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.
I contemplated whether to try to build a dating site a few times while I was single, and every time what stopped me was the perverse incentives. Making a financially viable dating service without actively making things worse on purpose is really hard.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
Stats consistently show that women only select about 5% of options displayed from online dating apps. Men select about 50%. And women disproportionately give their attention to the most conventionally attractive men. (To say: That 5% is not evenly distributed amoung men.) The bottom half of men (from attractiveness ratings) basically get zero matches... ever. Online dating is brutal.
I'd probably pick only the top 5% too if I was inundated by matches, so I'm not surprised.
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
I do not think that it is online dating that is brutal, but these dating sites.
I have been through a couple of online dating and personality usually came first, so by the time appearance was revealed, we already could not care much. She was not my type, I was not her type, but that affected nothing.
The reason it did not work out is financial and logistics (different country, I have MS, I am heavily dependent on healthcare, and so forth), not because of any moral failing or what have you.
No, all women get some attention using online dating apps. A bunch of YouTubers have created fake online dating profiles with incredibly ugly women (bad face or bad body), and they still get matches. This guy on X has run lots of these tests with hilarious results: https://x.com/MurrayHillGuy1
> Dating is brutal.
I can confidently say that dating was not brutal before the apps. (I am pretty old.) Before the apps, couples were mostly looks-matched: the ugos dated each other, the mids dated each other, and the best dated each other. Unless the guy was very personable/funny/rich, most people were looks-matched. Online dating has reduced everyone to a few photographs.
Women demonstrate incredibly different behaviour when "selecting mates" when comparing (1) familiar settings, like work, school, church/temple, friend/activity/hobby groups vs (2) unfamiliar settings, like bars, clubs, public places, and online dating. For (1), they find many more men attractive because they can evaluate them on more than looks. For (2), they can only evaluate on looks. If you ask women to rate strangers based only upon looks, they will rank only 20% as attractive. That is what makes online dating so awful for average men.
When young (average looking) guys tell me about their awful/non-existent dating lives at the office, I always recommend that they try approaching women in public more often. Ignore the shit you see on social media where the fake #MeToo women come on to put guys on full blast for approaching. Don't worry about them. They are awful people, and you don't want them. Yes, you will get rejected a lot (maybe 5-10% hit rate), but it is way better than online dating apps. You can approach in supermarkets, stores, cafes, festivals/concerts, gym, parks, etc. That way, plenty of other people are around, and she won't feel unsafe. And start by approaching ugos/low-mids. You only need to get their socials or chat app. Even if you have no serious interest in that woman, you can practice chatting with her. Once you build some confidence, approach average looking women. Eventually, you will find success. As long as you dress average/OK, groom (comb/style hair, etc.) and don't smell bad, they won't put you on full blast if she is not interested. She will politely decline, or give socials, but never reply to chats.
Please don't read this post as an attack on women. It is an attack on our current ecosystem of online dating apps.
Meeting people in public really is the answer, but I think shifting the focus from romantic to being genuine, friendly, and focusing on community in places where it’s not just guys is way more successful (for hetero men)
I met my girlfriend at a coffeeshop. I was a regular and just actively friendly to everyone. Our first date felt more like a second because we already had multiple conversations.
Men have a much greater emphasis on physical attraction than women which is why women need a much higher level of physical attraction when only using that. But building community lets us show off our other qualities which women put a much greater emphasis on.
You literally give the advice to "start by approaching ugos/low-mids. This entire post comes off as vain, but your disclaimer at the end doesn't absolve it of also being misogynistic.
You're telling men to use "conventionally" unattractive women as target practice, implying they will be more receptive to attention, presumably due to a general lack of it. Then your advice is to leave these women behind once you've gotten what you needed, and to then seek women more attractive to you.
> I can confidently say that dating was not brutal before the apps. (I am pretty old.)
What? Dating been brutal and unforgiving for as long as I've been alive, but I wouldn't say I'm old (between 30 - 40). it was definitely harsh before the apps and had the exact same "everyone wants to date beautiful people, no one wants to date ugly people" "problem" that exists today, not sure what makes you say it's any different than today.
> Please don't read this post as an attack on women
I don't read your comment as an "attack" on anything, women or dating apps. But things like "women can only evaluate based on looks in bars, clubs, public spaces, etc" is wildly out of touch with reality, and makes your comment rightly seem out of touch rather than an attack on anything at all.
You should try AFK dating sometime, it's even worse! Out of all the women I've met, only 0.00000001218% been interested enough to date and marry me, and I didn't even touch any of the apps! Brutal.
If I wouldn't have to deal with the legal liabilities around moderation and user data, I would love to make a non-profit dating site that was truly optimized towards some benevolent goals.
If people are oriented towards traditional relationships, then pairing people up younger probably leads to higher overall fertility rate in the population, so I could see governments with existentially declining fertility rates (read: almost all of them) taking an interest in actually providing a successful service here (unlike the commercial dating apps).
Of course, a lack of a match is not the only thing that prevents people from having kids, but I'm curious what the impact of an optimal matching service would be on fertility rates.
edit: I think governments might do well to provide funding for dating apps (whether privately or publicly owned) based on how many matches from the app actually lead to children. Completely flip the classical incentives on their head. Should be easy enough to ask if newborns were a product of a participating app as part of the birth certification process.
It is important to remember governments aren’t living things with their own agency. The people at the top running the governments are usually all dead in 30 years tops. They have no long term incentives. Put them in charge of a dating app and they will run it to enrich themselves just like all the other ones.
In practice it would be 10 managers and in-between contractor types siphoning all allotted money and then an unexperienced dev building a terrible overburdened service that noone wants to use.
depends on the country. this type of corruption is guaranteed in some countries, less so in others. Singapore is usually good at avoiding it. Their online services are very good.
the government can switch up the incentives and for example make payment contingent on people actually using the platform as well as opening the tender to startup teams (usually they are locked out).
Sure it's easier to keep eyes on in a tiny country like Singapore, but basically all major western countries struggle with stuff like this because politics is way too spread out and ingrained with too many local interests. Strong federalism is the cradle of corruption, but if you can walk across your country in a day there's simply not enough room to federalize. OTOH federalism is necessary if your seat of government is 500 miles away, because there is no way for them to effectively govern local issues anymore.
