>It's stupid because they have multiplied a couple anecdotes, conflated decreased reproductive output and formalized relationships with a decrease in actual sex

>It's stupid because they have multiplied a couple anecdotes, conflated decreased reproductive output and formalized relationships with a decrease in actual sex, and gotten all breathless and hyperbolic about it. This doesn't fit the article: > A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way. So A: the person asking the questions isn't a reporter, B: they aren't British, and C: they have every reason to figure out a way to get people to answer the questions honestly, i.e., not "cultural misunderstanding" where someone at a party lies about how much sex they have. What your argument really boils down to is: "no measurement, real or otherwise, could ever possibly indicate that Japanese people are having less sex": i.e. your post is unfalsifiable, and your claim thusly ludicrous. >There may well be ongoing generational changes to reproductive and marriage/relationship behavior in Japan [...] but this article doesn't go there. Did you read it? >Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like". So we can correctly interpret your post: what precisely is "going there", if not this? The article is also based on the opinions of two people who have been claiming to study Japanese sexual behavior: the therapist Ai Aoyama and the sociologist Nicholas Eberstadt. Certainly the opinion of two "experts" is not a conclusive analysis of a situation, but this is a pretty ordinary way of sourcing information for a news article. It isn't particularly "stupid" for this. Which is why statements like this: >There's no evidence of any trend that young people in Japan have stopped having sex. make you look dishonest in light of this: http://www.ipss.go.jp/site-ad/index_english/nfs14/Nfs14_Singles_Eng.pdf http://www.ipss.go.jp/site-ad/index_english/nfs14/Nfs14_Sing... http://www.durex.com/en-jp/sexualwellbeingsurvey/documents/gss2005result.pdf http://www.durex.com/en-jp/sexualwellbeingsurvey/documents/g... http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20110906ad.html http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20110906ad.html You can dispute the strength of the evidence, but it isn't "no evidence".