Out of Pod Experience

UPDATED:

Don't want a girlfriend? This researcher thinks you may be ill. And no, your waifu does not count.

Japan's birth rate is in the pits. People just aren't doing the nasty, at least, not in ways that produce children. As a result, Japan's birth rate is declining rapidly, despite government-run programs designed to teach people to date. If the current trend continues, by 2050 Japan's population will have shrunk 20%, and the elderly will make up 50% of those that remain, presumably leading to some kind of nightmarish, apocalyptic future where gangs of octogenarians stalk the streets of Tokyo on their mobility scooters, hunting teenagers with nets and tridents.

Part of the blame for the lowered birth rate has been laid on the nerdy trifecta of anime, manga and gaming, which several critics have accused of turning virile young men into unhealthy shut-ins, unable to interact with women old-fashioned three dimensional women. Recent comments from Tomonori Morikawa, who studies relationships at Waseda University, seem aimed that particular group.

"If [one] begins thinking, 'I can't get a girlfriend, but that's not big deal,' that is a serious illness," he writes. "One of the symptoms was to erase the gap between one's dreams and one's reality."

"You really want a someone to love. But in reality, you cannot," continued the professor. "However, if you brush that off and use the excuse that you don't want a girlfriend, then you're trying to ease your serious heartbreak."

Symptoms of the disease include



I bring forth to you .
The future of social interaction.

But seriously tho .
Cleverbot

Its a robot that is 59.3% human in the Turing test while the humans in the event achieved just 63.3%.

Considering the progress of computer going going by by serval GFlops per Tick Tock cycle (Intel is already at 7 GFlops with its crummy i7, lets not talk about its Xenon clusters lol) .
Sooner or later , human interaction is pretty much going to be phased out in countries such as Japan.

• First , we completes their minds .

• Then we build their bodies We PERFECT them

• Robotic AIs with plastic muscles and silicon skin overlays .



Finally , we build them to specs of client's requirements .

As someone who has been in and out of the circle back when I still had time , I think I can kinda relate.

Relationships are time sinks (oh the irony of saying that on OOPE)
Kind of like having 20 cats that can't be shut off by rubbing its head the right way , its also a cash sink .

OH SURE , the once in a millennial hump hump snuggles is nice , but then again , is it worth it?

Through other medias , such as KORN and of course in Japan's case . Anime . The same desire for a relationship can be satisfied through imagination while the person can still retain FULL control of the entire exchange.
MUCH less hassle , and much better focus on the work that is at hand while still being able to get rid of the sudden libido spike .
Can't really blame them if I'm honest

Tomonori has always been there , but the links are new tho .

Damn internet taking the credibility away from everyone :P

And then other studies say that its the Japanese women who don't care about boyfriends and marriage. Dating is too much bother, and who wants to be like their mom, married at 25 and spend the rest of your life a housewife? Raising kids, forcing them to do homework and go to cram school, and taking care of a husband who's mostly away at work for 40 years until retirement?
Then there's also the trend of Japanese women watching Korean movies and idolizing Korean actors. Who are more traditional macho-types than Japanese actors. Might be a connection to the dating/marriage slump, or maybe not.

Hear, hear!

This isn't a Japanese problem it is a first world problem.

To sustain a population birth rates must be on average 2 Children for every couple. To increase the population there must more than 3 children from some couples with the rest averaging 2. In a population of 3 Million if 1 million couples have 1 child and 1 million have 2 children then the last million would have to have 3 children to sustain it.

In the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, UK, France, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Norway, Ect, Ect, how many 3+ and 2 child families are there vs 1 child or no child people. I am using couple as a marker not taking into account second marriages / single parents, ect for simplicity reasons but you get the idea.

Why is it more noticeable in Japan, simple, take a look around any Japanese cities and you'll notice something, it is full of mostly Japanese people. When I go into Toronto do you know what I see? A whole lot of not white people. Here is a graph. A lot of European and American cities look similar. Japan is mostly a homogenous society unlike many other 1st world nations.

The richer a community is, it is a fact that less babies are had. Immigrants are filling the gaps and immigrants from poor countries are usually on average more poor in 1st world countries then native citizens and they in turn have or bring more children. Those children are "naturalized" (which is a pretty demeaning term if you ask me) and they have less children.

We have literally OUTSOURCED production of infants. 3rd world baby factories if you will.

Now this is probably sounding racist to some people but that isn't my intention at all. It is not an issue of race but economics. People in a good economy with community roots and the same culture do better on average financially and therefor produce less babies, nothing to do with race at all, just poverty.

Here is the thing, our baby factories like oil are not a sustainable resource because in a world where good idea's spread fast 3rd world nations are moving away from poverty, some quickly, some slowly but they all are. Schools are being built, buildings and roads are constructed, goods imported in trade and countries export raw materials and eventually product when money from export is put into industry and advances in farming feed the world. The number 1# cause of starvation is not food shortage but poor infrastructure and wars that prevent food from getting there.

If the world keeps getting richer and more peaceful the number of children will keep falling and population will start to plummet. What happens then? I'm not worried, humanity isn't going to go extinct. While world population might fall dramatically let's remember we were at 1 billion 200 years ago, in 200 years we will be well above 1 billion still. So what if the world downsizes a bit? It isn't like we're dying in "das camps", we are living very long full lives. Birth incentives, human cloning, social programs, ect will come about easily in the next two or three centuries when this becomes a real problem and not a doomsday prediction on a graph.

Japan drops to 90 million by 2050, I say so what. Economic downsizing now involves people and we will make those numbers level off in time.

Well. it's 'out of fashion' for myself by default and by nature.

I'm married... we went on our first date the next day.

Just like it used to be back before the 50s

You have something against Russians and Asians?