Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm (twitter.com)
211 pointsby rzk16 hours ago149 comments
purplepatrick 36 minutes ago
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…
615341652341 29 minutes ago
Yeah but they now have all those interests, hobbies, daily routines, objectives, etc. tied to an email address once they forward that information on.
rayiner 19 minutes ago
This is why matchmakers are actually a good idea. You need experienced grownups who understand what kinds of people are compatible.
abeppu 3 hours ago
So on the one hand it's nice to see when a cool algorithm or framework is used IRL.
On the other hand, actually applying a 'stable marriage algorithm' to people makes a bunch of assumptions which are worth interrogating:
- Do people actually know what they want even in the short term?
- Do people's preference change meaningfully over longer periods of time?
- Does your preference _upon reading people's profiles_ have any strong relationship to your preference after spending any amount of time with them?
The property that right after being matched, no one could have matched with someone whose profile they preferred more does not mean that this will create stable relationships.
qprofyeh 3 hours ago
The match is whoever wants to start on the journey with the user, at that moment, and the algorithm is there to give the potential couple a better starting point. I guess at any rate that’s better than leaving it to hope and chance.
justonceokay 2 hours ago
Least they are using an algorithm that has the intended purpose of matching people. For profit dating apps are more interested in keeping you coming back then they are in creating successful relationships
missedthecue 2 hours ago
This is an extremely common sentiment I see online - that there is some conspiracy to keep people single to reduce subscription churn. I have run two dating apps (my own apps, not working for a company), and what I found through trial and error was that no matter how many levers you pull and tweaks you make, a lot of it is simply user-behavior problems, not a tech or product design problem. There is no reliable way for a dating app to only serve users non-committal matches for example. The reason someone's matches aren't committal is because they don't want to commit.
The thought experiment I usually pose is to ask what you think a free, open source, and community supported dating app would change. The answer is "not much".
rationalist 2 hours ago
I am interested in creating my own dating app/website, but the problem I foresee is getting users - a Catch 22 problem.
I would like to create a service that opperated like OkCupid used to before they sold out. Visible compatibility percentages and being able to search profiles. No curation/algorithms or swiping.
I'm interested in helping people, not taking their money.
missedthecue an hour ago
Getting users to dating apps is probably easier than you think. Because men will go to where the women are so you only need to work on attracting female sign ups. It's actually that simple. The best way to launch is with a waitlist of warm users in 1 large city. I've seen a lot of people pining for the 2010-era OkCupid so you probably would have plenty of people willing to give it a try.
computably an hour ago
> There is no reliable way for a dating app to only serve users non-committal matches for example
While that certainly sounds difficult, it sounds feasible for e.g. Facebook.
> The thought experiment I usually pose is to ask what you think a free, open source, and community supported dating app would change. The answer is "not much".
That sounds more like a framing problem. If the ultimate goal is promoting long-lasting new romantic relationships, and it's developed without any profit motive, I'd imagine a general social network that primarily organizes in-person social gatherings.
missedthecue an hour ago
Facebook has a dating app and it's completely free. There are no subscriptions or paywalled features. It works about as good as all the other ones.
jmilloy an hour ago
My take is that it isn't about serving non-committal matches and withholding promising matches or whatever, it has more to do with whether you feel like there are better matches on the app if you just keep lookin or waiting. I can see how and app using the stable matching algorithm could really make you feel like you're getting the best match you're going to get, which I think could have a real impact on commitment.
missedthecue an hour ago
"it has more to do with whether you feel like there are better matches on the app if you just keep lookin or waiting."
Yes, the FOMOism in dating app user psychology is extremely real, but this isn't a product problem, it's a human psychology problem. In theory, you could make an app with, say, a lifetime number of swipes to prevent infinite FOMOism, but it would fail to be a viable product model because the #1 thing that I found users wanted -- more than everything else -- was optionality. And if you don't offer it, they'll go to someone who does.
Hinge actually already uses Gale-Shapley and it doesn't seem to be producing meaningfully improved outcomes.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2021/09/30/hinge-and-its-...
LelouBil 5 minutes ago
[delayed]
nostrademons an hour ago
Note that it's possible for dating problems to be user behavior problems in a way that is suits the profit motive of dating sites, without any conscious intent from anyone in the ecosystem.
