Thread

Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

466 points · 499 comments · rzk

purplepatrick · 1790817358 · focus · HN ↗
Cute. Of course, beyond basic deal breakers, neither do people know their preferences (but they think they do), nor do the majority of preference categories actually matter.
This is a common problem with all dating apps. Specifically, interests, hobbies, daily routines, objectives, etc. have nothing to do with compatibility.
“We like the same things!” is the compatibility signal of a naive 22-yr old…
1. alexey-salmin · 1790832058 · focus · HN ↗
  > “We like the same things!” is the compatibility signal of a naive 22-yr old…
  What signals do you suggest? Regardless of whether it's feasible to put them in the dating app.
  1. morkalork · 1790832364 · focus · HN ↗
    The OkCupid guys figured out that it was (potential) that best predicted stable relationships and everything else was just a proxy for that feature. Similar/compatible education level? Just a proxy for income. Similar/compatible hobbies? Guess what, also a proxy for income!
    hgomersall · 1790835242 · focus · HN ↗
    Or income is a proxy for, say, intelligence.
    aleph_minus_one · 1790855082 · focus · HN ↗
    > Or income is a proxy for, say, intelligence.
    It clearly isn't.
    In Germany, there is a reason why the term "akademisches Prekariat" (academic precariat/precarity) exists, meaning that people who stay in academia are often in a precarious job situation and are paid quite badly. But these people are very intelligent and well-educated.
    alexey-salmin · 1790856271 · focus · HN ↗
    It is, if you define intelligence as "how to do well in life" and not as "here are 5 ways how Germany could have won the war in 1943".
    aleph_minus_one · 1790856612 · focus · HN ↗
    > It is, if you define intelligence as "how to do well in life"
    "Intelligence" is a term that is defined very precisely in psychology (psychometrics):
    > <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
    alexey-salmin · 1790856954 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't really contradict what I said. This definition of intelligence can be useful in some contexts, but on average neither women nor capital are particularly attracted to people who have it
    aleph_minus_one · 1790860447 · focus · HN ↗
    > This definition of intelligence can be useful in some contexts, but on average neither women nor capital are particularly attracted to people who have it[.]
    This is actually a reformulation of the point that I made in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920421">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920421 that income is not a proxy for intelligence. :-)
    hgomersall · 1790859939 · focus · HN ↗
    Was my point really that hard to follow? I'm not saying "intelligence" in the strict psychological definition of the word. I mean, perhaps, the thing they claim was the independent variable was in fact a proxy for something else I hypothecated as "intelligence", by which I really meant some as yet undefined thing that on average leads to higher incomes, which could be intelligence in the colloquial sense, because that sort of has that trait and is pretty influential in attractiveness.
    aleph_minus_one · 1790860577 · focus · HN ↗
    > really meant some as yet undefined thing that on average leads to higher incomes, which could be intelligence in the colloquial sense
    What you are looking for is "dark triad traits", i.e.
    - machiavellianism,
    - (sub-clinical) narcissism, and
    - (sub-clinical) psychopathy.
    > <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
    These are quite correlated to higher incomes and higher-status jobs.
    californical · 1790838835 · focus · HN ↗
    As somebody who met my spouse on there, I can confirm that their algorithm was amazing back in the day.
    Though it definitely wasn’t income proxies as the only criteria, it probably was a decent part..
    I also met a couple other people that I had good relationships with on that site. All in the 90%+ range of their compatibility scores. There weren’t many people in those tiers for me though. Any time a 90% match appeared was a big deal, there were only ever a few!
    Anyone I met in the 80% range was usually also pretty great
    Go much below their 80% match score and meeting in person didn’t usually go so well.
    aleph_minus_one · 1790854781 · focus · HN ↗
    > Similar/compatible education level? Just a proxy for income.
    This clearly does not hold in Germany. There, you often can earn much more money with a vocational training than with a humanities degree, in particular in the current messed up job market.
    On the other hand, people with different education levels often have very different psychometric traits (similarity here is very important for the relationship to work).
    > Similar/compatible hobbies? Guess what, also a proxy for income!
    There do exist some hobbies that are somewhat correlated to social classes (think of who plays soccer/tennis/golf (replace "soccer" by a different sport if you live in the USA)), even though these associations are much less pronounced than in former days.
    On the other hand, for example, a person who loves sports climbing or parachuting will likely have very different psychometric traits from people who are into stamp collecting.
    Thus, in many cases, hobbies are thus rather a proxy for some psychometric traits.

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