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
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.
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.
also declining in countries which are doing well, across all social strata
So when someone says “fucked up world” you imagine not country destroying wars, fascist presidents at the top of biggest countries and threat of a looming world war but how well someone’s economic situation is? Interesting perspective.
Also I don’t think anything I have said provides a simple explanation for declining birth rates. It simply suggests an ordering between AI chatbots and fucked up world as causes of declining birth rates. So your comment doesn’t really apply.
Can you find the wars and election of Trump (for the first time) on these charts? Or anything to back up the view expressed in the original comment?
Can you find any actual analysis which supports the view that the current drop in fertility is generally caused by sentiment about life? No? You’re just going to lob useless comments like “Interesting perspective”? OK.
Yea yea we get it you are so great at thinking outside the box and every other comment made is just ideological populist shit. Grow up and learn to discuss stuff with people.
Amazing, you came up with something worthwhile, though not before you were a snippy little bellend. I’ll still read it though.
Here’s why I read your “ordering” in your original comment (I didn’t see your mention of ordering in your second comment, as that was an edit) as ascribing the majority of the effect to sentiment about life: because you (still) didn’t provide any evidence for that claim, the only way it made sense to me was if what you were actually saying was that sentiment about life was such a major and significant contributor to falling birth rates that we could simply assume it was more important than AI chatbots.
By the way, I find it very interesting that the two studies you were both largely about economic circumstances (4/6 axes in the first study, the entire premise in the second).
Yea yea we get it you are so great at thinking outside the box and every other comment made is just ideological populist shit. Grow up and learn to discuss stuff with people.
You’re just going to lob useless comments like “Interesting perspective”? OK.
Amazing, you came up with something worthwhile
Are you practicing accusations in the mirror technique, I don’t understand. Do you really not realize how aggravating your discussion approach is? Do you really expect someone to see your first comment and go “oh what a lovely reply, let me get into a very interesting discussion with this person”? Are you really that not self-aware?
Your prior entry point to the discussion was claiming that I was somehow trying to prove that sentiment about life is the one and only explanation of declining birthrates. Now that you have admitted that you were wrong in assuming that (I assume you did otherwise there is no point in discussing further because we are discussing something fictitious), lets go back to the crux of the discussion:
I am claiming sentiment about life is a more major contributer to declining birth rates than AI chat bots. And you are asking for proof or evidence of this? If you only accept as valid proof a carefully designed study that compares AI chat bots and sentiment about life for this particular question, I would only laugh at this expectation (mostly because AI chatbot romantic relations are relatively new and this is an original claim about them effecting birth rates so very unlikely for some researcher to have taken up on it yet).
Currently, the only reasonable way one can compare the two is to see if there are any sources that independently claim they are contributers to declining birth rates (or not). I have presented multiple source for the first one (and have read more in the past). For the latter I don’t think we will find any sources, but it is biased by the fact that it is a relatively new concept and people may not have studied it. In such a scenario the only reasonable action then is to default to logic and that is what I did. From my previous readings and my own perspective I think sentiment about life affects birth rates. From reasoning I imagine people get into serious relations with AI chatbots because they want to lead a life in isolation from Earth, they have stuff they feel like are missing from their life (hope for future etc) and they look for comfort in a chatbot that always confirms what you say, bigs you up no matter and presents minimal friction. So for me it makes more sense to view it a side-effect of again sentiment of life rather than an individual causative effect on declining birth rates. If true, this would mean because both declining birth rates and increase in chatbot romantic relations are caused by decreasing sentiment in life they may indeed be correlated but do not cause each other. And hence makes sense why someone who hasn’t thought about it deeply may think it is causative.
You have not contributed one bit to this discussion apart from aggravating the OP (me) and pulling the discussion in completely the wrong direction while trying to present an aura of the superior unbiased debater. lol.
Do you really not realize how aggravating your discussion approach is?
When people respond with that kind of passive-aggressive sniping, I don’t see any reason to have any other kind of approach.
[It’s too early for there to be evidence about AI chatbots’ effects on birth rates]
Yeah, I agree.
I think I’ve said all I wanted to say, don’t have anything to say regarding your speculation on the other factors and, since your reply was sensible (and not snippy) don’t have any motivation to be annoying either.
When people respond with that kind of passive-aggressive sniping
Your very first reply was
so your explanation is very clearly incomplete.
without really trying to make an attempt at a good discussion or trying to really understand what I said. If you tell me that this first reply of your was written in a completely neutral tone with no intent of condescension then we are probably living in alternate realities.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
The existence of condoms and women wanting normal life. Also the cost, time and money involved in creating a competent person.
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.
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.
