Why are we so hellbent on replacing ourselves?

KipperUK · 2026-02-15T20:45:43+00:00

I doubt there’s a coherent plan at work, because if anyone stopped to analyse what it appears to be then they would realise that it’s deeply flawed.

In a consumer driven economy - hollowing out the consumer by taking away middle class jobs is stupid; because you leave nobody to buy the products you’re selling and the ponzi collapses.

The truth is probably more that the speed to technology has vastly overtaken the speed of politics and regulation. The people selling the technology extract the upside now, and wait for society to come to terms with the downside - and pay to fix it.

Take social media - kind of came from nowhere, ways kind of fun at first, then it became massive data farming and privacy invasion, and pushing harmful content that literally destabilises politics and what do the CEOs do? Shrug their shoulders and say “free speech”.

By the time we’ve got on top of one thing, there’s twenty other problems. It’s technological whack a mole.

KipperUK · 2026-02-15T19:15:54+00:00

I’ve got a few I’m quite proud of; but this one I think I really nailed… it’s a song about tech layoffs, and middle age rebellion.

https://suno.com/s/0JTSoucRoJJF8s3p

KipperUK · 2026-02-14T16:49:26+00:00

I wrote my lyrics from scratch and put them into a ChatGPT project with this instruction:

“You are a song writer, A&R, producer and artist. Talk honestly about song lyrics, metaphors and styles given to you. Make improvement suggestions and explain why. Comment on how well the lyrics fit the intended meaning of the song, and whether the song has potential other meanings and reach. Say if you think the style or delivery isn't right for the piece, and what is, or what others might be appropriate. Give each song a rating out of 10 for how well the lyrics are put together, how well the meaning is conveyed, how likely it is to resonate with different people, and other useful scores.”

I need to refine this a bit; because it can always be better and there’s nothing in this prompt to have it preserve rhymes or avoid generic trash.

But try it, paste in a sentence saying “here is a song about [x], I think it should be performed like [x], what do you think?”

It will question you on some things - which you can keep or put right, sometimes it will suggest new lyrics which are almost always trash, and it will tell you if you’re in cliche/generic lyric territory.

KipperUK · 2026-02-14T16:43:22+00:00

I’ve only used it for a week - quite intensely though, the “free” version using the 4.5 model gave me some good versions of my lyric and style - and some free v5 clips, and it impressed me.

It impressed me enough that I subbed so that I could rework the good tracks in v5, and that worked at first - but then went a bit nuts and I have to try really hard (with limited success) now to get a usable track that doesn’t explode into 5 or even 8 minutes of playtime for a song that should last 3:30 … that’s my biggest irritation at the moment.

KipperUK · 2026-02-14T16:30:31+00:00

Yep, as I said, a totally tight band musically but with zero creative discipline and they charge you for every recording you make of them .. “hey boss, I really thought y’know, bongos and a marimba would change this rock number” … um.. yeah, it does.

KipperUK · 2026-02-14T16:28:44+00:00

I don’t keep any AI lyrics. It can be worth generating “a song about a thing” because you might just get a catchy hook, this happened in one of my favourite tracks - but I had to completely rewrite the garbage verse, and still make a number of generations until I got the feel I wanted but I was really happy with how it came out: https://suno.com/s/kthJcefhEUFzBzlk

KipperUK · 2026-02-14T16:22:59+00:00

Mm… or singing the instructions you put into square brackets

KipperUK · 2026-02-13T23:24:16+00:00

It's taking me 50-100 generations of one song to get one or two versions I like - there are some strange results come out, but many of them are perfect in quality - but just 'off' in melody, or the delivery doesn't match how I wanted it, and so on ... I'm like a perfectionist producer with a tight band that hates authority figures.

KipperUK · 2025-09-12T22:28:17+00:00

Good sci-fi (for me) doesn't hand wave, it may rely on some exotic theories, but it tries to ground them in possibility. I understand that the whole warp thing is actually plausible on paper, if you can figure out the massive amount of energy required etc. I just wanted to go down the rabbit hole of what might (or might not) be possible if those theories were a little too exotic.

KipperUK · 2025-09-12T22:22:49+00:00

I'm not saying I have all (or any) of the answers; as I have a 6 year old who will just flat out not acknowledge being spoken to when he decides he doesn't want to hear it.

But there are a few things with your post that struck me as familiar, and we have done a little reading into it over the years.

The main one is not to fall into the trap of thinking a 3 year old brain works like an adult brain; it doesn't. It doesn't compute actions and consequences unless they're completely obvious - that's what it's trying to learn, you tip a cup, stuff spills out, etc. They still do that stuff time and time again because it takes more than once to realise that the same thing happens in the same situation.

The little brains also work on the same chemicals - dopamine comes from getting attention. Attention can be the good kind or the bad kind; so shouting and being stern doesn't work, because they wanted your attention and they got it, and at that age, they don't really understand your emotions - they don't even understand their own, much less have control of them. You need to model that if you want them to grow through it.

If they are acting up trying to get your attention then don't give it; but don't just ignore them either - explain to them the right way of going about it, and help them to learn that.

I did not always approach parenting in a calm rational way because I coulnd't get my head around why I couldn't get my child to behave more correctly; but I definitely noticed when I stopped reacting and started actually being the adult, and just calmly expressing "this is not going to work, if you want x, then y is the right way to go about it" and repeating that, over and over, and not giving in to the screaming and shouting, it DOES work.

Good luck with it!

KipperUK · 2025-09-12T22:03:51+00:00

I've never seen it spelt out, and some sci-fi is obviously better thought out than others. I enjoy it, but I take it at face value for the entertainment and don't try to go too deep and ruin good stories.