The UK had some success with GDS. Not all IT in bigger countries is failures.
I honestly think that labeling corruption as corruption and a popular sentiment towards slamming a few people in jail for it would go a long way towards fixing these problems.
Instead even among the general public the sentiment is "government is just incompetent" which helps soften the reaction to it and thus indirectly encourages it to get worse.
There's no shortage of countries around the world that have dug themselves a corruption hole they struggle to get out of. It's easier to fix it starting from here than there but we don't want to end up there.
I think it's unlikely for your worst case scenario to be realized. Underspecified objectives can cause unexpected results, but it can also lead to desired results. Fortunately experimentation is relatively cheap and tuning optimization metrics is the norm for most apps.
The modern trend of most families with 0-2 kids isn’t sustainable. We don’t need to go back to 5+ being the norm but a self stable society needs to be able to offset non parents thus requiring 3+ children families to be quite common.
That was never traditional anywhere. It was possible in the 1950s in a few places. Anyone thinking it was traditional is seriously undervaluing women's work.
For a time, everywhere people typically had homes and cars and families it was required that they could afford it all on a single person's income because women were property, and not allowed to work outside the home (at least after marriage), or get an education, or own anything.
This is very much a worst case. It assumes three children, each with their own bedroom, and two work from home parents each with their own office.
Why do you need an entire room each for an office? I work in a corner of a bedroom, and have previously had a desk in a living room. I know lots of people who do the same. I know few families where both parents work from home. Where more than one person works from home they can share an office.
If people work from home to a large extent, less office space is required, so the cost of land should go down. It does not because most people are not working from home.
Yes, but, as said, there are probably also a lot of people that decide either against children at all or against having +1 of them due to these constraints.
No one said that one cannot make do. One can always make do.
Well I mean the whole discussion was about "why is the fertility rate so low it should not be so low".
So that does sound like it is very much an issue. To someone, anyway.
I don't really care. I have no horse in this race.
__
To cover the expected pedantic reply:
Of course technically it's everyone's problem. But just because it technically affects you doesn't mean that you have to emotionally involve yourself in stupid online discussions that don't comprehend systemic views and mistake them for personal whining.
That still works up to like age 7. It really is needed for that age up to ~18, which means you can get with providing that service for ~15 years (multiple children) and then going back to smaller apartments.
Or you can keep the smaller apartments and make boarding schools more common. Small kids all live in the same room while the ones old enough to need their own space move out completely to a boarding school. Depending on the specifics, may be a much better solution overall.
I actually attended high school in that way in Poland, despite it being very rare here. I was 15 when I started. While I think it was great for me, I would not recommend doing it for younger people - you need some basic emotional maturity and safety.
Even then, it would not solve any problems here, really.
It is not about preference, but because of regulation. Nowadays the government demand is that each child needs to have a separate studying and sleeping area. If a sliding wall in a room counts as a separate area is up to the officials' discretion.
On one hand, all of this is understandable, but on the other hand these policies do indeed raise the cost of having children.
I thought it was clear from context that I was referring to people who want to have kids with a romantic partner (I suppose for fertility rate purposes it doesn't even necessarily need to be with just one romantic partner, or within a monogamous relationship).
Lots of people don't want kids these days relative to 50 years ago, but even among those who do, they're delaying the process, often to the point where it becomes less ideal due to age. Many people who wanted kids when they were younger end up not having them as a result (and many who want them haven't had them yet).
Having a partner (or partners) to do it with is a significant factor for many, among other factors like concerns about affording food and housing for oneself, let alone for additional dependants.
The government also wants stable couples (divorce are costly to society) and non-toxic relationship (because these too are costly), which is also what the users desire.
I give it about a month before they start gaming the algorithm to pair people who are likely to be on government benefits with people who can support them.
You make $150k, congratulations all your matches are McDonalds crew members.
You make $200k, the same but now they're all mentally ill because the algorithm deems you capable of supporting thyat too.
As long as you're going dystopian, maybe the government decides that it'll be better for the country if they raise a generation of super-babies and secretly pivots to eugenics as a service.
Yeah, the precedent for the idea of a .gov dating service is Plato’s Republic along with comments in the Timaeus/Critias which make it clear that Plato envisioned a rigged service designed for eugenics. Central control over matchmaking is incentivized to eugenics.
This is the primary worry with governments getting involved with dating apps, is it not?
Many of our countries are just one election cycle away from the politicians mandating that the official government dating app only incentivise Anglo-Saxon baby-making...
>This is the primary worry with governments getting involved with dating apps, is it not?
<insert bad faith comment about how it's ok because they're not literally sterilizing anyone and you can opt out of you want>
(bonus points if it's from an account that has a bunch of comments whining about interface defaults and algorithmic nudges matter in technical contexts)
As long as that government is benevolent enough to avoid demographic engineering. Singapore is a fine melting pot, but I'd probably avoid using a closed source government-run dating app in both my home (EEU) and my current (WEU) country.
I think that's a bit too reductive, but the incentive mismatch is real. Commercial apps generally benefit from people staying on the app; a government service theoretically benefits if people pair off and leave.
It's an interesting question, because on one hand the government goals will remove a lot of the perverse incentives. E.g. having people who aren't going to answer in the pool of profiles shown is mostly a negative. Doing actual, well thought out matches makes sense where for a commercial app favouring one-sided matches that keep one side wanting and not getting frequent answers can be better.
But on the other hand, if it appears "too limited" because the most desirable people disappear off quickly because of a successful match, maybe they'll still struggle to keep the users coming back to it even if they're actually doing a better job at matching people up...
Really depends whether the track record (assuming its good) becomes known enough to people, I'd guess.
On the other side you got a fresh supply on both sides from kids growing up to be adults and from adults divorcing and even if your matchmaking is perfect and divorce culturally shamed against, people still die which leaves widow(er)s behind, of whom a certain amount will want a new relationship.
Dating apps are a race to the bottom. They're collecting a tax on the lonely and desperate of dwindling populations. Ironically it's not sustainable over the long term.
> Ironically it's not sustainable over the long term.
The entire idea of just wanting MRR and be done with it is a huge, huge part why the world is so screwed. So much of the economy is just devolved into rich people seeking rents.