Model a world where everybody's self-perception of their mating value is just a little bit higher than their actual value - in other words, one not too far off from reality. Some segment of this population will drop their standards in the face of repeated rejection, and then eventually find a partner because of this. Their "lowered standards" become an accurate self-perception of reality. But some segment of the population will be unwilling to do this. They have a problem - they cannot find a partner no matter how hard they look.
A problem creates a market. People who can't find a partner turn to dating apps to find a partner - some may pay, and a lot more will click on ads. There's a decent chance that dating app management isn't consciously optimizing for failure in dating and success in clicking on ads. However, all the apps that are good at finding partners for their customers find that their customers disappear, while the apps that are good at getting people to click on ads generate huge amounts of revenue and take over the market. Which is entirely composed of people who don't actually want to find a partner, anyway, because those people who care more about the outcome of finding a partner will usually drop their standards enough to find one.
The same dynamic applies in many other markets. Evolution and selection bias > intent and intelligent design. The market ends up composed of people who can't achieve the ostensible purpose of the market, largely through their own actions, because people who can drop out of the market. Happy people often go through life with very few transactions: they might change jobs a couple times early in their career before finding a boss and job they're happy with and staying there until retirement, or they date around a little and then find a partner they marry for life, or they might rent a couple apartments before buying a house, renovating once, and then staying in it for 40 years. The transactions are overwhelmingly composed of people who are dissatisfied, because that's why they're buying things.
pdntspa 41 minutes ago
I don't know... mid 2010's pre-match.com OkCupid and PlentyOfFish seem to get a lot of love. Not saying they didn't have problems but they did actually match a lot of happy couples and online dating didn't feel like nearly as much of a wasteland as it does today
godwinson__4-8 24 minutes ago
You ran not one, but two, dating apps that were your own apps, and were not part of a company?
Which apps were these? What were your user metrics?
Seems somewhat suspect to extrapolate from your personal experience to what the large dating apps are allegedly doing if you are not approaching their scale. You've mentioned your personal experience as some kind of authority a few times now in this discussion, why not name the two apps directly? Apologies if I missed it but I don't see where you gave any indication that this appeal to authority is credible.
2muchcoffeeman 2 hours ago
Gale-Shapely provides the best possible stable outcome for the proposing side.
You’re never going to match with people who aren’t actively looking.
You’re only ever going to match with the people who are looking at the same time as you.
Your criticisms are true of real life without apps. That’s why we have this thing called “divorce”.
Comments like these always seem to miss the point. They aren’t trying to solve marriage. They are trying to create social lubricants to get young people more interested in dating. This algorithm tries to ensure that at the very least your core values at the time match up.
drfloyd51 2 hours ago
I don’t think you are legally bound to marry. And if it stops working, divorce before resentment.
missedthecue 2 hours ago
the stated vs revealed preference problem is very big when it comes to dating, and it's made worse that a lot of people have confusion and even shame about what their preferences actually are. And a lot of preferences are mimetic, which means demand for certain things is always outstripping supply. So it's really not even worth it to figure out someone's preferences if there is literally no one out there to pair them to.
The productive question would be to figure out how far outside someone's preferences they can go while still settling happily.
miki123211 2 hours ago
I think what you should be doing as a dating app — much more so if a government one — is some kind of RL based on length of actual marriage.
At least, you should have some algorithm estimating marriage length / likelihood of divorce based on your (non-app) statistics, and then use that as one factor for your in-app calculations.
pinkmuffinere 32 minutes ago
Just to call out, you're implicitly assuming that strictly lower divorce rates is the correct end-goal. This may not be what you really want, eg you might find many abusive pairings where the weaker partner is too scared to leave. In the style of "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" [1], I'll claim that the optimal amount of divorce is non-zero.
[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
qihqi 2 hours ago
Depending on the which gender does the initiation; the result is either male optimal (males get the best he can get, females gets the worst among those she would tolerate) or female optimal. I wonder which version this one is.
jb1991 2 hours ago
The article also mentioned that, but I don’t understand it. Receivers are also making choices, so why do they end up with the worst match?
jezzamon 2 hours ago
You have to accept the best offer you get, if there's someone that you would like, you only match with them if all their better options are exhausted.
2muchcoffeeman 2 hours ago
Imagine you are the proposer. You will start at the top of your list and work your way down only if rejected. So you are guaranteed to the best you could possibly do.
