The causal chain: blocking AI compute costs lives, datacenters don't
flowersslop · x · 2026-08-23
A widely-shared argument: suppose OpenAI or Anthropic cures cancer in 1–3 years — realistic, the author claims, but only with enough compute. Then stopping that compute means people who would have lived will die; whereas even if the datacenter buildout fails, nobody dies from datacenters. The author frames this as the literal causal chain. It's a canonical e/acc-style rebuttal to datacenter environmental/community objections, resting on a heavily contested premise.
Related event: Debate over whether blocking compute costs lives(2 posts)→
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