Thread

Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

466 points · 499 comments · rzk

janalsncm · 1790819453 · focus · HN ↗
In principle this can be a lot better than regular dating apps.
Tinder doesn’t know if they were successful or not. They just know you stopped opening the app. In fact they are incentivized not to make matches that lead to marriage, because then you will stop paying.
The government knows whether you got married and stayed married, and given the social cost of divorce, they are pretty incentivized to keep people married.
1. derangedHorse · 1790822474 · focus · HN ↗
  > given the social cost of divorce
  I think they're more concerned about their fertility rate and labor force. A 0.87 total fertility rate for 2025 [1] is pretty bad.
  [1] <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-12/singapore-low-fertility-rate-existential-challenge/106397470" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-12/singapore-low-fertili...
  1. yutter4 · 1790822990 · focus · HN ↗
    Western governments don't seem at all concerned about this, unfortunately. They no longer represent the people, they represent the economy. And the economy is far more interested in importing millions of unskilled adult migrants from developing countries who are immediately eligible for debt, rent, mortgages, and low-paying jobs to prop up the GDP, rather than a crying baby that will leech on public services for 18 years beforehand. Culture, stability, safety, happiness, long-term prosperity and survival be damned.
    roncesvalles · 1790841657 · focus · HN ↗
    >importing millions of unskilled adult migrants
    There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.
    The "yield" from crying babies is not 100%. Some will die before their productive years, some will succumb to disabilities, addictions, delinquency, or simply choose not to study and work.
    Importing an immigrant cuts away all that "shrinkage", at zero cost to the receiving country (their country of birth bore that cost). It's such a good deal it's a no brainer, basically a tree that grows money. Not to mention it's immediate. Crying babies have a 18-22 year lag time.
    Also, government incentives to have children usually stimulates immigrants and poor people anyway, if your argument is purely ethnoracial. You may as well take the 23-year-old Indian or Algerian dude. There is very little the government can do to make a white couple in Connecticut have babies.
    yutter4 · 1790900138 · focus · HN ↗
    >There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.
    False. We have unknown numbers of illegal immigrants being ushered in by governments every day; rampant fraud by foreigners, especially students, working in unskilled positions for cash or using a friend's ID; and we have many "skilled" migrants with rubbish qualifications that reveal themselves to be a sham the moment they go to work (potentially at great cost or risk to others). Don't tell me we aren't importing unskilled foreigners when almost every Uber and delivery driver I've had for the last 15 years has been an Indian.
    Absolutely no actual Westerner is making the arguments that you have, by the way. You have revealed yourself as a foreigner trying to subvert our way of life. We don't care about a baby's "lag time", we love our children and couldn't care less if economic metrics don't. We certainly don't believe we "may as well" take in millions of Indians or Algerians to meet arbitrary economic goals rather than maintaining a harmonious and prosperous homeland for our White children. You cannot put a price on that.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790906994 · focus · HN ↗
    > Don't tell me we aren't importing unskilled foreigners when almost every Uber and delivery driver I've had for the last 15 years has been an Indian.
    Indian people are the richest ethnic group in the US.
    Maybe your anecdotes and perceptions aren't the sum total of reality
    yutter4 · 1790909506 · focus · HN ↗
    How is that related to my observation?
    aprilthird2021 · 1790932486 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you think unskilled foreigners have become the wealthiest group in the US bc Ubering and gas stations pay a ton of money? Or are your anecdotes just not representative of the country as a whole. Most of the economy and skilled labor is done by people you never meet or interact with
    yutter4 · 1790953681 · focus · HN ↗
    Why are you implying that the two are mutually exclusive though? It can be true that Indians are relatively wealthy as a group in the West and also that there are a staggering number of Indian drivers in taxi and delivery roles. I've seen it with my own eyes, I don't think there's any number of tech CEOs you can list that would make me believe that this unrelated phenomenon isn't real.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790955662 · focus · HN ↗
    But the median income is higher than any other ethnic group. Like I said, who you see is a small crazy tiny fraction of who is actually making the economy productive. Every time you say "I seen it with my own eyes" it's further proof you don't understand the economy or how society works. Most stats we have show people what they don't see: ultimately immigrants to this country are economically productive and we choose skilled immigrants with high median wages who make a brighter future for any next generation.
    yutter4 · 1790986621 · focus · HN ↗
    Who cares? I don't understand how this is relevant to the discussion.
    Even if we grant that Indian doctors and CEOs and other high earners are a net positive, what does that have to do with the reality that we have a huge number of foreigners (especially Indians) working menial jobs that require only basic qualifications at best. Drivers, hospitality, retail, etc.
    Are you implying that we can't filter these beforehand, so we must accept a random young Indian man without any way of knowing if he is a nuclear physicist or a 60 IQ dropout?
    We do not appear to be choosing skilled immigrants. We've just opened the floodgates to foreigners, many of whom clearly (and occasionally offensively) have no desirable skills nor willingness or capacity to cooperate in a clean and safe White society with long-term outlooks.
    aprilthird2021 · 1791019386 · focus · HN ↗
    It's relevant because it's proof that we are selecting skilled foreign immigrants. That is the only way they would have the highest median income in the US.
    You saw some drivers, retail workers, etc. who are Indian and you assume it's massive and huge amounts of such people when in reality they are a small fraction of the Indian immigrants in the US (as stats prove). They can be the brothers or other family members of such people as our immigration system let's skilled immigrants bring over certain family members as an incentive to attract them.
    If you can accept statistics, you'll see your perception is wrong. If you can't then who can help you see reality? The sky can be purple if you want to live that way then

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.