A dating app with an MMR score for the players is an interesting idea, with matchmaking done based on MMR similarity. Then there could be an annual dating tournament for the best players.
I don’t think that a market for lemons is the right analogy or how it relates to your other claims. A market for lemons is one where buyers cannot distinguish between high and low quality goods (eg used cars). I think people are mostly ok at judging the ‘quality’ of romantic partners and the problem you describe is a different thing.
If you do a good job - all the people find partners, and leave, and you need to find new people to join
If you do a bad job - all the people see it as desparate, and leave, and you need to find new people to join
It's a high churn environment so there's no real way to make money from... er... bums on seats.. so there's no real choice but to make some sort of barrier forcing people to spend money
Spending a couple decades with the government putting it's thumb on the scale trying to get people who score high on government metrics to pair up with other people who score high on government metrics seems like a great way to start a civil war a couple generations down the line.
But I'm sure the marriages will be stable all the way there so there's that.
They got your birth record, your education records, your bank account details, your employment record. They can write themselves a warrant to dig through your life. The government already knows all this.
>chooses a mate for you.
You're not forced to marry whoever you match with in the app.
Where in the 48 countries in Asia this is like that? Are you reducing the largest, most populated, and most diverse continent on Earth to a single country?
Honestly, the levels of desperation and despair I'm seeing in the hellscape that is modern dating, I think a lot of people would sign up for this. I probably would if I were single. It's very similar to how matchmakers work, and they're popular all over the world, and have been for millennia. They're an unbiased and impartial judge and coach. We all have enormous biases and weaknesses in so many ways, and we could all do with help to better ourselves.
The important distinction here is no one is forced to marry anyone. This is entirely optional.
I am also pretty disillusioned with government right now, and I share your views on common law marriage and alimony, but I see this as one of the few things a government is doing right.
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.
I want to agree, but the fact it's state-run / promoted gives me the ick. Or, it gives me a lot of conflicted feelings / opinions, let's put it that way.
Like, here in Europe we've got right-wing parties on the rise that have this conspiracy theory that the foreigners are moving here en masse to replace the locals (because of ??? they never explained, our jobs, benefits and women I suppose). So they spend a lot of time and effort fearmongering about the for'ners coming here and bring in laws and policies to keep them out.
Meanwhile they don't seem to be doing anything about those that already live here - you'd think these right-wing, own-people-first types would do anything to ensure people living here would thrive and reproduce. But no free child care, no major economic reform to allow single incomes to buy a house, none of that. Because ultimately it's not about foreigners or "own people first", it's about self-enrichment, got mine fuck you.
Are you implying that there aren't a massive number of foreigners moving to Europe? roughly 10% of the people living in the EU were born outside of it.
Not if you think that your government isn't looking out for your best interests. A well run state is exactly what we need, but rarely what we have. Right now we see rising authoritarianism, less transparency, open bribery, more frequent and blatant lying, less accountability, more corruption, democratic backsliding, attacks on civil rights. etc. All that stuff is going to breed skepticism, and it really should. Eroding people's trust in government by actively working to corrupt it and impede it from functioning properly has been a very successful strategy.
Exactly. Eroding trust is such a successful strategy because it weaponizes confirmation bias. Once people are primed to be skeptical, they often come to conclusions irrationally first, and then (knowingly or not) seek only to prove themselves right.
You're right, and you'd think seeing all the ways our government is vulnerable to these problems would result in reforms to fix and prevent those issues, but it seems like a lot of people have given up even trying. Learned helplessness I guess.
>That’s an irrational reaction, probably conditioned by ideology.
And yours isn't?
Like it doesn't take much beyond a room temperature IQ to look at the arc of just about every government these days and make an estimation of where it's going without some substantial unforeseen change of course. The state of the world should merit a little pause and/or self doubt there.
>A well-run state has been perhaps one of the most successful enabling factors for human flourishing in human history.
Historically the states that have dabbled in this area of policy area has been "well run" in only the most dishonest "they accomplished their short term goals" sense of the phrase.
Many people trust the government for policing, military, central banking. Some not.
Many trust them for health care and education, many not.
Very very few don’t trust the government for anything. So for this random example, a dating service, it feels like it’s ideological conditioning (otherwise the OP would explain why it feels bad for them).
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?
> I've never heard this discussed or mentioned as a drawback because it's Nobel Prize winning and "stable" is a shorthand for "fair".
You've never seen this discussed as a drawback? I've seen it mentioned quite a bit. For instance, it came up on the last big thread on this just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915825
Given how women initiate most divorces, it's probably best to set it up so they are the proposing side.
But this isn't raw Gale-Shapley-- the participants aren't ranking all hundreds/thousands of others. In particular, the preference matrix is based on identical mutual compatibility scores, so there's a unique stable solution (not multiple stable ones!), and there's no "side" that benefits, since the solution is identical no matter who does the "proposing".
In the UK male plus joint is roughly the same as female.
You also need to take the reasons into account as well as why. There are multiple reasons for this. The better off partner has more to lose from divorce, women tend to get custody of children, they might have different feelings of obligation to keep a marriage going (I cannot extrapolate this to other men, but I felt an obligation not to file for divorce until I had exhausted all other possibilities), social pressures and responses are different, etc.
If stats from dating websites are to be believed, all women tend to flock on all the same tiny percentage of men and ignore the rest. If women initiate, I’m afraid you will see only a few men getting any pairing. Men are likely to be less picky as we see in the wild.
> If stats from dating websites are to be believed, all women tend to flock on all the same tiny percentage of men and ignore the rest
This is absolutely not an accidental phenomenon, this is the optimal outcome for dating apps, because that's the only way to prevent women from finding what they are looking for too quickly (and then leaving the app).
> If stats from dating websites are to be believed, all women tend to flock on all the same tiny percentage of men and ignore the rest.
These are on platforms where you have profile pics and jobs, front and center on your profile, and the algorithm learns from your preferences based on that. The questions on this platform seem to suggest that the algorithm matches based on anything but that, so perhaps we have different, more open-minded outcomes on what a good partner for someone is like rather than who the ideal man/woman is like.
If the goal is successful relationships, then probably?
