How Singapore's government-run dating service works

ChrisArchitect

Related: Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906432

sublinear

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.

water-data-dude

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.

thisrod

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.

jharohit

person previously dating in singapore - this is awesome! wish i had

jjmarr

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?

MiroslavPokorny

Welcome to Korea 2.0

podocarp

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.

tommica

A very interesting solution to the problem. Surely this data will not be repurposed, right? But if it helps likeminded people to find each other, then it absolutely has some value.

tonyhart7

I think this is good, yes there can be improve but the idea is good especially for country like korea and japan ???? Yeah bro they need it

dominicq

> In short, stable matches mean nothing when nobody is committed and the best options might exist outside of the matchmaking pool This is wrong. Stable matches still mean something , and in fact probably mean quite a lot. You are given a much better match than a random pairing. If you still aren't interested, you can decline. If you go on a date and it doesn't work out, you can decline. Nothing forces you to use this process, it is just an offer of a significantly better than random matching to what you might prefer. It doesn't even need to account for preferences not covered by the questionnaire.

thrownawaysz

I thought incels are white right wingers, first time I see this term in a non-white context. Southern Poverty Law Center is listing them as a hate group for example so by definition incels can’t be black.

SwtCyber

I think the algorithm is almost a distraction here. Gale-Shapley works nicely when preferences are reasonably well-defined and participants are actually committed to the matching process. Dating has neither property. People are terrible at predicting who they'll have chemistry with, and everyone has outside options.