Imagine A ranks X,Y,Z in that order B ranks Y,X,Z in that order C ranks X,Y,Z
X, Y, Z rank A,B,C in that order.
A will propose to X and match. B will propose to Y and match. C will propose to X and get rejected. C will propose to Y and get rejected. C will propose to Z and match.
Y will never get a proposal from A. Z will never get a proposal from A or B.
Edit: I think I fixed it.
jb1991 2 hours ago
Why will B propose to X first if their first choice is Y?
2muchcoffeeman an hour ago
You’re absolutely right. I’m on my phone trying to imagine the scenarios in my head and trying to find the simplest possible example.
Maybe 4 participants is too few to clearly see what happens.
computably an hour ago
(A,X),(B,Y) as the proposals is fine for the point being made. The issue is if we reverse which group is the proposer, we still end up with the same matching, because (A,X) strictly prefer each other.
The minimal example with 4 participants is if each person P has unique preferences and P's 1st choice has P as 2nd choice. So in this case just flip X:
A:XY B:YX X:BA Y:AB
If A,B propose you get AX,BY. If X,Y propose you get BX,AY. Both are stable because the proposers are getting their first choice.
jb1991 35 minutes ago
I find this algorithm to have a curious definition of the word "stable."
computably 39 minutes ago
I left another comment with the minimal example, but intuitively:
- proposers descend from their 1st choice, while recipients ascend according to their offers; the outcome can't be recipient-biased, because recipients ascend only when proposers are forced to descend
- a matching is stable if each pair contains at least one party that cannot find a strictly better match
- in particular there are multiple distinct matchings, and if proposer-biased, recipients have no recourse to break the proposer-favored pairs
lalaithion 2 hours ago
they could just swap the direction for each matching
dotcoma 2 hours ago
Is it necessarily so?
And doesn't something of the same kind happen in real-life, in some societies or countries or cities male-optimal and in others female-optimal ?
loeg 22 minutes ago
It is necessarily so if you're using Gale-Shapley for heterosexual matching, yes.
pinkmuffinere 25 minutes ago
I know there's a cold-start problem for adding a new competitor to dating apps, but I wish one would show up. Maybe I'm naive, but I think I would like this. To be fair, I think Hinge is already pretty good. Not sure why it feels so much better than Tinder.
missedthecue 2 hours ago
Begging economists and dating app designers to understand that the problems with the dating market are not a matching problem but a clearing problem. It's very tempting to think that if one could devise a sufficiently clever algorithm they could solve these problems but it's simply barking up the wrong tree.
jfengel 2 hours ago
What's a clearing problem? (A quick Google did not turn up an answer.)
kylecazar an hour ago
I think they meant post-match personal incompatibilities exist that can't be accounted for in even the most thorough profile
missedthecue an hour ago
It's tempting to think of the problems of a dating market as a matching problem because men and women are almost equal in numbers so we just have to match them all up. A clearing problem occurs in markets, (even markets with ~equal supply and demand) when the reserve price of the transaction is not met. For example, the reason I don't own a Ferrari isn't because there isn't 1 Ferrari out there for sale, it's because I don't have enough cash to clear the transaction. Building a more powerful car sales website won't fix this problem. The reserve price is not met.
The dating market is similarly full of people who would like to clear transactions (economist speak for form a relationship), yet cannot because they do not meet the reserve price of those they want to date.
I hope my Ferrari analogy helps to illustrate the core concept, but you have realize that dating markets are even tougher than car markets, because dating is a barter market. For a transaction to clear, there needs to be a double coincidence of wants -- you can't simply use a medium of exchange like dollars to cut the transaction in half. Imagine if to buy a Ferrari you had to find a seller who also happened to need $350k worth of Linux sysadmin work done.
s1artibartfast an hour ago
This seems to raise the question of why there is a clearing problem.
Is it fair to say a clearing problem is a missmatch of expectations?
It seems to me that people are simultaneously becoming more specific and demanding, while simultaneously seeking risk aversion and comfort
loeg 17 minutes ago
Well, also the dating market is illiquid, with high transaction costs and incomplete information.
dotcoma 2 hours ago
So why, in your opinion, do people not finalise the deal?
missedthecue 2 hours ago
They do not want to.