If I have 10/10 love for Halle Berry, and she has 4/10 love for my Jeff-Bezos-looking ass, it's the 4/10 that's going to dictate whether we live happily ever after. So our mutual compatibility is probably well below 10/10.
I don't think you can measure love at all, and certainly not guess it based on some info you can type into your phone, so that's rules out before we even get started.
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?
The problem is it's a lattice and not fully ordered. There are cases where there are two or more pairings that are worse for women and better for men, but we cannot determine which pairing is superior to the other overall.
> 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.
If women were (legally allowed and required ) to be paid upfront for delivering and raising children, the market would sort things out. We would probably get some professional mothers who would have 6-12 children.
Men would obviously the buyer…. Most would need financing… (baby mortgage)
Would probably need a Fannie / Freddie cousin if the market got overheated and a bubble pop happened.
theoretically some women could pay some quality fathers for coparenting , but it would be rare.
Why would men be buyers? If the women are raising children what do they get out of it? Will be women and children be living with them? If so they would be parenting so need to be paid too.
It sounds like your idea is that women get paid to have the joys of being a parent, while men pay to get nothing in return.
If the woman and children do live with the man then essentially you are recreating the idea of a male provider married to a housewife, except more transactional and unequal.
This honestly sounds dystopian. The foster care system does not point to "people who are in it for the money" as the best people to raise children. The market is not the best solution for everything, and working on structural barriers to family raising for people who would like to raise a family seems like a worthwhile effort. I do not know enough about Singapore to say if this dating app will help, but I like seeing efforts like this; hopefully in addition to daycare, education investment, and family leave policies.
Foster care is for other people’s children. I think having her genes in the children would make a professional mother a little more attentive to her children. Also better quality parenting would allow her to charge more…
The current situation artificially limits supply of mothers because it requires relative exclusivity of the father. It’s like nimby people not wanting apartments in their cities to limit supply. Except imagine if nimby’s were able to ban apartments all over the world. That’s the situation with motherhood. It’s single family zoning world wide…
Of course it sounds dystopian and is not about to happen anytime soon. Because cartel’s don’t give up policies that limit supply so easily…
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.
> people today have much higher demands on their partner than ever before.
"People"? For heteros, it is mostly women who have raised their demands. Seriously, are men raising their standards? For men under 30, they are probably lowering their standards!
The best summary I have seen: Average women are no longer interested in average men. More details: Since women became economic equals to men, they are no longer interested in their economic equals. They want men who earn (much) more money than them, and that makes those men very rare.
Specific to Sweden, is it really true that women now approach men? I heard about this trend in Denmark and Netherlands, but I am a bit suspicous because it is mostly anecdotal.
Obviously you're wading into hot water by even outlining this analysis. Personally I'm tempted to buy it (if it's true, it's true!) but recently I saw an interesting argument that softened me up a bit to the feminist line. It's that the traditional deal between the sexes has been broken. Before, women would suffer the hardship and danger of childbirth, and in return men would take on the physical perils of war. In modern society, of course, conflict mostly means playing video games in an armchair. And yet bearing children remains a stubbornly physical chore. Hence a latent feeling of injustice that may balance out the real one you describe.
I think that overplays the role of war. men did other things in general, such as going out to work and also dealing with other dangers. Even in developed economies male work related death rates are far higher than women's.
Childbirth might remain physical, but it is also extremely safe by historical standards. In the Uk the rate is just over one maternal death per 10,000 births including deaths shorty afterwards, compared to close to 50 in Victorian times (I think excluding subsequent deaths, although i am not sure).
Bearing children might remain physical, and bringing them up is hard work and goes on far longer than bearing them. IMO the solution it to change social expectations so men participate in raising children more. I see this is happening. its best of everyone: less of a load on women, men participate in the joy of having children properly, and kids grow up with better parental relationships and more parental attention in total.
> and in return men would take on the physical perils of war.
Oh common. Those wars were not for the benefit of women. They were for the benefit of decision making men, the men who ruled. Which were not women. And the men in power sometimes used women as argument for why you should go invade this or that country, but then again appeal to patriotism was even stronger. There are limited situations, like Ukraine today which is defending where the "for other women and children" claim can kinda be made. And even there, fighers are motivated by more then just that.
Traditionally, you was fighting for your male ruler.
The war thing is not deal between sexes. Even today, men are more likely to support invasions, to support parties that lead country to wars.
Countries ruled by woman also go to war, and have done going back for millennia: Boadicea, Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, etc.
I would like to see data supporting the idea that men are more likely to support parties that lead to wars, and if its true the reasons why.
In less safe societies and situations men were pressured to take the risks to shield women. "Women and children first". That definitely was to the advantage of women and the detriment of men.
I did not said that countries run by women would never go to war. I made statement about majority of actual real world past wars. Men were dominating the leadership, the leadership made decision to go to war for reasons unrelated to womanhood, so the war it was. The fight was not "for women". Also, actual real world fathers and husbands preferred not to go to war. Their wifes also preferred them not to go to war.
> I would like to see data supporting the idea that men are more likely to support parties that lead to wars, and if its true the reasons why.
Men are more likely to support fascists - both in runup to WWII and now. You can see it in data. Large part of its appeal is warrior aesthetic and aggression. Also, men are more likely to vote republicans who are more hawks and start wars. The pro war parties and groups are dominated by men, because some men display their masculinity by endorsing wars. They think manly men should support war, they think it makes them manly, so they do. See Hegseth - he is basically a caricature of such man.
> In less safe societies and situations men were pressured to take the risks to shield women. "Women and children first". That definitely was to the advantage of women and the detriment of men.
When the plan crashes or there is a fight, there is no "women and children first". In actual ships wrecks, men were more likely to survive (so no, women had no precedes).
When the men are going to fight away, that is when they die more often. Men were obligated to stay in Ukraine while women and kids were allowed to stay. Men did major of Chernobyl work too. But, men complaining about "women and children first" they have seen in books, are no where near any situation where it might happen to them.
Besides, here is what I reacted to:
>Before, women would suffer the hardship and danger of childbirth, and in return men would take on the physical perils of war.
No, there was no such "deal" made. Childbirth being safer now does not change it, drones dont change it and world having more peaceful period last decades dont change it.
