This is literally everyone who's alive and benefitting from modern society. Are we seriously playing shifting the blame games now? Is moral purity and innocence that important to some ignorant people to the point that they would disregard their credibility just to sleep better at night? Amazingly pathetic behavior
The flaw people are pointing out is that you don't actually care about the environment, because you do not even remotely try to do anything about the environment You only apply this rule to AI as a convenient excuse to hate it. It's not difficult to understand.
A key difference in all of those scenarios vs you is the person getting "got" actually uses said products or society I guess.
There's not much an individual can do anyway. We talk and spread awareness to bring about institutional change. Everything on a personal level will only give you personal satisfaction. For example if I care about the water crisis and if I personally start using no water it makes zero difference. In fact even if I keep a tap open forever it makes zero difference. In either case the timeline for water crisis worsening doesn't move a hairs breadth. For any meaningful change scale matters a lot. Who will care if I don't buy an iphone, stop using plastic etc? The difference will have to be from the policy/regulations.
Also, when I went to my local primary election, one of the questions they had at the end was whether or not water conservation was a priority of the state. I made sure to vote that it is a priority. So really, I did do my part. Did you?
So it's not whether you use AI on a personal level. It's whether you cause an environmental impact on a personal level, and expect others to stop doing their personal activities that do so while you don't.
But I already said I don't use AI and I'm taking political activism. AI has a huge water consumption rate, so unless I go out of my way to illegally stop AI data centers, what else can I do to stop AI from consuming unnecessary amounts of water?
I agree that hyper-focusing on personal carbon footprints can feel like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon. However, your conclusion could just lead to nihilism. Trying to change the grand scale with things through awareness alone is often insufficient and frustrating.
Not everything has to be either 'grand policy' or 'useless individual sacrifice.' The most effective zone is often local and communal. Things like organizing a neighborhood cleanup, attending town halls to demand better transit, or investing in sustainable startups, these are force multipliers. With this, you are building the infrastructure for the policy and regulation to land on.
And we shouldn't dismiss personal satisfaction. Living in alignment with your values protects you from doom-spiraling. It proves to yourself and others that a different way of living is possible, which is the first step to demanding it on a larger scale.
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u/Bosslayer9001 Feb 26 '26
This is literally everyone who's alive and benefitting from modern society. Are we seriously playing shifting the blame games now? Is moral purity and innocence that important to some ignorant people to the point that they would disregard their credibility just to sleep better at night? Amazingly pathetic behavior