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Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

rzk

Comments (140)

  • purplepatrick
    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…
  • pinkmuffinere
    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.
  • abeppu
    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.
  • loeg
    Yeah, so, who are the proposers and who are the receivers?
  • qihqi
    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.
  • mlboss
    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.
  • aurareturn
    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.
  • missedthecue
    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.
  • ValentineC
    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_SingaporeIt 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).
  • abhchand
    This is tangential but I wrote a Go utility a while back to implement this stable matching algorithmhttps://github.com/abhchand/stable-matchingIt’s an effective yet simple algorithm. Also widely used in North America to match medical students with their residency of choice.
  • laybak
    the Singaporean government is often described as having a "parental" approach. I guess this move would be on brand
  • throw0101c
    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.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gale–Shapley_algorithm* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_matching_problem
  • anon
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  • storywatch
    I wonder if it's made by the same people behindhttps://aphrodite.global/The project was partially started by some students/scholars from there.
  • djoldman
  • beeforpork
    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.
  • edoceo
    Anyone tried this algo to match co-founders?
  • dnautics
    Which side do they screw over (the choosers get their worst possible match and the bidders get their best possible match)
  • motionlessveloc
    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_NetworkCreated 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.
  • jojobas
    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.
  • anon
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  • bakugo
    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
    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.
  • anon
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  • fHr
    0-worlding
  • thomasfl
    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.
  • Violaschueller
    [dead]