Investigators recovered two stolen trailers carrying $1.3 million in data center supplies, including copper wire and infrastructure equipment.
Investigators recovered two stolen trailers carrying $1.3 million in data center supplies, including copper wire and infrastructure equipment.
It’s fascinating how selective people’s moral principles become.
When it’s AI data centers being robbed, suddenly theft is funny, justified, or even worth celebrating. But if the victims were socialist politicians, transgender people, or any other group this community sympathizes with, the reaction would be outrage and demands for justice.
For the record, I have no issue with people supporting socialism or transgender rights. I only use those examples because they’re emotionally charged topics in this community, and they illustrate how quickly people’s standards change depending on who the victim is.
Either theft is wrong regardless of who the victim is, or your moral standard changes depending on whether you like the target. That’s not a principle. It’s favoritism dressed up as ethics.
I see one unethical person robbing another unethical person. It’s the same reason I don’t care when bad things happen to criminals. Transgenders don’t fall into the same category as billionaires.
If a socialist did something unethical I’d root against them too.
You’re absolutely correct. As would I. The fact that someone is a socialist or transgender has no bearing on the content of their character. I was simply using examples of emotionally charged topics on this particular platform.
But theft is theft. Luigi Mangione murdered the CEO of United healthcare. That is not up for debate. Whether Luigi Mangione did something morally correct is an entirely separate and highly contested question.
I will still condemn Luigi Mangione for resorting to violence in the same way that I will condemn people stealing from AI data centers. Theft is theft. Murder is murder.
On a personal level, I couldn’t care less who steals what from a data center. The fewer of these things we have, the better. But my personal opinion does not change the principle. If I’m going to condemn theft when it affects people or causes I support, then I should condemn it when it affects people or causes I dislike as well.
Actually, it is. That’s what the whole, y’know, trial and “innocent until proven guilty” thing is about.
The current defense strategy for Luigi is emotional distress. They are fully admitting that he shot the man.
The question at trial will be. Is he culpable for the crimes.
I don’t know what y’all are talking about. Luigi was bowling with me.
Amazing that your ‘gotcha’ is just two false statements.
Theft isn’t wrong regardless of the victim - it’s nuanced, just like all crime. That’s why we have very complicated legal processes to determine guilt and appropriate punishments.
Our morals don’t change depending on whether we like the target - it’s that our judgments are based on context.
The cool thing about ethics, morals, principles, etc… They’re all made up. We invented them. They have no objectivity (as far as we know) and therefore can and have changed based on our feelings. “Ethics” is just humans agreeing to do things a certain way because it makes us feel good, or doing things the other way makes us feel bad. There is no objective truth to it that you can so easily plug in a problem and get an objective answer.
Or is the world you want to live in just completely binary? No room for nuance?
Wow. That is a lot of words for someone to say they have no clue what they are talking about.
Why is Lemmy like this?
There is no established consensus that subjective morality is correct over objective morality, or vice versa. Both are philosophical positions that have been debated for centuries. Acting as though one side has already been proven correct is not an argument.
The point remains simple: stealing property that does not belong to you is wrong. It does not matter whether the owner is a person, a corporation, a political group, or an organization you dislike. The act itself does not magically become moral because you disagree with the person who owns the property.
The same applies to murder. Killing someone does not stop being murder because the person is considered immoral. If I killed Adolf Hitler before his crimes were committed, it would still be murder unless there was a legitimate justification for doing so. The morality of an action cannot be determined solely by how much we dislike the target.
Are there circumstances where people may feel justified stealing materials from AI data center construction sites? Maybe. Context matters. What does not change is that the law recognizes it as theft, and theft has traditionally been considered immoral because it involves taking something that belongs to someone else through force, coercion, or deception.
The criminal justice system already accounts for circumstances. It recognizes different levels of severity, intent, and harm. That has never been the argument.
The issue is the blatant inconsistency I see on this platform. Some actions are condemned as immoral when they happen to people or organizations that the community supports, while those same actions are suddenly justified when the target is politically unpopular.