Except that, women with college degrees and in higher socioeconomic groups marry as much as before. It poor people, poor women who stay single.
If your theory was true, it would be other way round. Poor women would be marrying and richer women would refuse marriage. That is not what we see in data.
Hypergamy is real. "I need to have a baby, but eew this guy is a dork, I'm not giving him my womb, and look at all these cool guys on insta" is a real conversation I've had.
Had one drop me for a professional DJ.
A friend of mine was convinced she was going to marry a famous basketball player.
You can guess how these "relationships" went.
Super average women with one or two OUTSTANDING characteristics (get it.)
It's a real problem.
Fortunately, I already had kids when we were both younger and dumber which might ultimately be the solution: keep humans off social media until they're grandparents.
Haha, this made me laugh and made me think of an absurd analogy.
Women are buying call options (hedge against rising prices) on men and the premium is the emotional damage that occurs when the market price on the guy falls below the strike price (turns out the man is a dud) and the woman refrains from pursuing the guy (no marriage).
It's poor in taste but I just can't unsee the similarity...
Commercial dating apps are a market for lemons - as a woman, you can't quickly assess whether a partner will be compatible with you or not without investing substantial time and effort. Hypergamy is the expected equilibrium - if you're not sure about the long-term compatibility, you might as well go off of looks or cues of status alone. I would expect the outcome distribution of an app with a much better matching algorithm to be drastically less concentrated in the upper tail. Moreover, a state-run dating app lacks the perverse incentive to keep you swiping, frustrated and jealous.
I don't assume that. The supply of men on dating apps is greater than the supply of women, and they tend to be less picky and more open to short-term mate-seeking behavior. This means that the dynamic of these apps is more fundamentally shaped by aggregate preferences of women.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Don’t they? Here in the UK at least participation in programs like that is a requirement of unemployment benefits. One has to attend a job center where one is given advice, sometimes training can get enrolled in trainung and etc. Not saying that they do a great job of it but they seems to at least try to do what you describe. At least nominally.
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.
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.
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.
The author's final recommendation about investing in offline third places is very true in modern Singapore
Modern 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
It's almost as though "economic freedom" (whatever that means) and the government schmutzing in citizens' personal affairs are completely unrelated things!
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.
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.
I think this is the key point. Put differently: Vibe matters. I cannot tell you how many times that I match for a date online, then less than ten minutes after meeting them, you think: "Oh, this will never work." Example: Photos are heavily photoshopped or old/out-of-date, overweight, weird/odd body language, etc. Humans are infinitely sensitive to a million different things that are impossible to authentically transmit via primarily photography-based online dating.
If I met them in real life first (cafe, supermarket, park, etc.), you can politely disconnect and move on if something seems off. The more that I do online dating, the more that I see this "vibe wall". Since third spaces aren't really coming back, I'm pretty sure that speed dating (or assisted group dating) is key. Sure, it is uncomfortable to meet many people so quickly (say an hour or two), it helps to get over the vibe wall. It could act like an artificial third space, but with a romantic intent.
I have an idea for a dating app: What if people could only make videos using in-app video recorder (and clipper)? This would completely remove the problem of photoshopping/filters. Plus, video can much better transmit "vibe" compared to photos and "profile". Example of something fun: Show a short video that is trending on TikTok (hand picked by staff), then ask someone to react to it. You can do the green screen effect, just like TikTok. It could be a nice way to visit someone's personality and check their vibe.
It's a shame that they deduce your ranking just from the questions. I think the algorithm would be perfect if paired with a manual ranking by the user.
Yes, but someone who looks, vibes and smells right can still be totally wrong for you. I often thought that online dating was inefficient because my eyes, ears and nose can rule out most potential mates without even thinking, but it works the other way too: I've had many partners I've enjoyed being physical with but would never want to settle down and start a family or anything (then again, I'm not a breeder at all, so take that with a pinch of salt). So it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. You need all things to be right, and this surely can only be better than e.g. Tinder, where you see only pictures.
There are lots of overweight and/or tatt'ed people in Singapore! In general, I have found people get a lot fatter once you travel from Thailand/Cambodia/Laos to Peninsular Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia. I don't know if it genetics, food, or "lifestyle". And loads of Singaporeans are up to their eyes in debt because they want to look flashy when they are young -- designer clothes, jewelry, bags, shoes, cars, etc. For me, the quickest way to know if a Singaporean is broke is if they are young, have a mid-to-shit job, but are wearing flashy clothes.
>> 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.
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.
Middle class life is pretty reasonable in Singapore. You can have two working parents with boring, average corporate jobs (the economy is very strong in Singapore), then you live in modestly priced public housing, ride public transit everywhere, and send your kids to public schools. It seems fine to me. And the middle class isn't something rare in Singapore; it is most of Singapore. You can also hire a cheap domestic helper to cook most of your meals, clean your home, and shuttle the kids to and from school and activities. This is a very common pattern in Singapore.
How might things look if a couple has 3+ kids, and perhaps only one parent working outside the home? Because if Singapore actually wants to reach break-even from where their numbers are now, that needs to be a realistic scenario for a whole lotta people.
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?
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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...
The biggest issues in Korea dating is young men either (1) don't have enough money to date (because local women expect men to paying for everything) or (2) women reject men with old-fashioned social views. In my personal experience, comparing the most developed places in Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore), young Korean men are the most like their fathers with out-of-date social views.
The marriage rates of these countries is not really the issue. Much of the remaining difference between East/Southeast Asia and the West is actually births out of wedlock, which the region still heavily stigmatizes.
As Singaporean commenters have said, I think this is more of a positive eugenics scheme.
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.
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.
> with government workers set to be the first batch of daters
Oh 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.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
That 5% is static - individual guys can improve their chances of being in the 5%, but that pushes out others already in the 5%.
IOW, if women are only looking at the top 5% of men, there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men.
I have been through a couple of online dating and personality usually came first, so by the time appearance was revealed, we already could not care much. She was not my type, I was not her type, but that affected nothing.
The reason it did not work out is financial and logistics (different country, I have MS, I am heavily dependent on healthcare, and so forth), not because of any moral failing or what have you.
Dating is brutal.
Online dating seems like it perhaps speed-runs that a bit, but I don’t think it dramatically changes the essence.
