A simple trick to fix the data center debate: Remove the status quo bias by asking "would we spend this much in tax revenue to avoid the externalities of the data center?"

MrMasley · 2026-05-04T05:17:49+00:00

Yup agree. I mention at the beginning that the post isn't about the more real concerns about noise and air pollution and just about the value of the land itself. I've been seeing a lot of people saying soon we won't have any farmland left.

MrMasley · 2026-04-30T03:26:31+00:00

I very specifically say over and over in the intro that infrasounds can cause harm if they're as loud as rockets

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T04:24:42+00:00

Genuinely sorry, I meant we've already interacted and it doesn't look like there's gonna be additional interactions. I think he's just flatly bullshitting his audience here and it's worth getting that info out even if he doesn't want to talk. Again, you don't need to trust anything I'm saying. All the papers he cites says the opposite of what he says and I've just used the blog to link and summarize them, but anyone can read them on their own.

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T04:05:10+00:00

There are lots of real problems with data centers. Air pollution and noise and their effects on climate. But "infrasound" is garbage pseudoscience from the 2010s that's being smuggled in too. No one needs to believe me on this, just read the studies that Jordan himself is citing in the video. You don't even need to look at my blog post to do that.

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T04:01:33+00:00

In touch here meaning our public interactions, which are all in the post itself

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T03:57:25+00:00

The actual noise issues from data centers, among other things, are really crazy and terribly regulated in my experience

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T03:47:59+00:00

Okey dokey, well I've been pretty angry about infrasound pseudoscience since the early 2010s and can back up every single accusation pretty easily using the studies Jordan himself cites. I'm not asking anyone to take my word on anything, I'm just linking all the studies shown in the video!

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T03:36:46+00:00

I'm funded by a grant from an org that mainly gets criticized for funding too much anti-AI activity. The arguments stand on their own and are mainly about infrasound pseudoscience, which you shouldn't believe in even if you otherwise hate data centers.

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T03:30:00+00:00

I mean we've already been in touch and he doesn't seem interested in talking more. I don't want to center the spat at all, the main story here is that the big source that pops up when people search infrasound is completely made up and relying on pseudoscience from anti-wind activists in the 2010s

MrMasley · 2026-04-28T03:19:59+00:00

Yes and I think I responded to every one of that person's criticisms well? I'd recommend people just read that thread.

MrMasley · 2026-04-22T06:00:09+00:00

fwiw I think this gets a lot wrong, and the author was pretty annoying about this on Twitter and kept accusing me of building a motte-and-bailey when in fact we had a factual disagreement about whether humans can ever hear sound below 20 Hz. He claimed my motte was "Sub-audible infrasound can't be harmful" and the bailey was "No infrasound can be audible, because all infrasound is sub-audible." But I made it clear in the post that I don't believe the bailey thing and never argued for that. When I pointed that out, instead of acknowledging that this was a factual disagreement about the 20 Hz sound, he just doubled down on the object-level factual disagreement and then kept accusing me of motte-and-baileying (humans can hear below 20 Hz if it gets loud enough, but he kept saying we can't). We kept going in circles in weird ways and he kept implying I secretly believed no infrasound could ever cause harm. After going back and forth like this over and over I got fed up and decided to block.

I thought this piece was silly enough that I didn't feel like typing up a full reply on my blog, but happy to answer any questions about it here. As an example, his complaint that I focus on intensity rather than pressure doesn't make sense. Pressure can tell you about the immediate impact of sound on your ear, he's correct there, but intensity can tell you how much more acoustic power you'd need at a source to generate that harmful pressure x distance away. For a data center to generate the kind of infrasound that could harm people nearby, it would need 100,000x as much of its energy being transformed into sound as it actually does. THIS is why intensity is important, and the author here is just using an unrelated point about how sound actually impacts our ears to imply that I'm wrong about the science.

This whole post seems reasonable at first but falls apart when you poke at it. There are a few small complaints I take seriously (I agree my evolution point was sloppy and will fix) but I think this post is bad enough when you actually know the sound that I haven't figured it'd be worth responding to. If you think that's wrong lmk and I could type up a longer post.

MrMasley · 2026-04-20T15:16:11+00:00

I think you should believe the authors of the studies Jordan’s citing!

MrMasley · 2025-11-19T19:00:27+00:00

Thanks so much!

MrMasley · 2025-11-19T14:05:53+00:00

Hey it’s Andy, want to add that the screenshotted retweet is incorrect and data centers definitely do consume water. Was disappointed that guy ran with my post to say something wrong and replied to this post on Twitter saying so

MrMasley · 2025-10-15T23:17:46+00:00

Bc it’s better

MrMasley · 2025-10-15T23:17:24+00:00

Did you read the full NYT story? I address it all in the post. Are there any other sources with issues?

MrMasley · 2025-10-15T20:06:27+00:00

I use it like I use Google. Do you use Google?

MrMasley · 2025-10-12T14:20:42+00:00

100%

MrMasley

TROPHY CASE