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Comments (168)

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  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.
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  lordnacho
  I think this would be better than commercial services, which have all the wrong incentives.I would think just a coarse sorting would do, paired with a free meal. Every couple of weeks, you go for a random date with a somewhat well paired person, and see what happens. Maybe you don't meet the love of your life, but you will meet someone roughly your age living in the same society, a perspective worth having regardless of whether you're compatible.However, if you know anyone from Singapore, you must think this is a rather small plaster on a gaping wound.Singapore is like a permanent examination hall. Everyone is competing to do well on exams, and then they try to get the best internships, and then the best jobs. It's not exactly conducive to starting a family. You'll lose a step in the rat race, and then your kid will need to join this rat race.
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  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?
• dominicq
  > In short, stable matches mean nothing when nobody is committed and the best options might exist outside of the matchmaking poolThis 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.
• 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.
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  blodkorv
  I dont see how a goverment-run dating service would solve the issue that social-media had made hypergamy run on steroids and that people today have much higher demands on their partner than ever before.In sweden we have one semi popular dating site with minimal amount of matching algoritms and swiping and such and its no easier there to find a partner than on tinder.
• noisy_boy
  > Team sunrise, or team “it’s 2am and I’m still up”? (close-ended)Why so weirdly binary? Sleeping at 11pm and getting up well after sunrise is not an option anymore?> What kind of traveler are you, really? (close-ended, with options like adventure junkie, culture seeker, and I don’t travel much)Isn't this the type of question that should be open ended? How about being a dynamic kind of traveller? Happy to go if someone else is organizing the trip and happy to stay if I have to do it.Such a typical Singaporean approach - even fun has to be funnelled into MCQs.
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  thenoblesunfish
  You know what's are great goverment run (or supported with money) dating programs? University. Erasmus. Things like Americorps. Even if the literal match is on the apps I feel like those sorts of environments are great.
• thomasfl
  Dating services should be run by private foundations that receives public grants. More foundations competing would be good too.
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  implements
  Tangent: I’ve often wondered why governments don’t provide a ‘dating’ service for employers and employees, or even better some kind of career development and management service for citizens. Use a bit of institutional wisdom to help people make the best of themselves from school age onwards, help people with similar or complementary skills and interests to connect … that kind of thing.
• rmason
  Interesting the different takes different nations take over dropping birth rates. I posted a story here on the Lisdoonvarna dating festival in Ireland. This is a village with a lot of bars wanting to encourage tourism. It has had so much success that the government is now sponsoring it. Quite different than America where the government mandates something as opposed to funding something that has proven successful in a given area.https://matchmakerireland.com/Social media had a story on an American lady disappointed with dating choices in her city who went over there for fun, met an Irishman and in less than a year of transatlantic dating got married.Bet you have just as much a chance of finding a life partner there than any online dating service, probably much better.
• ripitrust
  The author's final recommendation about investing in offline third places is very true in modern SingaporeModern dating problem comes from too many online platforms trying to sell you a lifestyle and tell you what you should have. People do not need another online platform to solve the problem caused by online platforms
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  olalonde
  Strange how the country that consistently tops the Economic Freedom Index also has a government-run dating service.
• nirui
  > with government workers set to be the first batch of datersOh yeah, the government workers, a group of people known for their prolific dating and people skills. This will go so well."Any hard Nos for you?", well, those who ignored the calls to their number is a no brainer big No, and also those who don't know how to fill their SMFF-29f-A form, which is different from SMFF-29F-A. Everyone here hates people who don't know the difference between SMFF-29f-A and SMFF-29F-A.
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  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.
• jharohit
  person previously dating in singapore - this is awesome! wish i had
• ChrisArchitect
  Related:Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithmhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906432
• rurban
  Glad to see that it requires cooperative partners, and not just parents. And that the matched partners are not automatically engaged.Let's see what other, more "progressive" governments will think about that. Lots of possibilities in government-run partner matching for out future AI overlords.
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  dude250711
  There is no weight/debt/tattoos filter... Then again, maybe those are not a problem in Singapore?
• JasonHEIN
  tinder by gov ?