More specifically, they would rather be single than pair with any of the options that are realistically available to them. Hence, the market fails to clear.
dotcoma an hour ago
I agree. I sure hope their government will not step in at that point and offer too many incentives to get married and disincentives to stay single, but I would not rule out this is exactly part of the plan...
porphyra 2 hours ago
too kiasu
joegibbs an hour ago
Perhaps then the government could spend money producing propaganda to convince people to lower their standards. Maybe they could fund TV shows about unattractive people with no money having a good time together - I think China is doing something similar.
mlboss an hour ago
There is a very simple solution to the problem. Just add a tax to single people and childless couples or reverse give huge tax break to married and couple with kids.
In past the motive for marriage was sex and companionship which was frowned in society if out of wedlock. Now it is not frowned upon. The old constraint is gone and we need to add new constraints if we want to solve the problem.
yieldcrv an hour ago
thats already the status quo in the US and it isn’t curbing a decline in marriage
missedthecue 43 minutes ago
A very funny but evidence backed policy would be free GLP-1s for women. A recent study showed GLP-1 use resulted in a 29 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a woman finding a relationship. A woman converting to conservative Protestantism for comparison results in a 2.7 percentage point increase.
Der_Einzige 32 minutes ago
GLP-1's are so good for society we should be giving it out for free on every street corner.
dannyw 26 minutes ago
GLP-1s, while being pretty miraculous as a whole, do come with risks like every other drug. There’s plenty of 1 in 10k or 100k side effects.
Kurtzerkag has a good video about it: https://youtu.be/TYhNHX372ek?si=5ESz3ykXykyUcmYg
loeg 20 minutes ago
1 in 100k risks (0.001%) aren't an argument against something that would benefit double digit percentages of the population.
nojs 36 minutes ago
Singapore already does this! There are huge housing and tax incentives.
lucb1e 12 minutes ago
One of the best things you can do on this planet is not asking it to support another person, at least not with a comfortable lifestyle which I'm sure we'd all want. Why'd you try to soft-force people to have more children?!
As a secondary problem, people (traditionally women, but with a two-income household it could be either party) often already can't leave a relationship because they can't support themselves and their child(ren) without the other half and so they're stuck in relationships that might either not work for them or that are downright abusive. With a big tax on leaving your partner... oof, why in the world would you want more lock-in?! Is this a manosphere thing that I'm not aware of?
croes 10 minutes ago
That’s how you get loveless marriages and kids whose purpose is being a tax break.
Good wages, enough free time, affordable housing, free child care, universal healthcare.
That’s the better way.
There plenty of people who want to marry and get kids but they don’t have enough time and money.
ValentineC 2 hours ago
The pilot targeting only government workers reminds me a lot of Lee Kuan Yew's various eugenics policies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#In_Singapore
It certainly doesn't help that the app conveniently targets those between 21 to 35 years of age, which is just before advanced maternal age (also the age where single Singaporeans qualify for public housing).
jojobas an hour ago
Positive eugenics never stopped and there's nothing wrong about it. Also there's nothing wrong with the government promoting the creation of stable families with children born before DS risk exceeds 1/100.
s1artibartfast 41 minutes ago
I mean, it sucks if you're a taxpayer over 35 that wants to use the service, especially considering that DS is easy to screen for using modern tests of a mother's blood and Singapore has a reasonable abortion policy
jojobas 16 minutes ago
Well that's not really different from any other age-limited policy where the govt sees the biggest bang for the buck, like state-funded uni under 35, dental for kids etc.
Der_Einzige 30 minutes ago
"6 feet, 6 figures, 6 inches" is Eugenics too. The modern Affluent White Female Urban Liberal (AWFUL) is a massive Eugenicist, even if and especially if they loudly proclaim that they are not.
laybak 4 hours ago
the Singaporean government is often described as having a "parental" approach. I guess this move would be on brand
chaostheory 3 hours ago
Before Xi, Singapore is what China aspired to become. Totally onbrand
doctorpangloss 3 hours ago
Makes little sense.
China is a cultural and diaspora behemoth. Completely apples to oranges comparison.
What about countries similar to Singapore's size and wealth? An interesting thing to look at: how many US electeds are Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong or Taiwan 1st-generation heritage or born? I like this number because you cannot fake it (unlike so many things, like statistics reported by countries that are not free), you cannot buy an election or run a PR campaign to pretend you had a successful election, and it measures a real notion of power (something the CCP aspires to have): Singapore 0, China 9, Taiwan 11, Hong Kong 4, Israel 7.