You do not get to have a moral framework that changes depending on who benefits from the outcome. If theft is wrong, it is wrong regardless of whether the victim is someone you like or someone you dislike.
There is a reason Lady Justice is blindfolded while holding a balance. Justice is supposed to be applied equally, not based on personal preference, ideology, or who people think deserves it.
I do, though, is the thing. As does all of society. We always have and we always will. And you’re lying to yourself if you think you don’t take advantage of that flexibility yourself.
So in other words… There’s nuance. It’s not just how much we dislike the target, there’s other stuff to consider too. We need
Context 😲
You’re equivocating between two different questions: whether an act is justified and what the act is.
Yes, context matters when determining whether an action is morally or legally justified. Self-defense, necessity, and defense of others are all examples. I have never argued otherwise.
What I’ve been arguing is that context does not redefine the underlying act itself. If someone intentionally takes property without permission, that’s theft. It may be justified theft, just as killing in self-defense is still killing and, in many legal systems, would technically satisfy the actus reus of homicide while being legally excused or justified.
That’s why “a starving person stealing bread” is a classic moral dilemma. It’s compelling precisely because it’s still theft, even if most people agree it’s morally justified.
So when people celebrate the theft of construction materials simply because they dislike AI data centers, they’re making a moral argument, not changing the definition of theft. If they want to say, “I think this theft is justified,” that’s a coherent position. Saying “it’s not theft because I approve of it” is not.
That’s what they did… And then you complained that people were being too flexible with their morals.
You can keep shifting the goalpost now or just accept you didn’t word your OC very well.
I haven’t moved the goalposts.
What are you talking about?
I’ve been very consistent with what I’ve been saying. At no point have I claimed that people are being too flexible with their morals.
I’ve essentially made three points:
Theft is morally wrong, regardless of whether it can be justified in a particular circumstance.
Lemmy is being two-faced in how it applies its moral standards.
Theft is, by definition, wrongdoing.
I’ve repeatedly acknowledged that theft is highly nuanced and that there are situations where it can be morally justified. I’ve said that multiple times. My criticism is that many Lemmy users will admonish people who disagree with their personal opinions, yet turn around and excuse or even celebrate theft whenever it’s directed at something they dislike.
Either theft is theft, or it isn’t. Definitions don’t change based on personal opinion, and neither does the law. Whether an act is morally justified is a separate question from whether it still fits the definition of theft.
Theft is wrong when you’re taking something away from someone who will miss it. Multi-billion dollar corporations will barely notice if their shit gets stolen, so I don’t care if it does.
I’m not asking you to care. What I’m saying is that you’re morally inept by not caring. Either you admonish theft across the board or you don’t. People are stealing from someone else regardless of who they are.
You don’t have to care, you’re just wrong.
I’m okay with not meeting your strict black and white standard of morality. In fact, I find it immoral. “You stole bread because you were starving?? You’re EVIL!!”
We’re not talking about people stealing bread because they’re hungry. We’re talking about people stealing millions of dollars worth of construction materials for personal gain.
Do you really think the thieves stealing those materials from AI data centers are morally justified by their actions?
I’ll even go one step further and fully admit that I don’t have a simple defense for someone stealing food because they’re starving. That situation is morally complicated and can absolutely be debated from a philosophical perspective. But justice is blind for a reason. We can acknowledge the circumstances behind a crime, show compassion toward the person committing it, and still recognize that the act itself is theft.
I’m not sure we can apply that same reasoning to organized theft of millions of dollars in construction materials.
Also, you’re the third person to tell me I’m being “black and white” about this. That criticism doesn’t really apply. I have consistently said that justice exists on a gradient and that different crimes carry different levels of severity. Recognizing that all theft is wrong does not mean I believe all theft deserves identical punishment.
Please don’t argue against a position I haven’t taken.