• CoinAlko
  Thank you
• NotGMan
  >> The truth is that we don’t really know what exactly makes love work, such that we can articulate and implement it on a societal scale. It’s too messy, too complex, too idiosyncratic, and too human. Anyone who claims otherwise probably has a course to sell you on negging and pickup artistry.The author, who is a gay man, obviously didn't study any pickup material since if he would he'd realize how wrong he is. If he'd study pickup material and the surrounding works he'd realize that what women write in these preferences is completely meaningless so his example of meeting a guy as a guy on this website is completely useless for men meeting women, since women do not work like that.All of these algorithmic matching will become totaly useless and wrong depending on the behaviour of the male. In a completely mismatched pair the women will fawn over the guy if his behaviour is congruent with what attracts females. And even on a complete match the women will run away in panic if the guy is a total tool sexual-behaviour-wise to what (dis)attracts women.Also: nothing will solve marriage problem as long as women are in the workforce.Look up books by Rollo Tomassi, he has a blog and has written on these topics if you are one of those "citation needed" people.
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  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.
• PennRobotics
  I have so many questions of my own:How many people see their ideal match and get humbled (or emboldened) by surprising results? How many of these try immediately to change something about themselves?Since the match pool will never be exactly 1:1, do you do anything at all about the least matchable people?Would it become possible to gauge whether changed answers are efforts to widen one's net or legitimate personal growth and/or a bit of self-reflection?If the dating service detects deceptive answering, is it correct to just pair these people with other dishonest users?Can you gather any feedback from unsuccessful dates and apply a "Je n'sais quoi" Factor to positively/negatively weight their chances when calculating their compatibility with future matches?If you take this idea to the extreme, can you start to distrust negative date feedback if the feedback provider is shown to be unreliable? (Person A doesn't like anybody, their feedback shouldn't matter.)Are there detectable signals of someone's Je ne sais quoi Factor in their profile metadata, including profile photo(s) and answering habits? (i.e. People answering the full survey in less than 15 minutes at 3 a.m. are 28% less desireable on average.)While it's good to grow together with a partner, it doesn't always work out that way. How would such an algorithm be able to determine that an ambitious (broadly: likely to dramatically change) person will not be paired with a long-term apathetic, set-in-stone person? (I do realize they have the, "always working on yourself?" question, but there's so much this question leaves unanswered.)Is this a ploy to get more applicants to join the government staff, if the pilot remains closed to the public?(tying together "least matchable people" and "government staff") Do you start monitoring the extreme ends of matchability to see if there's a link between perceived social agreeableness and job performance? What was that again about detecting dishonesty and limiting the pool to government workers?-----One detail I particularly liked about early OKCupid was the ability to rank how much someone's answer mattered. For instance, I don't particularly mind someone's exercise and organization preferences, and it's fine if we didn't match because they DO have expectations from me in these areas which I fail to meet. I would hope the Singapore service would implement this as well, although a description of FirstDate in The Straits Times suggests this nuance isn't there.Another thing the Singapore dating service has in common with OKCupid is at least a few poorly worded questions: "What’s a country that’s ruined all other countries for you?" is akin to OKC's "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" You can't split hairs as a Yes/No response in OKC, "sure: I would understandably have tons of negative excitement, a sudden spike in anxiety/dread, instantaneous long-term shift in priorities, etc.; although the use of atomic weapons thoroughly horrifies me," just like you can't explain whether the country that "ruined others" did so via greatness (Spain with its social and expressive population, food, beaches, siestas, and music) or by causing a loss of faith in humanity (Ireland, due to a stolen laptop plus being verbally threatened by a primary school-aged child while I was walking with a baby stroller).My personal take on the nuclear war question? I just tried to optimize (cast the widest net) and decided, "Anyone willing to misunderstand this one question while also prioritizing and demanding its response is less likely to be someone whose company I value," and left the question unanswered + unimportant to me.Now if only my local government had a "friends group" service, so I don't end up hanging out with other parents just by virtue of also being a parent and needing to be around them in the same places at the same times...
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  MiroslavPokorny
  Welcome to Korea 2.0
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  bell-cot
  From a few comments in the article and here, I'm wondering how viable Singapore is as a country for typical residents (vs. the 1%) to have children.If (say) both would-be parents in a couple have to work long hours to afford their own food, housing, & such - yeah, NO. They obviously can't have many kids.Anyone here familiar, to comment?
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  tonyhart7
  I think this is good, yes there can be improve but the idea is goodespecially for country like korea and japan ???? Yeah bro they need it
• aaron695
  [dead]
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  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.
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  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.