Anyway I don't really buy into this line of thinking but it is interesting to me to look at a place that isn't really free, like Singapore, and figure out how it affects me.
chaostheory 3 hours ago
"In 1992, Deng exhorted CCP cadres to “learn from the world, especially from Singapore”, touching off a “Singapore fever” in PRC political and academic circles."
https://jamestown.org/fortnight-end-singapore-model/
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/607615/summary
https://www.thinkchina.sg/politics/construction-singapore-mo...
https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/china-and-its-mentor-...
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/singapores-success-cont...
https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/12/the-odd-couple-singapor...
vovavili 3 hours ago
It's also known as being one of the very few countries actually capable of using state capacity to overcome serious social and economic problems. Godspeed.
oatmeal1 3 hours ago
It's basically a benevolent dictatorship due to one party being in charge for the last 67 years.
PorciiVorbesc 3 hours ago
Sometimes a benevolent dictatorship is better than a perverted and corrupt democracy. Democracy isn't the perfect be-all and end-all form of governance that will work well for everyone, a fact even ancient greeks recognized. Letting the masses decide the future of a country just because they're the majority is like letting the passengers fly the plane because they outnumber the crew.
While many countries in the west have a two or multi party system due to historical reasons, on certain issues they often just function as controlled opposition, making your vote worthless anyway, with political battles between parties now being mostly and ideological circus to keep the unwashed masses distracted and divided while they get robbed blind, rather than focused on actually fixing things for the working class.
If Singapore can skip this expensive time consuming circus and just get shit done, then good for them, but I don't want our western leaders to take the wrong lesson and move us to a dictatorship as the promised solution to fix things, which is what I feel they're trying.
missedthecue 2 hours ago
Benevolent dictatorship is probably always the best form of government. I would even say a benevolent dictatorship is superior to a functioning democracy. The main (and unsolvable) issue is that there is no reliable mechanism to ensure they are and that they stay benevolent.
vovavili 3 hours ago
Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him.
outside1234 2 hours ago
The Singaporean president gets paid USD$2M a year.
baggy_trough an hour ago
Well worth it so far.
bijowo1676 2 hours ago
Singapore is the case when you can just rely on your government to do its job and they will do the job properly!!!!
Can't remember when it was last time you could rely on western government to do the right thing
jb1991 2 hours ago
Not just one party, but one family.
motionlessveloc an hour ago
The current prime minister is unrelated to the Lee family, and none of the third generation Lees seem particularly interested in politics.
jb1991 24 minutes ago
Sounds like a step in the right direction, then.
Der_Einzige 29 minutes ago
Hardly benevolent. I'll take every social problem America has 10x to avoid being an extremely boring "utopia" like Singapore.
It's literally the antithesis of "cool", whatever your definition. The most square people on earth.
Barrin92 2 hours ago
the kind of issues that Singapore has been fairly effective at, getting people to speak the same tongue or not spitting on the street, what you could put into a bucket of 'public discipline' measures I think is over-romanticized.
The country has been effective at it but so was Prussia or England. Singapore has increasingly complex social issues you aren't going to solve with a cane, and government organized marriage likely will go as well as government cheese
vovavili 2 hours ago
It has achieved the highest global GDP per capita is just a couple dozen of years, starting as a small bit of swamp forcibly kicked out Malaysia. I think it's unfair to say that people are over-romanticizing these sorts of accomplishments.
motionlessveloc an hour ago
Starting out at the second richest city in Asia after Shanghai, you mean.
The PAP likes its "fishing village in a swamp" trope, and post-war Singapore certainly had its share of problems, but it was already a wealthy trading entrepot long before Lee Kuan Yew came along.
jb1991 2 hours ago
It's also known as being one of the very few first-world countries actually without basic freedoms, like free speech, freedom of the press, etc.
JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago
> basic freedoms, like free speech, freedom of the press, etc.
How is that going for us in the west?
Like, I believe in these rights. But I also think we should be open to questioning them when we’ve got anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers finding popular purchase among an increasingly and proudly illiterate population.
jb1991 2 hours ago
The net effect is ultimately positive. Societies are healthier in many ways when people are free to speak their mind.
jb1991 2 hours ago
Humans are messy but long-term nothing good has ever come from repression.
alex43578 2 hours ago
The stupidity of some shouldn't be an argument against the rights of everyone.
jacquesm 21 minutes ago
Until the stupid are in the majority and start curbing your rights. That's one of the main problems with freedom of speech and with democracy as well: they both contain the seeds of their own undoing.
broodbucket 2 hours ago
Australia doesn't have those either, despite many people assuming we do (including most people who live here).