Women demonstrate incredibly different behaviour when "selecting mates" when comparing (1) familiar settings, like work, school, church/temple, friend/activity/hobby groups vs (2) unfamiliar settings, like bars, clubs, public places, and online dating. For (1), they find many more men attractive because they can evaluate them on more than looks. For (2), they can only evaluate on looks. If you ask women to rate strangers based only upon looks, they will rank only 20% as attractive. That is what makes online dating so awful for average men.
When young (average looking) guys tell me about their awful/non-existent dating lives at the office, I always recommend that they try approaching women in public more often. Ignore the shit you see on social media where the fake #MeToo women come on to put guys on full blast for approaching. Don't worry about them. They are awful people, and you don't want them. Yes, you will get rejected a lot (maybe 5-10% hit rate), but it is way better than online dating apps. You can approach in supermarkets, stores, cafes, festivals/concerts, gym, parks, etc. That way, plenty of other people are around, and she won't feel unsafe. And start by approaching ugos/low-mids. You only need to get their socials or chat app. Even if you have no serious interest in that woman, you can practice chatting with her. Once you build some confidence, approach average looking women. Eventually, you will find success. As long as you dress average/OK, groom (comb/style hair, etc.) and don't smell bad, they won't put you on full blast if she is not interested. She will politely decline, or give socials, but never reply to chats.
Please don't read this post as an attack on women. It is an attack on our current ecosystem of online dating apps.
I met my girlfriend at a coffeeshop. I was a regular and just actively friendly to everyone. Our first date felt more like a second because we already had multiple conversations.
Men have a much greater emphasis on physical attraction than women which is why women need a much higher level of physical attraction when only using that. But building community lets us show off our other qualities which women put a much greater emphasis on.
You're telling men to use "conventionally" unattractive women as target practice, implying they will be more receptive to attention, presumably due to a general lack of it. Then your advice is to leave these women behind once you've gotten what you needed, and to then seek women more attractive to you.
This is a perverse way to approach people.
Just wait until you hear what women actually say amongst themselves, this dudes comments will sound like Sunday school talk.
What? Dating been brutal and unforgiving for as long as I've been alive, but I wouldn't say I'm old (between 30 - 40). it was definitely harsh before the apps and had the exact same "everyone wants to date beautiful people, no one wants to date ugly people" "problem" that exists today, not sure what makes you say it's any different than today.
> Please don't read this post as an attack on women
I don't read your comment as an "attack" on anything, women or dating apps. But things like "women can only evaluate based on looks in bars, clubs, public spaces, etc" is wildly out of touch with reality, and makes your comment rightly seem out of touch rather than an attack on anything at all.
You should try AFK dating sometime, it's even worse! Out of all the women I've met, only 0.00000001218% been interested enough to date and marry me, and I didn't even touch any of the apps! Brutal.
- we get paid for date $1
- we get paid for second date $10
- we get paid for proposal $100
- we get paid for marriage $1000
- we pay for divorce $1500
- we get paid for first child $500
- we get paid for second child $1000
- we get paid for nth child $2000 * (n - 2)
Of course, a lack of a match is not the only thing that prevents people from having kids, but I'm curious what the impact of an optimal matching service would be on fertility rates.
edit: I think governments might do well to provide funding for dating apps (whether privately or publicly owned) based on how many matches from the app actually lead to children. Completely flip the classical incentives on their head. Should be easy enough to ask if newborns were a product of a participating app as part of the birth certification process.
What size of population are you considering for this hypothetical nation?
And which nations are scaled to a few billion people?
And they all date? Every single one of them? The married couples? The children and the elderly?
That's 1000 times smaller than your "few billion" scale, before you remove those already in partnerships or those who don't want to.
the government can switch up the incentives and for example make payment contingent on people actually using the platform as well as opening the tender to startup teams (usually they are locked out).
I honestly think that labeling corruption as corruption and a popular sentiment towards slamming a few people in jail for it would go a long way towards fixing these problems.
Instead even among the general public the sentiment is "government is just incompetent" which helps soften the reaction to it and thus indirectly encourages it to get worse.
There's no shortage of countries around the world that have dug themselves a corruption hole they struggle to get out of. It's easier to fix it starting from here than there but we don't want to end up there.
As a worse case example, you could succeed by matching people least likely to abort, but most likely to have multiple partners.
The modern trend of most families with 0-2 kids isn’t sustainable. We don’t need to go back to 5+ being the norm but a self stable society needs to be able to offset non parents thus requiring 3+ children families to be quite common.
That's a lot of bodies.
Which, in times of working from home, means 4 bedrooms, 2 offices, 1 living room.
Ideally with walls not built from paper mache, so that they can actually be used for encapsulation of different requirements.
Why do you need an entire room each for an office? I work in a corner of a bedroom, and have previously had a desk in a living room. I know lots of people who do the same. I know few families where both parents work from home. Where more than one person works from home they can share an office.
If people work from home to a large extent, less office space is required, so the cost of land should go down. It does not because most people are not working from home.
No one said that one cannot make do. One can always make do.
So that does sound like it is very much an issue. To someone, anyway. I don't really care. I have no horse in this race.
__
To cover the expected pedantic reply:
Of course technically it's everyone's problem. But just because it technically affects you doesn't mean that you have to emotionally involve yourself in stupid online discussions that don't comprehend systemic views and mistake them for personal whining.
Fuck that.
"Just stop preferring that"? Good luck enforcing that.
Even then, it would not solve any problems here, really.
I guess this will work for something like 10-20%? Maybe? (Speaking from a very german cultural background)
On one hand, all of this is understandable, but on the other hand these policies do indeed raise the cost of having children.
If we want them to have 3+ children, we need to reduce these sources of friction of doing so.
Lots of people don't want kids these days relative to 50 years ago, but even among those who do, they're delaying the process, often to the point where it becomes less ideal due to age. Many people who wanted kids when they were younger end up not having them as a result (and many who want them haven't had them yet).
Having a partner (or partners) to do it with is a significant factor for many, among other factors like concerns about affording food and housing for oneself, let alone for additional dependants.
Maybe they should have a Rebound app as well.
I give it about a month before they start gaming the algorithm to pair people who are likely to be on government benefits with people who can support them.
