’s just going to be this drone of a building that makes an odd sound all the time and sucks up all the electricity and could poison my water. Okay, what’s the trade-off? The buildout of an industry that everyone’s telling me — including the CEOs — is going to come for my job. So what is the upside? And you’re like, well, you can ask meaningless questions and queries to your ChatGPT. And people are like: I don’t want that, and it’s not worth it.”
Sounds right to me. People are against AI (for whatever reason) and are locally resisting. The more of this, the better. If this happens everywhere and AI becomes as politically toxic as nuclear power in its time, I’ll celebrate.
the building is loud
and it overuses a communal resource (electricity)
and it pollutes the waters
and it will destroy my livelihood
and it offers nothing in return.
the quote seems very reasonable. how would you prefer these objections be stated? the first three are appropriate reasons to oppose a building project. the fourth is marginal, but with a bit of charity we can see it gesturing at something real.
is your objection just the inclusion of the fifth? i agree it carries an odd implication—that if gpt was more popular, there would be no objection—that this decision is made by status rather than law.
if the building were actually loud, raised electricity prices or caused electricity shortages, or polluted water, that would be a legitimate complaint, but those things are not true.
For example, if Alice has a house in which she and her children sleep, it is not Bob’s place to put up giant lights and noise-making equipment next door, because this would interfere with Alice’s and her family’s use of their property. Even if Bob owns the land next door, Bob’s right to use that land for anything he chooses end at the property line. The rules around effects of Bob’s actions that extend into Alice’s property, or into public space — sound, light, smoke, runoff, road traffic & hazards, etc. — are a legitimate subject of law and regulation, in which Alice’s and her family’s rights are significant.
“I don’t like Bob’s datacenter next door because it does creepy AI stuff out in the economy” is a very different objection from “I don’t like Bob’s datacenter next door because it’s loud and brightly lit, which disrupts my kids’ sleep, which makes my kids sick, mean, and stupid.”
Yes this. I’m not a legal expert but I think the legal system has figured out better boundaries about what’s “mine” and “yours” (including legit nuisances like what you described) than the naive rhetoric in the article, which boils down to “I don’t like it, so why should I allow it?”
I think this is really poorly phrased, and could reasonably be read as tone-deaf and outright contemptuous.
that’s intentional. (It’s of course valid for you not to like it, but I was in fact questioning the need for bystanders to like deals like data center construction. “tone deaf” and “contemptuous” are exactly what it would sound like if someone were making this point.)
I think this kind of thing would’ve been more appropriate in the 2000s or so, when the issue at stake was somewhat less that the powerful people are just going to shove their preferences down everyone’s throat, norms be damned, and there was still more civility going on.
Externalities that other people produce are my business.