this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/68343929

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[–] MilkGolium@lemmy.zip 2 points 12 hours ago

他们一向把人们当作小孩子来看待。例如血液不能是红色的,在CS2里面要设置成黑色。原因之一是缺乏“分级”,例如哪些内容适合小孩子看,哪些适合成人看。

生育率下降和楼主提到的AI内容几乎没有任何关系,纯粹是年轻人思想和过去不同了,以及手里确实没什么钱,经济状况不好。

信息闭塞的地方可能会认为越穷越应该生孩子,但是中国除了南方地区以外,这个观点并不流行。

They've always treated people like children. For example, blood can't be red; in CS2, it has to be set to black. One reason is the lack of "rating," such as what content is suitable for children and what is suitable for adults.

The declining birth rate has almost nothing to do with the AI content mentioned by the original poster; it's purely because young people's thinking has changed from the past, and they genuinely don't have much money, leading to a poor economic situation.

In places with limited access to information, there might be a belief that the poorer you are, the more children you should have, but this view is not prevalent in China except for the southern regions.

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 54 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Declining birth rates has more to do with the fact that we live in a fucked up world. AI chatbot lovers is also probably a symptom of that. Not surprised goverments barking at the wrong tree though

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 36 points 2 days ago (14 children)

Declining birth rates are multi faceted and no-one has a complete explanation. They're also declining in countries which are doing well, across all social strata but disproportionately along the wealthy, so your explanation is very clearly incomplete.

[–] JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The existence of condoms and women wanting normal life. Also the cost, time and money involved in creating a competent person.

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's the cost. By far the biggest reason. People that don't want kids, don't want kids.

But many people do, but it's simply not financially reasonable.

Childcare, lack of days off and medical expenses are insane.

[–] vanillama@programming.dev 9 points 2 days ago

Part of it yeah, but the emancipation of women seems like a bigger factor, as women with less choices in poor families are more likely to have children despite the insane costs, and it isn't out of malice or misunderstanding either. And other factors are the stress and the general pessimism people have for the future, especially regarding climate change.

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[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

I don't think this tracks.

The countries with the highest fertility rates are some of the poorest, most fucked up, with the worst conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

Evolution of societal norms for all sorts of reasons seems to be a much bigger factor.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's contraceptives. It started dropping as soon as they became widely available, starting in the West, and never stopped. (The norms around family rearing certainly changed as well, in response)

People really like sex. Kids get a more mixed reception.

[–] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Contraceptives and easy access to them are definitely a big part of it. The largest factor in birth rates is access to education for women. Higher levels of schooling lead to delayed marriage, later childbearing, and fewer total children.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/

https://wol.iza.org/articles/female-education-and-its-impact-on-fertility/long

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Yep, and that's probably through better access to and knowledge of contraception and other kinds of family planning. In really patriarchal societies men don't have to worry as much about the difficulty of raising a high number children. Or giving birth to them.

You can find anecdotes supporting that causation, although there's no hard data that I'm aware of.

[–] metallic_z3r0@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago

I think it's because we've "solved boredom". Sometimes with heavy, hectic, stressful events that come one after the other, sometimes with passive media, or algorithmically generated media, or doomscrolling: shows, clips, or posts designed to engage or entertain, other times with little clicker, distraction-style games; all of it seems to just drain every last drop of dopamine anyone can muster until there's no room for anyone to have volition of their own. It tends to put a damper on the amount of time and energy one has for more longer meaningful interactions, and you end up almost, but not quite, completely content to microdose human interaction with single-serving friends by making comments on posts like this one (or the various parasocial interactions with internet micro-celebrities, or much worse, hallucinating a meaningful conversation with a statistically probable paragraph generator like the ones in the post).

