How Singapore's government-run dating service works

(singapore-samizdat.com)

45 points | by danielfoster 3 hours ago ago

16 comments

  • tommica 2 minutes ago

    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.

  • water-data-dude an 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.

    • sergiotapia 14 minutes ago

      Aren't commercial dating sites as a whole summarized as:

      Keep supply of women high because men will pay anything for a chance?

      I am very curious how this will be changed in this government platform. Maybe it won't LOL

      • some_furry 2 minutes ago

        It's also a market for lemons: Every match that leads to a long-term, exclusive relationship is two customers gone for good.

  • jjmarr an hour 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?

    • jmalicki 7 minutes ago

      Are there keywords to search for to read more? This is the first time I've heard about this! This is super interesting, what are a few well known other stable matches people deeper into this talk about?

  • thisrod an 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.

    • tantalor an hour ago

      The govt pays for the date??

    • ValentineC an hour 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.

    • maplant an hour ago

      honestly that seems like a great way to spend public funds

  • podocarp 30 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.

  • jharohit an hour ago

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

  • ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago

    Related:

    Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

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

  • sublinear 2 hours 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 an hour ago

      Trust for the first date or long term? For the first date you already must supply your government id

  • MiroslavPokorny 34 minutes ago

    Welcome to Korea 2.0