Der_Einzige 27 minutes ago
Australia, New Zealand, and the UK are all competing with each other on who can be the most authoritarian anglo nation. "Oi, you got a loicense for that opinion M8?"
rahimnathwani 36 minutes ago
UK?
France?
Germany?
jb1991 32 minutes ago
France has a constitutional right to free speech since at least the 18th century, not sure what you mean. There is a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is still part of France's constitution. France is also bound by the EU Convention on Human Rights. Why would you compare France to Singapore in this regard? That's strange.
rahimnathwani 21 minutes ago
Google any of these terms to see examples of people who were actually fined for speech in France, after 1950, and well after the 18th century:
- Hervé Eon Sarkozy fine
- Éric Zemmour 3000 fine
- bardot degenerates 20000
- Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly fine
None of these were threats or incitement to violence. Just insults.
And you talk about a constitutional right to free speech since the 18th century, but mocking Catholicism could be prosecuted until 1881 (i.e. in the 19th century).
blater an hour ago
Correct - this isn't new, it's how it works there. Single new grads in the 80's & 90's were being offered government funded beach holidays on graduation where they were paired with selected dating partners.
abhchand 2 hours ago
This is tangential but I wrote a Go utility a while back to implement this stable matching algorithm
https://github.com/abhchand/stable-matching
It’s an effective yet simple algorithm. Also widely used in North America to match medical students with their residency of choice.
aurareturn an hour ago
Maybe part of the solution for any country dealing with low marriage rate is to ban all private dating apps and only government issued apps are allowed.
Private ones will always prioritize profit which means they want you to keep using the app which means they don’t want you to find a partner.
Modern dating apps makes it so that an average woman will have unlimited choices but the average man will have next to none. Before dating apps, they could have been a good match. But with dating apps, the woman has unlimited higher value men. How could these average women marry an average man if she’s being taken on dates constantly by top 5% men?
The problem is that these higher value men will not commit because they also have unlimited options.
Even if she marries an average man later in life, she will feel resentment towards him. Therefore, these women just choose to stay single. This is especially viable now because women often are more educated and have good income.
Now we can see why young men are increasingly becoming far right and longing for far more conservative world.
Modern dating apps are just manifesting natural instincts on steroids. I don’t blame either party. Just an observation.
rationalist an hour ago
Especially since populations are potentially in decline with fertility rates below replacement rates. It seems like an existential problem for the government if they want future taxpayers.
fluidcruft an hour ago
Governments shouldn't "want" anything. If people want more taxpayers, so be it.
tomrod an hour ago
While technically correct for Western-aligned nations, not all governments are for the people and by the people.
kylehotchkiss an hour ago
o__O my url bar doesn’t currently say Reddit? This argument feels red pilled and not curious nor productive. Women have plenty of valid frustrations with the dating pool. I don’t live in SF but the last woman whom I talked to there told me many of y’all just have mattresses on the floor and like no bed frame. There are places to improve fellas
Yeah, dating apps are problematic. No, nobody here is going to fix that with another stupid app. But I think a lot of these “meet with a group of strangers at dinner” biz concepts are cool and gonna try some soon.
aurareturn 31 minutes ago
It’s just reality when all the internet virtue signaling is turned off.
I’m not blaming anyone. I think all parties are behaving as they should.
throw0101c 4 hours ago
Stable marriage algorithm or stable matching algorithm?
> In mathematics, economics, and computer science, the Gale–Shapley algorithm (also known as the deferred acceptance algorithm,[1] propose-and-reject algorithm,[2] or Boston Pool algorithm[1]) is an algorithm for finding a solution to the stable matching problem.
thaumasiotes 3 hours ago
It is in fact known as the stable marriage algorithm. It's not known as the stable matching algorithm.
loeg 23 minutes ago
Yeah, so, who are the proposers and who are the receivers?
storywatch 10 hours ago
I wonder if it's made by the same people behind
The project was partially started by some students/scholars from there.
beeforpork 12 hours ago
Nice! But is there an app with this algorithm/strategy/design for finding good matches for casually having fun together? All the apps I know suck.