The reason I used a “stealing because they’re starving” example is that you said there are NO exceptions to the idea that all theft is wrong. I strongly disagree, and further think such inflexible thinking is destructive. While you have said that the punishment should be different depending on the crime, something being a crime is in itself not a reason to believe it’s morally wrong; there are unjust laws everywhere.
You sound well-spoken, yet you’re doing what everyone else is doing. You’re encouraging a set of circumstances that somehow negates the fact that it’s theft.
A starving man stealing bread so he doesn’t starve to death is still committing theft. By the very definition of the word, it is theft. Theft is, in itself, a form of wrongdoing.
Again, I fully agree that we can justify it morally under certain circumstances.
What I don’t understand is where the disconnect is. Do you genuinely disagree that it’s theft?
No, it is breaking a law, which is not necessarily wrongdoing. As I said, there are many unjust laws. Laws are not the arbiter of morality.
Since you said it can be justified morally under certain circumstances, but still consider it wrongdoing, this might just be a case of semantics. Something that is morally justified cannot also be considering wrongdoing to me.
So yes, it is theft. That alone doesn’t tell me whether or not it’s wrong. In this specific case, the data center thefts, I agree it is wrong of them to take items that are not theirs for the purpose of profiting from them. However, they are committing theft against something that itself constantly commits far greater theft by its very nature, not to mention great harm to the economy and environment. So it’s bad things happening to bad people, which I am not going to object to like I would if it happened to someone innocent. There are degrees of wrongness.
The difference is that the data centers aren’t part of the community. They’re invasive, coming in to steal the water and power and spoil the area with heat and noise. The locals have no say or control over them.
Turning a blind eye towards damage done to them is a form of self defense.
I’m sorry, are you talking about me?
Because I never said I supported data centers. I was simply pointing out what I see as the two-faced nature of this community. In this thread, many Lemmy users are openly cheering on thieves stealing supplies from AI data center construction sites, yet those same people will turn around and condemn someone for not sharing their opinions on other issues.
Multiple people have already made assumptions about my beliefs, put words in my mouth, and assigned positions to me that I never argued for in the first place.
And that is another issue I see frequently on Lemmy: people arguing against a position they invented rather than the one someone actually stated.
For example, it often goes something like this:
“You don’t like AI data centers, so you must be some kind of left-wing communist. Why don’t you go eat avocado toast while listening to lo-fi music?”
Except none of that follows from what was actually said. Disagreeing with one thing does not automatically place someone into a political category.
LLMs are built on theft of intellectual property and copyrighted products by capital managers who hoard wealth propped up on stolen wages and exploitation, look in the mirror before you yap on about selective application of morals.
So absolutely none of that has anything to do with people stealing copper from AI data center construction sites.
You can do all the moral finger-pointing you want. The moment you start selectively deciding who is and isn’t a thief is the moment the justice system starts breaking down. You don’t get to decide who can and cannot commit crimes. We already have enough of that in our American political system, considering who our president is.
To address your other point, no copyright infringement has been found to have occurred in the training of flagship AI models. If you’d like to debate that, that’s fine, but I don’t really feel like arguing about it because we’re talking about the morality of theft, which you apparently view as something that exists on a selective gradient. Good for you, sir. Go play Robin Hood in your own neighborhood.
Wealth inequality is one of the worst and most pressing issues in the world today. There is nothing I consider more damaging than the growing wealth gap, especially in America. You’re absolutely right about that. But once again, it has absolutely nothing to do with construction materials being stolen from AI data center construction sites.
It broke down long ago. You care more about copper in a techbro’s plagiarism machine than you do about all the wage theft ever.
No.
You’re stating a position that I never took. I never said I supported AI data centers. My point was about how users on Lemmy are quick to encourage criminal behavior when it targets something they dislike, while condemning the same behavior when it is directed at something they support. That’s called being two-faced.
For the record, I do not support AI data centers. They could all burn down for all I care. If every LLM shut down tomorrow, nothing in my life would change. I consider AI data centers a blight on the environment, and many communities do not want them built in their areas.
I pray to the God I don’t believe in that they don’t build one anywhere near me.
