Japan is trying to exterminate what is left of its population · 12:31pm Jan 23rd, 2017
That is the only reasonable explanation for this.
Many years ago, John B. Calhoun ran a series of experiments on mice. He built a series of self-contained environments. He would add in enough food for all the mice, to make sure that they didn't starve. It started out with eight mice - four males and four females - and after a year and a half, the population had reached 2,200.
It didn't take long after that point for it to hit 0.
You see, after the mice reached a certain state of crowdedness, they started showing strange behavior. Females showed less and less interest in their offspring. Violence became common and random, while other mice retreated into isolated corners of the environment, where they did nothing but eat, groom themselves, and sleep. The mice in the common areas eventually died off, but so did the ones in the isolated areas, who stopped reproducing altogether.
While the mice which fell into violent anarchy dying off is not particularly surprising, the ones who isolated themselves dying out because they simply stopped reproducing was perhaps scarier - the former, at least, makes sense. The latter is just strange.
Calhoun dubbed these mice "The Beautiful Ones".
Sometimes, I worry that I'm one of them.
But when I see stuff like this, I worry that a lot of other people are.
Though at least I can take some comfort in not being tempted by such things. Maybe there's hope for me yet.
I want one.
All it needs is to come with a body pillow and yup, goodbye large number of bloodlines.
Wow.... I could have easily become one of the The Beautiful Ones if not for discovering how much I enjoy reproduction.
That said as much as i'd want one my wife would kill me if i got one.
It’s just a form of palliative care for societal alienation.
I made one ~19 years ago, though it wasn’t anywhere as advanced, for obvious reasons. It is the oldest program I wrote that still runs – in emulation, under multiple layers of cruft, but it’s still functional.
Maybe it’s time for a rewrite. :)
4393348
It actually seems somewhat worse than that - asking someone to come home early is not really something which is good for people who need friends to do. Likewise, making people want to come home to it, rather than doing something to deal with their social alienation...
That's what's really dangerous about it, in my eyes.
If it was more about teaching people how to interact socially, I'd be more on board with it.
I have said it before and I will say it again, there is something wrong with the Japanese.
Does it come with Lum?
4393354
Like doing something to make it worth the effort of dealing with social alienation? That’s not something you can build a robot for.
This is some Twilight Zone/Black Mirror shit right here.
4393354 The issue is with Japanese society, especially the parts dealing with work. It's why stuff like dating sims are so popular in the first place, it's not that, for some reason Japanese people just prefer virtual interactions, it's that their lives pretty much leave them no time for anything else. They are expected to work, work, work, devote everything they have to their jobs, many working up to 70 hours a week or more. To the point that "Karoshi" (Literally "Death by Overworking") has become a common, everyday thing over there. With that kind of stress just to hold a job, there is no drive, or no real reason, time, or energy to deal with all the added stress of trying to find a lover, maintaining a relationship with someone you'll barely ever see, have kids who will only know their dad as that guy who comes home late at night and then passes out, but is gone before you wake up.
The issue is not things like this driving them to avoid social interactions, it's the entire mindset of their society leaving them no time or energy for social interactions in the first place, and this trying to fill that void they can't fill in another way. If anything it's trying to avoid killing off more of them, by giving them something to reduce the stress of living like they do.
4393533
Disagree, primarily because the whole salaryman culture went on for a good generation or two before Japan started seeing the types of problems it has today. I think a good argument could be made that this is a result of Japanese youth seeing what their parents went through and not wanting it, and I think there's truth to that---but it's more than that, too. My experience is that a lot of Japanese women have very little interest in most Japanese men, I think in large part because those men lack confidence and persist in a lot of unhealthy beliefs about relationships. Again, I think that connects back a lot to the salaryman culture and its effects on child-rearing. But there's more to it, in my opinion, than just "having to work a lot means people don't want to put in the effort to build a relationship".
Well, the government probably wants people to have more sex, but private amoral companies programmed to increase profit don't care.
This is an extraordinarily well done advertisement, ethics aside.
I believe Asimov had a series that covered this sort of thing, where the human race grew increasingly isolated from each other because robots filled all their needs. Anyway, it's a logical progression on waifus and cat ladies.
One thing I could see them expanding on: some sort of standardized interface that lets game systems tap into it, so that you could "play" alongside/against your gatebox. It would just be the game's AI, of course, but she'd react to what was happening.
4393594 I'd say it is well done at targeting lonely people. For others, it makes having one seem rather pathetic. But they could easily tailor a different personality/angle for those sorts of people, more of a holographic personal assistant focus.
Does Doctor Krieger know about this?
4393801
You might like The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. There's an online text version here..
4393533
4393577
Fun fact: the average American worker actually works more hours per year than the average Japanese worker - 71 hours more per year, in fact (which is almost two 40-hour workweeks per year).
It isn't really how much they work (there are a lot of workaholics in the US, too), it is their entire world of socialization - people are expected to hang out with their coworkers after work and socialize with them, which results in them not going home to spend time with their families. And there's a catch-22 as far as family life goes as well - there's something of a social expectation for women to give up their independent careers to take care of the kids of a guy they hardly ever see (something they understandably don't want to do!), but at the same time, a guy is a loser if he doesn't participate in the standard workforce culture there (and therefore, a lot of women wouldn't want the guys who would actually spend time at home with them).
The Japanese have created a culture which eats itself. Though things are actually getting somewhat better, as the Japanese have realized that they do have a problem.
4393594
Surprisingly, Japan's fertility rate has actually rebounded - from a low of 1.25 a decade or so ago, they're back up to 1.41 per woman, which is actually above Germany (1.38 per woman), let alone South Korea and Singapore (which are something like 1.2).
Things have actually been getting somewhat better there in recent years, though the Japanese are still (understandably) deeply worried about their people and their weird culture of socialization (or the lack thereof).
4394022 Fair enough, the bigger point was that stuff like this, and the prevalence of dating sims, etc... are a result of deeper systemic issues with their society, not the cause of those issues.
As to the rest of the point here, well Scott Adams (Wirter of Dilbert) has said quite often that the holodeck will be the last invention mankind ever makes.
I'd be getting uncanny valley shivers something awful if I bought that thing. Or at least, if it actually manages to be as immersive as they advertise. Otherwise it seems more like a cuter version of Siri for the truly desperate.
I'll stick to my regular pornography, thank you. I mean, sure, this is more immersive, but it seems like a very large amount of effort to put in compared to regular porn. It also seems like a narrow fetish to invest so many development resources in.
4394044
i disagree, because there will always be someone somewhere trying to build a better holodeck because somebody else somewhere else thinks some other other guys holodeck is better than his.
the grass is always greener on the other side of the holoemmiters.
I would not compare Japan's population to mice. That's a little silly in my opinion. Now of course there is an overpopulation problem all over the world, I found https://studymoose.com/free-essays/overpopulation for information on this. Something really needs to be done about it. Look at the population growth in China! Dozens of years from now, I shudder to think what will happen.