How Singapore's government-run dating service works

(singapore-samizdat.com)

40 points | by danielfoster 2 hours ago

8 comments

  • water-data-dude 1 hour ago
    You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
  • jjmarr 54 minutes ago
    Gale-Shapley, used in this service, has the property that one side ("proposing" side) is guaranteed their most advantageous stable match while the other side is guaranteed their worst possible stable match.

    I've never heard this discussed or mentioned as a drawback because it's Nobel Prize winning and "stable" is a shorthand for "fair". Even though there's many unique stable matches that each offer participants different utilities even if individual participants don't have incentives to change their pairing.

    In practice, the more powerful party seems to be the proposing side, e.g. hospitals are the "proposing side" when using Gale-Shapeley to match w/ med school students and get their ideal students.

    I wonder if anyone who works on dating apps knows if men or women are the preferred side? And is there any research on stable matching that ensures equity (or ideally arbitrary distribution of utility) between the two groups in their stable matches?

  • thisrod 1 hour ago
    There is an amusing irony in this approach to marriage promotion: who isn't already married in Singapore? I've been told that the city's 30 year old gay and lesbian crowd is treated to a lot of fancy dates at public expense.
    • ValentineC 35 minutes ago
      > There is an amusing irony in this approach to marriage promotion: who isn't already married in Singapore?

      I don't understand your question.

    • tantalor 43 minutes ago
      The govt pays for the date??
    • maplant 1 hour ago
      honestly that seems like a great way to spend public funds
  • podocarp 14 minutes ago
    Entirely dismissing how important looks, vibes, personality are in relationships. Not even dating -- if someone smells, you're not going to be incentives to make friends with them. This seems to me to just be trodding the same pseudoscientific route as MBTI personality tests, trying to condense a person into a list of multiple choice questions. That will never work. No algorithm can do it. Social interaction is not a solved game.
  • ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago
    Related:

    Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906432

  • jharohit 1 hour ago
    person previously dating in singapore - this is awesome! wish i had
  • MiroslavPokorny 18 minutes ago
    Welcome to Korea 2.0
  • sublinear 1 hour ago
    Interesting that when I ctrl-f the linked article and the previous discussion (463 comments), not once is the word "trust" found.

    That's the actual problem, though (a lack of it)! Above all else, you'll probably overlook a lot and still commit long-term to someone you can trust.

    • killingtime74 49 minutes ago
      Trust for the first date or long term? For the first date you already must supply your government id