PorciiVorbesc 11 hours ago
> finding good matches for casually having fun together?
Basically all dating apps are optimized for enabling casual hookups at this point.
>All the apps I know suck.
Do ALL the apps suck, or are you maybe not appealing enough for being picked for casual hookups by the users on the app?
nextaccountic 10 hours ago
The app has an incentive to suck unless you pay
whatshisface 4 hours ago
Go recheck your calculations, you'll notice something about their incentive in the case where you pay.
missedthecue 2 hours ago
No, it doesn't. Because the value of a dating app is in its size. The bigger you are and the more options you can provide users, the better the experience is for everyone - paying and nonpaying customer alike. Given that most users of any dating app will be non-paid, making them miserable causes the largest portion of your users to leave, making the app a little worse and less competitive for everyone. Those paying and those not paying.
Further, customer psychology doesn't tend to reward paying to improve a bad experience. Users are more like to pay to upgrade an already good experience.
There is a very common idea that there is some conspiracy on dating apps to prevent coupling up as some strategy to reduce subscription churn, but it really just isn't true. The market is plenty large enough. Millions of relationships end every day. Millions of people turn 18 every day and enter the (online) dating world. The cold hard truth is that almost every complaint about the online dating experience is a complaint about human behavior, not about something remediable with better product design.
Source: I used to build and run dating apps.
rrr_oh_man 4 hours ago
> Do ALL the apps suck, or are you maybe not appealing enough for being picked for casual hookups by the users on the app?
Dunno, @beeforpork sounds hawt
pamcake 2 hours ago
Think more platonic hanging out. Hiking, game night, grabbing a drink.
Joakal 11 hours ago
meetup and other related apps have always been best for finding people with related interests.
If they don't have your interests, feel free to start a new group?
TFNA 4 hours ago
Meetup got enshittified years ago already, and the changes drove away the small communities that once made up so much of the site; the only groups which prosper on it now are mainly large for-profit ventures.
In places where there is a healthy ecosystem of casual, non-rapacious meetups, that is overwhelmingly organized via Facebook, not Meetup.
exhilaration 4 hours ago
Thank you, I just learned a new word.
Rapacious
ADJECTIVE
1 given to seizing for plunder or the satisfaction of greed.
2 inordinately greedy; predatory; extortionate.
a rapacious disposition.
grasping, voracious,
Synonyms:
ravenous
Antonyms: generous
3 (of animals) subsisting by the capture of living prey; predacious.
rrr_oh_man 4 hours ago
FYI, Meetup got acquired by Bending Spoons and it seems it's being de-enshittified.
bluebarbet 3 hours ago
>Meetup got enshittified years ago already
Citation needed. Not my experience at all. And it has the major benefit of being independent of the tech giants, who already know too much about your social graph.
derektank 3 hours ago
Why would you need a pairwise matching algorithm for finding friends? Friends are generally not exclusive nor rivalrous
waldrews 3 hours ago
It's about prioritizing candidates for the costly initial audition, and breaking symmetry for the introduction, something particularly useful for people who can't just approach other at random in a social setting.
notpushkin 3 hours ago
This could work for that purpose in a pinch. You do actually get other matches afterwards, you just don’t get an infinite feed of other candidates and can focus on having great time with the one you’ve got.
djoldman 4 hours ago
Link to the website: https://firstdate.sandbox.gov.sg/
motionlessveloc 2 hours ago
A reminder that Singapore has plenty of history with government-sponsored dating, notably the Social Development Unit (SDU), aka "Single, Desperate and Ugly".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Development_Network
Created appropriately enough in 1984, it had explicitly eugenicist goals (discussed at length in Wikipedia), since Lee Kuan Yew was quite worried about the Idiocracy scenario where the lower classes out-procreate top talent and lead to societal decline.
dnautics 3 hours ago
Which side do they screw over (the choosers get their worst possible match and the bidders get their best possible match)
edoceo 2 hours ago
Anyone tried this algo to match co-founders?
jojobas an hour ago
This assumes everyone puts their preferences and dealbreakers faithfully and not so as to score best/most chicks. I wonder what comes out of this.
bakugo an hour ago
Trying to fix falling birth rates with an official government dating app shows they don't understand the problem in the slightest, as dating apps are one of the main causes of declining birth rates in the first place.
pydry 4 hours ago
this is their third attempt at a government run dating service I think :/
it's low key kind of funny how they keep reaching for the quick fix to their collapsed birth rates instead of changing the things that would cost real money or make them less desirable to foreign investors.
fragmede 3 hours ago
What would you do if you were the Singaporean government?
irjustin 3 hours ago
Bigger HDBs
vuurmot 2 hours ago
Japan is doing it well
Crash the economy and reduce people's purchasing power
Make them poor, and the birth rate will rise (Japan birth rate is rising) =)
aw4rzs 3 hours ago
What things could Singapore change to fix their birth rates? Empirically, nothing that any country is trying is working.