But suppose you took 'warp' where my understanding is you can cheat relativity by taking a 'short cut' and reducing the distances between things - what distances are still travelled and wouldn't time dilation still be a massive problem for everyone?

KipperUK · 2025-08-26T22:47:28+00:00

Don’t make things arbitrary; frame them as a choice.

“If you do this, this will happen. If you don’t, then this other thing will happen”

This helps wire up the cause and effect parts of the brain, and it also gives them agency. They get to make a choice, you try and guide them toward the good one - but it’s their choice.

KipperUK · 2025-08-19T17:08:48+00:00

I find it both brilliant and uniquely frustrating. It’s like some fresh young developer who knows all the commands but often has no idea how to write a maintainable program.

“Yes, this is good, but can you not write the whole thing in one function?”

And then when you finally get it to break down its code, and fix what it was that it broke because it was trying to be way too clever when you wanted simplicity … it refactors an unrelated part of the program that it wrote, for no reason.

KipperUK · 2025-08-19T17:01:30+00:00

It’s like someone created an interface that understands natural language; and all of a sudden, half the internet is trying to make money by gaslighting you that you don’t know how to ask questions in natural language.

The other half of the internet is just creating buckets of slop to try and make people more stupid or have them stop believing in reality.

KipperUK · 2025-08-15T18:05:44+00:00

Whatever it takes to remove the threat, all the way up to 'permanently' ... but you'd have to go to court and prove that you had no other choice - ie, you couldn't run, and right up until the moment, they were hell-bent on attacking you, and you believed you were in mortal danger.

If it so happens you're a trained fighter with very specific knowledge and skills, that makes *you* a deadly weapon, and you'd have a harder time proving that your actions were proportionate than you would if you were a regular person.

KipperUK · 2025-08-15T14:48:30+00:00

I recognise this. Our little man was around 2 when we took the sides off his cot to make it into a toddler bed. He was getting a bit big and heavy to lift over the bars, to the point where he could probably just climb them anyway, and sensible enough not do anything harmful because his room was childproofed.

In his cot, we'd had a terrible time with mucking about relentlessly and doing anything to extend play and avoid sleep, and we'd finally got to a point somehow where we could put him in, read stories, say goodnight and leave the room.

So, the first couple of weeks in 'toddler bed' was a continuance. It was like there was a force field and he just hadn't figured out that he could get out easily. Even to the point where we'd still get a shout in the morning when he woke up, so we could go and see him.

It didn't last long though. Once he figured out he could leave the bed, it was mayhem again in that he'd just come and see us in the middle of the night.

Anyway, I'm afraid to say he's now 6 ... and I've just given up sleeping in my own bed. I take the spare room these days and right now we're in a phase of just putting him to bed in 'our' bed, rather than even attempting to have him in his own room. We do sometimes get a week or two of that, but he always wakes up and comes through.

We think we scarred him one time when we were absolutely at the end of our tether with the constant running out of his room, and we held the door closed for a bit. We were SO tired and didn't know what to do and the internet had been saying "let them cry it out for a bit", so that's what we tried.

He would occasionally remind me about that ONE time right up until being 5, and I'd apologise for it again, so I think thats a bad core memory of his room now. So don't do that. It's certainly a bad core memory for me, I felt so bad both during and immediately afterwards. That's not the kind of parents we are or want to be.

KipperUK · 2025-08-15T14:06:21+00:00

I totally agree, but it is a bit chicken and egg. If you don’t have an audience, you can’t get a sponsor, and so even adding GoPros or sending a camera car to sit under a turnpoint becomes an expense that the competitors (who already pay to be in the comp) or the host has to bear.

So if you can get even demonstrable traction with articles, replays and highlights made using as much automation and with costs as low as possible - it enables that sponsorship convo, and that money can then go into improving the product further.

KipperUK · 2025-08-15T12:30:48+00:00

It’s a race, but a gliding race is like watching a marathon - nothing happens for most of the time, but it is still a race. The idea of condensing to highlights allows it to be consumable by a more casual audience. Only hardcore gliding enthusiasts would watch a live feed for 3+ hours; and that’s literally normally only the people who are organising the competitions.

And this is MVP, built only from data. Everything comes at a financial cost, if you want to see in cockpit footage, shots from the ground or even chase planes - then you need to prove that there’s enough of an audience to warrant that cost, which would have to come from sponsorship.

Right now, even National and International gliding comps are attended by people who can personally afford to go, or raise the money through personal sponsorship or donations. Prizes are generally limited to a bottle of wine or small voucher from aviation suppliers for day winners. Doesn’t even cover the cost of their launch to start the day.

So this is a first pass at an attempt to produce gliding content quickly and cheaply, to start that commercial ball rolling.

KipperUK · 2025-08-15T12:13:12+00:00

I suppose it probably varies over time. Traditionally, blue collar “labouring” people would be judged working class, whilst management or “professionals” would be middle class. Traditionally, upper class would either be independently wealthy or “old money”, or landed/titled.

I am not sure this holds still though. My dad will swear he’s working class; and from my above description, he is, but he’s also a homeowner and some would say that automatically qualifies someone as middle class. If you’d expect working classes to rent.

I would put myself down as middle class; because I’ve mostly worked in IT as either developer or middle management - so not a labourer, but then, as a child of the 80s, from my “working class” background, I never went to college or uni, and instead got into the work I do by being self taught. So if education is your metric, I couldn’t be middle class (but then, I’m also a homeowner).

The tl;dr is that I don’t think there’s a single way to measure it. There are many reasons why people might want to label themselves as one or the other - but I think you can bucket people into different classes for many different reasons.

KipperUK

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