You make $150k, congratulations all your matches are McDonalds crew members.
You make $200k, the same but now they're all mentally ill because the algorithm deems you capable of supporting thyat too.
This is the primary worry with governments getting involved with dating apps, is it not?
Many of our countries are just one election cycle away from the politicians mandating that the official government dating app only incentivise Anglo-Saxon baby-making...
<insert bad faith comment about how it's ok because they're not literally sterilizing anyone and you can opt out of you want>
(bonus points if it's from an account that has a bunch of comments whining about interface defaults and algorithmic nudges matter in technical contexts)
Or at least to start practicing how to make babies.
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
> Keep supply of women high because men will pay anything for a chance?
Grindr has a different fix.
But on the other hand, if it appears "too limited" because the most desirable people disappear off quickly because of a successful match, maybe they'll still struggle to keep the users coming back to it even if they're actually doing a better job at matching people up...
Really depends whether the track record (assuming its good) becomes known enough to people, I'd guess.
On the other side you got a fresh supply on both sides from kids growing up to be adults and from adults divorcing and even if your matchmaking is perfect and divorce culturally shamed against, people still die which leaves widow(er)s behind, of whom a certain amount will want a new relationship.
Dating apps are a race to the bottom. They're collecting a tax on the lonely and desperate of dwindling populations. Ironically it's not sustainable over the long term.
The entire idea of just wanting MRR and be done with it is a huge, huge part why the world is so screwed. So much of the economy is just devolved into rich people seeking rents.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42609353
If you do a bad job - all the people see it as desparate, and leave, and you need to find new people to join
It's a high churn environment so there's no real way to make money from... er... bums on seats.. so there's no real choice but to make some sort of barrier forcing people to spend money
Spending a couple decades with the government putting it's thumb on the scale trying to get people who score high on government metrics to pair up with other people who score high on government metrics seems like a great way to start a civil war a couple generations down the line.
But I'm sure the marriages will be stable all the way there so there's that.
They got your birth record, your education records, your bank account details, your employment record. They can write themselves a warrant to dig through your life. The government already knows all this.
>chooses a mate for you.
You're not forced to marry whoever you match with in the app.
>This is beyond incentives, it is just perverse!
ok this is just slop
The important distinction here is no one is forced to marry anyone. This is entirely optional.
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.
Like, here in Europe we've got right-wing parties on the rise that have this conspiracy theory that the foreigners are moving here en masse to replace the locals (because of ??? they never explained, our jobs, benefits and women I suppose). So they spend a lot of time and effort fearmongering about the for'ners coming here and bring in laws and policies to keep them out.
Meanwhile they don't seem to be doing anything about those that already live here - you'd think these right-wing, own-people-first types would do anything to ensure people living here would thrive and reproduce. But no free child care, no major economic reform to allow single incomes to buy a house, none of that. Because ultimately it's not about foreigners or "own people first", it's about self-enrichment, got mine fuck you.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
That’s an irrational reaction, probably conditioned by ideology.
A well-run state has been perhaps one of the most successful enabling factors for human flourishing in human history.
Not if you think that your government isn't looking out for your best interests. A well run state is exactly what we need, but rarely what we have. Right now we see rising authoritarianism, less transparency, open bribery, more frequent and blatant lying, less accountability, more corruption, democratic backsliding, attacks on civil rights. etc. All that stuff is going to breed skepticism, and it really should. Eroding people's trust in government by actively working to corrupt it and impede it from functioning properly has been a very successful strategy.
And yours isn't?
Like it doesn't take much beyond a room temperature IQ to look at the arc of just about every government these days and make an estimation of where it's going without some substantial unforeseen change of course. The state of the world should merit a little pause and/or self doubt there.
>A well-run state has been perhaps one of the most successful enabling factors for human flourishing in human history.
Historically the states that have dabbled in this area of policy area has been "well run" in only the most dishonest "they accomplished their short term goals" sense of the phrase.
Many people trust the government for policing, military, central banking. Some not. Many trust them for health care and education, many not.
Very very few don’t trust the government for anything. So for this random example, a dating service, it feels like it’s ideological conditioning (otherwise the OP would explain why it feels bad for them).
careful, we have a very intelligent individual over here
> arc of just about every government
do you mean the US government?
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?
You've never seen this discussed as a drawback? I've seen it mentioned quite a bit. For instance, it came up on the last big thread on this just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915825
But this isn't raw Gale-Shapley-- the participants aren't ranking all hundreds/thousands of others. In particular, the preference matrix is based on identical mutual compatibility scores, so there's a unique stable solution (not multiple stable ones!), and there's no "side" that benefits, since the solution is identical no matter who does the "proposing".
In the UK male plus joint is roughly the same as female.
You also need to take the reasons into account as well as why. There are multiple reasons for this. The better off partner has more to lose from divorce, women tend to get custody of children, they might have different feelings of obligation to keep a marriage going (I cannot extrapolate this to other men, but I felt an obligation not to file for divorce until I had exhausted all other possibilities), social pressures and responses are different, etc.
This is absolutely not an accidental phenomenon, this is the optimal outcome for dating apps, because that's the only way to prevent women from finding what they are looking for too quickly (and then leaving the app).
These are on platforms where you have profile pics and jobs, front and center on your profile, and the algorithm learns from your preferences based on that. The questions on this platform seem to suggest that the algorithm matches based on anything but that, so perhaps we have different, more open-minded outcomes on what a good partner for someone is like rather than who the ideal man/woman is like.
For marrying: I suspect they are about as picky?
Is that modeling the problem correctly? It seems pretty rare for two partners to have equal amounts of love for each other.
If I have 10/10 love for Halle Berry, and she has 4/10 love for my Jeff-Bezos-looking ass, it's the 4/10 that's going to dictate whether we live happily ever after. So our mutual compatibility is probably well below 10/10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_of_stable_matchings
The problem is it's a lattice and not fully ordered. There are cases where there are two or more pairings that are worse for women and better for men, but we cannot determine which pairing is superior to the other overall.
“The active salesman got better sales than the person that just sat there and accepted offers? Outrageous!!!”
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.
Who pays men for their role in raising children? Some men are primary parents, and increasingly so.
theoretically some women could pay some quality fathers for coparenting , but it would be rare.