PorciiVorbesc 3 hours ago
>nothing that any country is trying is working.
Because most countries aren't actually trying anything nor can the government do much in that regard when the issues are cultural and emotional.
The low-birthrate couples who can't/don't want kids aren't suddenly gonna want them if you give them 3 months of paid maternity leave and a monthly stipend or other such welfare perks.
And those who do have kids because of government welfare perks, were having kids anyway, they're now incentivized to have even more.
nemomarx 2 hours ago
3 months of leave or a small welfare payment are not sufficiently compelling alternatives to a career. Pay them at the level of a career and see if that changes the numbers - I feel like at least some people would be interested in that. (Say, median national income? Spitballing here)
The countries that do try seem to fall short of actually replacing even a few years of serious career work and offer no way to go back to that career after taking care of children for a while, so you just need to do that.
Der_Einzige 24 minutes ago
Importing lots of white dudes. WMAF literally is extremely pro-natalist (massively higher WMAF babies than other pairings per-capita):
https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/1s184vi/cdc_da...
Unironically Mao/Nixon and Henry Kissenger almost put us into a hilarious world where we (the USA) would have "imported" ~10 million Chinese women. Mao unironically proposed this and his argument about why it would have hurt us is that they "have too many children!":
"Chairman Mao: (Laughing) Those are honest words.
Dr. Kissinger: This is our position.
Chairman Mao: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million. (Laughter, particularly among the women.)
Dr. Kissinger: The Chairman is improving his offer.
Chairman Mao: By doing so we can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children and our children are too many. (Laughter)
[Page 132] Dr. Kissinger: It is such a novel proposition, we will have to study it."
- https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v18...
gib444 2 hours ago
Yeah the world is in a 60 year trend in declining births. An app isn't going to fix anything
Increase women's education, labour participation, reduce infant mortality, have good access to birth control, and make life expensive...You're not going to get babies
fHr 3 hours ago
0-worlding
thomasfl 4 hours ago
Will Tinder be blamed for the sudden decline in fertility rate? Is there any other plausible explanstion to South Korea’s sudden and dramatic drop in fertility rate to 0.8? No matter how bad the housing market is or the job market is, there has never in history been such a drop in population.
password54321 4 hours ago
Yes, dating apps turbocharge hypergamy. It is not a secret that the top 10% of men get a huge share of the likes received.
Edit:
Share of all likes received according to ChatGPT
Top 1% 16.4%
Top 5% 41.1%
Top 10% 58.0%
Top 50% 95.7%
Bottom 50% 4.3%
derektank 3 hours ago
Male hypergamy and polygyny has been practiced by many cultures historically. They had many problems, but low birth rates wasn’t among them. I don’t think dating apps are a sufficient causal explanation alone for low birth rates
password54321 3 hours ago
Back then you could have 10 wives and start a population of people named Khan.
jrflowers 3 hours ago
3848488558 3 hours ago
The second factor is access to birth control, most women just dont want to have children unless in very specific circumstances
Historically they were compelled
password54321 3 hours ago
This explains the drop from 50s not the 2000s.
voxelghost an hour ago
perhaps religious and moral pressure not to excersize the choice available has decreased between 50s and 2000s
malicka an hour ago
Cell-phones. Noone’s having sex because they’d rather watch Tik-Tok; it’s got lower friction than going outside.
breezybottom 42 minutes ago
Like which cultures?
atq2119 11 minutes ago
This is the kind of thing that really needs a primary source instead of ChatGPT.
glitchc 3 hours ago
The only new variable in the last century of humanity is birth control. All others (hypergamy, economic mobility, migration, etc.) are recurring and have not impacted birth rates significantly in the past.
numpad0 an hour ago
Population density and infant mortality had changed a lot too in the last 100 years. Income disparities, working hours, and climate too in the last 50.