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah I am aware of this fact too. The effect of sentiments about life and economic level are I think interleaved in someways. Sentiments about life might have a bigger effect when you are in a certain economically comfortable zone that you can really start to think about how the future of the world will effect your life. In fucked up places, people just live day to day and are in survival mode. I believe I have once read something that goes along the lines of "poorer demographics generally have tendency to make more children because they think that more children is the most sure way to secure their near future for when they get older". Another possibility is that in a certain comfortable economic zone you have more time and opportunity to receive knowledge about what is going on in the world at large and therefore get psychologically affected by it more. In survival mode you don't have much other chance than really just thinking about day to day businesses.

[–] unglueclass23@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In fucked up places, people just live day to day and are in survival mode. I believe I have once read something that goes along the lines of “poorer demographics generally have tendency to make more children because they think that more children is the most sure way to secure their near future for when they get older”

I think it's simpler than that. Nothing to do when you're poor and overworked so you just fuck. Oh, and less caring about the consequences.

[–] FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Aside from birthrates... maybe not such a bad idea. Go out and learn how to talk to actual people and whatnot.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Have you seen people? No thanks.

Thing is, having people grow accustomed to the idea of romantic ai bots has very negative implications.

AI on it's own is already problematic, every clanker is a yes clanker, the erosion of common knowledge and perception, the polution,.... But with romance/erotica involved it's probably not too far fetched that there will be people who grow up into the idea that panties should drop just because you said hi. That's how we get incels and rapists.

[–] UninterestingVoid@reddthat.com 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 2 points 21 hours ago

You're telling me you wouldn't date mechahitler if given the chance? /s

[–] cosmos8188@leminal.space 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not really as simple as that, especially since the corporations and governments botch everything everywhere. There are of course other factors.

[–] FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Did you mean to post this comment somewhere else? Not trying to be insulting but it just feels a little out of context.

[–] vanillama@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

They probably meant that they don't trust governments to implement policy like this well enough, but not sure.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

No you heard him, Uncle Sam is a cockblocking bastard!

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 73 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 66 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 50 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think Bender would be rather proud of the label, honestly

[–] omniman@anarchist.nexus 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No 3d gf , no ai gf just hentai hentai hentai

Hentai is verboten Japanese Westernized cultural cancer, true cumrades would use 卡通漫画

Which means "sexy cartoon"

(I made that all up and copy and pasted the characters from the Internet so if it's wrong I don't care)

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 35 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I love how they think these losers would be getting laid if it wasn't for the chatbot.

[–] StillAlive@piefed.world 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hey don't lump us losers with those cogsuckers.

[–] Mutelogic@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago

"Cogsuckers"!! Thanks for expanding my vocabulary!

no, most of them wouldn't. many of these people are Leftover Men, who have little to no chance of finding a partner if they're heterosexual. just a problem that comes from living in a country that had a one-child policy and a preference for sons.

I know it's comforting and easy to wrap yourself in ignorance and scorn, but perhaps in the future, you could find it within yourself to have a little empathy for a whole generation living in a soul crushing late stage capitalist economy who feel hopeless that they will ever get to have a family of their own.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 20 points 2 days ago

Are they also going to go back in time to stop people aborting girl foetuses so there aren’t more men than women?

[–] db2@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

So China got their overpopulation under control in order for it to make sense to worry about declining birth rates?

[–] Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 1 points 22 hours ago

Yeah, looks like it

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The prospects for China are not looking particularly good. Decades of a one-child policy seems to have helped normalize one child per couple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

China has a fertility rate of 1.02 children per woman.
For comparison, in the US that rate is 1.62 children per woman and in Germany 1.46.

A "healthy" fertility rate, where the population remains more or less stable (not accounting for immigration), is roughly at 2.1 children per woman.

The West is going to have issues with their low birthrates, but the looming Chinese demographics crisis is looking to be much worse than what the West is going to be dealing with.

[–] AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I swear the next global superpower will be determined by whatever country has the least problems.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If I had to date in China I'd be dating an AI bot too. It's still being mostly social status and matchmaker driven - it feels like 20th century. It's so sad.

That being said romantic AI chatbots are cancerous and while I'm very liberal here I do feel like as society we should look down on this. Maybe it's just a phase?

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