You just handwring about theft from them. But not wage theft.
For one reason.
No. I was talking about the two faced nature of this platform.
I’ve admonished data centers the entire time in this exchange. Don’t tell me what I wrote about. I know what I wrote about.
Wage theft impacts millions of actual humans and you’re whining about the rights you think a corporate owned tool of oppression has instead.
You actually read what I said?
You don’t think AI eliminating vast swaths of jobs and exasperating the wealth inequality that’s starving the economy has anything to do with an increase in poor and desperate people willing to resort to crime to surive? You do realise that data centers and AI are directly dependent, yes? That conclusion is just burying your head in the sand. Let’s not forget who started the moral finger wagging here, pointing to one crime while blinding themselves to another for whatever the irrational reasoning is. Like this particular crime is just happening in a vacuum, and AI isn’t infiltrating every aspect of society by design. What’s it like to be that selective?
“no copyright infringement has been found to have occurred in the training of flagship AI models” I’m just not going to engage with this level of disingenuous assertion, you’re either deluded or you’re a liar.
Okay, I’ll address this briefly.
When a human artist paints a painting and sells it, does the estate of Michelangelo receive royalties because that artist was inspired by his work?
The reason you believe LLM training is copyright infringement is that you fundamentally misunderstand how the technology works. That’s a common theme on this platform among people who oppose AI. Many dislike it because it’s become the popular position, not because they understand how these models actually function.
When an AI generates something, it creates a novel output in response to a prompt. It is producing something new, not copying existing works verbatim. Copyright infringement generally requires copying protected expression, and simply learning patterns from publicly available data is not the same thing.
Moreover, you can’t have it both ways. If information is publicly available, then it is available to be read, analyzed, and learned from. Either it’s public, or it isn’t.
More importantly, none of this was the point of my original comment. I’m only addressing it because you clearly want to discuss AI.
For the record, I am completely opposed to what many companies are doing with AI data centers. I think the current trajectory is environmentally damaging, economically questionable, and, in some cases, a humanitarian concern. I’ve said this repeatedly. You’re free to believe me or not, I can’t prove my sincerity, but that has been my position throughout.
Now, would you like to discuss the actual topic of conversation, the two-faced nature of Lemmy?
You couldn’t pay me enough to waste my brain cells on your disingenuous, fart-sniffing sophistry and bad faith horseshit, so no I don’t think I will, get better please.
Bad faith?
That is an amazing claim coming from somebody who is literally arguing in bad faith.
You already have a predisposition and bias against AI.
You read my comment and immediately thought, “He’s defending AI because he’s calling me out on my bullcrap.” I’m actually not. I’ve been making two points: you don’t know how AI functions, and you don’t know what copyright is.
AI models don’t use their training data to reproduce that training data verbatim. Therefore, the training process itself is not copyright infringement. Using publicly available material to train AI is not illegal, nor is it inherently morally reprehensible.
If companies are stealing data to train their AI, then they are breaking the law and should be punished and prosecuted for it.
I do not support that in any way. I also do not support the construction of massive AI data centers. They’re a blight on society.
You’re upset because I called you out for being stupid. Instead of responding to my arguments, you called me a fart eater and threw around words like “sophistry.”
And then you say I’m the one arguing in bad faith.
What a hypocrite.
You are reacting to masses but attributing caricature as if the masses were individuals. You’re being played by the game. On any story there’s X% of people who are fuming over it, but its not the same people. You’re reacting to the system but treating broad categories as persons. By default, you’re strawmanning, and there’s power to that, but until you grow out of that mindset, you are ruled by the strawmen you create for yourself, or rather, who our cultural engineers create for you.
I am 14 and this is deep.
Do not bring up how deep fourteen year olds are around me. This is not what I need to be thinking about in my new Mormon life.
Omg. Your username!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
This is who I am. I identify as a Mormon Occultist, and so I am. But I don’t identify as an alcoholic, so I’m not. I’m gunna get into stand-up with this bit, I think.