Japan had been trying to pull off this trick for years. There’s an easier solution. It’s called immigration, but Japan has been ruled by conservatives who refuse to see a difference between nationality and ethnicity. There are a lot of nurses from developing countries that would be a lot more effective than a can of Pepper.
Japan also has a problem much like exists elsewhere, that older voters are the ones who vote most, so their interests and views get disproportionately represented in election results. I’m sure that’s only exaggerated in a country that’s so lopsided in its age distribution as Japan is. I also wouldn’t be surprised at all if it were to turn out that elderly voters tended to be more xenophobic and resistant to changes in immigration policy.
Japan really needs to get it sorted out soon, though, as they are desperately in need of work in all sorts of fields, but moving there is such a massive pain that it really doesn’t seem worth it unless you live in a developing country where you can go to Japan, do a few years of work and go back with enough money to buy yourself a home. Like, I looked into it for a laugh a month or two ago, and I actually have work experience that would qualify me for a visa as a skilled worker, but there’s no way I would consider going. You could only use it for a maximum of 5 years, it cannot be renewed, as far as I could tell, it also cannot be reapplied for, and it’s ineligible to serve in any capacity for establishing residency. You also cannot bring your family with you. That’s a pretty hard sell for all but the most desperate of people to uproot their lives for, even before you get into Japan’s famously terrible work culture.
I do understand a certain reluctance towards migration that doesn’t result in cultural assimilation to a fair extent, especially considering how big of an export Japan’s cultural products are, but xenophobic reactions to any possibility of change are going to back Japan into a corner where they have to pick between collapsing as a society, or just opening the floodgates to immigration in a way that will leave them way more susceptible to the sort of massive cultural shift that so many Japanese voters seem to fear. In my layman’s opinion, they would do far better to go about massive work culture reform and allow much more immigration with an immense amount of support for people learning the language and culture, and assistance in integrating into the community. It’ll probably be painful for all involved, but the result of kicking this can down the road perpetually will be far more painful, and they’ll have nobody to blame but themselves.
Their voting system is somehow the worst of both worlds. It’s FPTP for rural seats, but proportional for inner city seats. So conservatives end up sweeping the rural seats, and also steal seats from inner city seats that would have gone to progressives if they have an FPTP system across the whole country.
I remember going to see a high-tech nursing home, where they had video conferencing with doctors and remote sensors for falls and things like that. That was in about 2000 or 2001. Yes, they are still talking about it.
What’s the vacuuming function like
People who need care, because they have nobody anymore. Robots looking after them instead of humans. A dark kind of future.
Most of these robots are backed by humans working remotely
I bet they are already planning to eliminate them at some point.
Why’s that dark? It’s a free future. The young don’t have to clean up after their elders anymore.
Personal human contact is still an important thing to have for one’s mental health and wellbeing at any age, and that includes the elderly and the young interacting with each other You’d think that was an important societal lesson the isolated Covid years should have taught us. Do you not think that making robots do all the work of caring for the elderly at least gives off vibes of the young just tossing out the old? A robot can never provide the personal touch of care that a human can. When I get old the last thing I would want would be just to be sent to some “home” with my only contact being with machines and computers.
- You are assuming that the current medical scene won’t improve. It is very likely that we’ll eliminate the “old person lying in bed, dying” visual altogether due advancements in the medical field (especially accelerated further by development in AI)
- The “human touch” is not impossible to replicate for machines. You aren’t seeing machines capable of that right now, because the field of personal care robots are in their absolute infancy. “The human touch” at the end of the day, is just warm, soft skin paired with a caring voice. We have already replicated the caring voice.
- Elder care robots won’t be cold, metal bodies going “Boop boop, shit in bed defected, Boop boop engaging cleanup procedure…”. They would be really kind voices, soft hands with an experience of more than a thousand years of handling thousands of patients. They would never become impatient, they would never feel bad or disgusted.
Of course, advancements in this tech won’t stop humans from caring for the elderly. You can still care for ur grandpa. However, ur grandpa won’t die if u don’t.
Here’s the best case scenario - you can be with ur grandpa, chat, play video games, do fun stuff. When it’s time to change the diaper, a professional robot trained for this very purpose does the job.
"The human touch” at the end of the day, is just warm, soft skin paired with a caring voice. We have already replicated the caring voice.
Spoken like someone who plans to marry a sexbot.
Haha I don’t think I would need to do that just yet. But now that you said it, perhaps a sexbot might have very interesting use cases for threesomes, eh?
I take it you’re not planning on becoming a domiciliary nurse?