So when someone says “fucked up world” you imagine not country destroying wars, fascist presidents at the top of biggest countries and threat of a looming world war but how well someone’s economic situation is? Interesting perspective.
Also I don’t think anything I have said provides a simple explanation for declining birth rates. It simply suggests an ordering between AI chatbots and fucked up world as causes of declining birth rates. So your comment doesn’t really apply.
Can you find the wars and election of Trump (for the first time) on these charts? Or anything to back up the view expressed in the original comment?
Can you find any actual analysis which supports the view that the current drop in fertility is generally caused by sentiment about life? No? You’re just going to lob useless comments like “Interesting perspective”? OK.
Their analysis appears to be “because of the feels”.
Have you read their latest comment?
Which?
I meant this one https://piefed.social/post/2230173/comment/12224050
Oh. I kinda stopped caring since omg who cares
Do you understand what an ordering is or what it means when someone says
Does it mean sentiment about life is the only explanation? No
Does it mean sentiment about life is the major explanation? No
It does require to show that sentiment about life does in fact effect fertility rates and here they are:
https://popcouncil.org/insight/societal-pessimism-and-the-transition-to-parenthood-a-future-too-bleak-to-have-children/
https://www.niussp.org/fertility-and-reproduction/future-fears-societal-pessimism-and-fertility-choices/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8924345/
Yea yea we get it you are so great at thinking outside the box and every other comment made is just ideological populist shit. Grow up and learn to discuss stuff with people.
Amazing, you came up with something worthwhile, though not before you were a snippy little bellend. I’ll still read it though.
Here’s why I read your “ordering” in your original comment (I didn’t see your mention of ordering in your second comment, as that was an edit) as ascribing the majority of the effect to sentiment about life: because you (still) didn’t provide any evidence for that claim, the only way it made sense to me was if what you were actually saying was that sentiment about life was such a major and significant contributor to falling birth rates that we could simply assume it was more important than AI chatbots.
By the way, I find it very interesting that the two studies you were both largely about economic circumstances (4/6 axes in the first study, the entire premise in the second).
Interesting perspective you have there.
Are you practicing accusations in the mirror technique, I don’t understand. Do you really not realize how aggravating your discussion approach is? Do you really expect someone to see your first comment and go “oh what a lovely reply, let me get into a very interesting discussion with this person”? Are you really that not self-aware?
Your prior entry point to the discussion was claiming that I was somehow trying to prove that sentiment about life is the one and only explanation of declining birthrates. Now that you have admitted that you were wrong in assuming that (I assume you did otherwise there is no point in discussing further because we are discussing something fictitious), lets go back to the crux of the discussion:
I am claiming sentiment about life is a more major contributer to declining birth rates than AI chat bots. And you are asking for proof or evidence of this? If you only accept as valid proof a carefully designed study that compares AI chat bots and sentiment about life for this particular question, I would only laugh at this expectation (mostly because AI chatbot romantic relations are relatively new and this is an original claim about them effecting birth rates so very unlikely for some researcher to have taken up on it yet).
Currently, the only reasonable way one can compare the two is to see if there are any sources that independently claim they are contributers to declining birth rates (or not). I have presented multiple source for the first one (and have read more in the past). For the latter I don’t think we will find any sources, but it is biased by the fact that it is a relatively new concept and people may not have studied it. In such a scenario the only reasonable action then is to default to logic and that is what I did. From my previous readings and my own perspective I think sentiment about life affects birth rates. From reasoning I imagine people get into serious relations with AI chatbots because they want to lead a life in isolation from Earth, they have stuff they feel like are missing from their life (hope for future etc) and they look for comfort in a chatbot that always confirms what you say, bigs you up no matter and presents minimal friction. So for me it makes more sense to view it a side-effect of again sentiment of life rather than an individual causative effect on declining birth rates. If true, this would mean because both declining birth rates and increase in chatbot romantic relations are caused by decreasing sentiment in life they may indeed be correlated but do not cause each other. And hence makes sense why someone who hasn’t thought about it deeply may think it is causative.
You have not contributed one bit to this discussion apart from aggravating the OP (me) and pulling the discussion in completely the wrong direction while trying to present an aura of the superior unbiased debater. lol.
When people respond with that kind of passive-aggressive sniping, I don’t see any reason to have any other kind of approach.
Yeah, I agree.
I think I’ve said all I wanted to say, don’t have anything to say regarding your speculation on the other factors and, since your reply was sensible (and not snippy) don’t have any motivation to be annoying either.
Your very first reply was
without really trying to make an attempt at a good discussion or trying to really understand what I said. If you tell me that this first reply of your was written in a completely neutral tone with no intent of condescension then we are probably living in alternate realities.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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
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.
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).
I have the answer: https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310
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.
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.