It sounds like your idea is that women get paid to have the joys of being a parent, while men pay to get nothing in return.
If the woman and children do live with the man then essentially you are recreating the idea of a male provider married to a housewife, except more transactional and unequal.
The current situation artificially limits supply of mothers because it requires relative exclusivity of the father. It’s like nimby people not wanting apartments in their cities to limit supply. Except imagine if nimby’s were able to ban apartments all over the world. That’s the situation with motherhood. It’s single family zoning world wide…
Of course it sounds dystopian and is not about to happen anytime soon. Because cartel’s don’t give up policies that limit supply so easily…
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.
The best summary I have seen: Average women are no longer interested in average men. More details: Since women became economic equals to men, they are no longer interested in their economic equals. They want men who earn (much) more money than them, and that makes those men very rare.
Specific to Sweden, is it really true that women now approach men? I heard about this trend in Denmark and Netherlands, but I am a bit suspicous because it is mostly anecdotal.
Childbirth might remain physical, but it is also extremely safe by historical standards. In the Uk the rate is just over one maternal death per 10,000 births including deaths shorty afterwards, compared to close to 50 in Victorian times (I think excluding subsequent deaths, although i am not sure).
Bearing children might remain physical, and bringing them up is hard work and goes on far longer than bearing them. IMO the solution it to change social expectations so men participate in raising children more. I see this is happening. its best of everyone: less of a load on women, men participate in the joy of having children properly, and kids grow up with better parental relationships and more parental attention in total.
Oh common. Those wars were not for the benefit of women. They were for the benefit of decision making men, the men who ruled. Which were not women. And the men in power sometimes used women as argument for why you should go invade this or that country, but then again appeal to patriotism was even stronger. There are limited situations, like Ukraine today which is defending where the "for other women and children" claim can kinda be made. And even there, fighers are motivated by more then just that.
Traditionally, you was fighting for your male ruler.
The war thing is not deal between sexes. Even today, men are more likely to support invasions, to support parties that lead country to wars.
I would like to see data supporting the idea that men are more likely to support parties that lead to wars, and if its true the reasons why.
In less safe societies and situations men were pressured to take the risks to shield women. "Women and children first". That definitely was to the advantage of women and the detriment of men.
> I would like to see data supporting the idea that men are more likely to support parties that lead to wars, and if its true the reasons why.
Men are more likely to support fascists - both in runup to WWII and now. You can see it in data. Large part of its appeal is warrior aesthetic and aggression. Also, men are more likely to vote republicans who are more hawks and start wars. The pro war parties and groups are dominated by men, because some men display their masculinity by endorsing wars. They think manly men should support war, they think it makes them manly, so they do. See Hegseth - he is basically a caricature of such man.
> In less safe societies and situations men were pressured to take the risks to shield women. "Women and children first". That definitely was to the advantage of women and the detriment of men.
When the plan crashes or there is a fight, there is no "women and children first". In actual ships wrecks, men were more likely to survive (so no, women had no precedes).
When the men are going to fight away, that is when they die more often. Men were obligated to stay in Ukraine while women and kids were allowed to stay. Men did major of Chernobyl work too. But, men complaining about "women and children first" they have seen in books, are no where near any situation where it might happen to them.
Besides, here is what I reacted to:
>Before, women would suffer the hardship and danger of childbirth, and in return men would take on the physical perils of war.
No, there was no such "deal" made. Childbirth being safer now does not change it, drones dont change it and world having more peaceful period last decades dont change it.
If your theory was true, it would be other way round. Poor women would be marrying and richer women would refuse marriage. That is not what we see in data.
Had one drop me for a professional DJ.
A friend of mine was convinced she was going to marry a famous basketball player.
You can guess how these "relationships" went.
Super average women with one or two OUTSTANDING characteristics (get it.)
It's a real problem.
Fortunately, I already had kids when we were both younger and dumber which might ultimately be the solution: keep humans off social media until they're grandparents.
Women are buying call options (hedge against rising prices) on men and the premium is the emotional damage that occurs when the market price on the guy falls below the strike price (turns out the man is a dud) and the woman refrains from pursuing the guy (no marriage).
It's poor in taste but I just can't unsee the similarity...
Commercial dating apps are a market for lemons - as a woman, you can't quickly assess whether a partner will be compatible with you or not without investing substantial time and effort. Hypergamy is the expected equilibrium - if you're not sure about the long-term compatibility, you might as well go off of looks or cues of status alone. I would expect the outcome distribution of an app with a much better matching algorithm to be drastically less concentrated in the upper tail. Moreover, a state-run dating app lacks the perverse incentive to keep you swiping, frustrated and jealous.
I... don't understand. Why do you think this is true for women but not men?
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.
Don’t they? Here in the UK at least participation in programs like that is a requirement of unemployment benefits. One has to attend a job center where one is given advice, sometimes training can get enrolled in trainung and etc. Not saying that they do a great job of it but they seems to at least try to do what you describe. At least nominally.
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.
Modern 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
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/state-mandated-girlfriend
But if it helps likeminded people to find each other, then it absolutely has some value.
Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906432
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.
You can then still apply your usual filters afterwards, such as smell, looks, vibes.
If I met them in real life first (cafe, supermarket, park, etc.), you can politely disconnect and move on if something seems off. The more that I do online dating, the more that I see this "vibe wall". Since third spaces aren't really coming back, I'm pretty sure that speed dating (or assisted group dating) is key. Sure, it is uncomfortable to meet many people so quickly (say an hour or two), it helps to get over the vibe wall. It could act like an artificial third space, but with a romantic intent.
I have an idea for a dating app: What if people could only make videos using in-app video recorder (and clipper)? This would completely remove the problem of photoshopping/filters. Plus, video can much better transmit "vibe" compared to photos and "profile". Example of something fun: Show a short video that is trending on TikTok (hand picked by staff), then ask someone to react to it. You can do the green screen effect, just like TikTok. It could be a nice way to visit someone's personality and check their vibe.
These are well defined criteria which can be queried upon.
However the ranking only works if both sides are honest.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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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...
especially for country like korea and japan ???? Yeah bro they need it
As Singaporean commenters have said, I think this is more of a positive eugenics scheme.
I don't understand your question.
Oh 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.