The stable marriage problem and modern dating • Hacker News Board

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#11

Post by anikan_vader » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

>> The first graph demonstrates the O(n²) complexity of the algorithm. We can see that as the community grows larger, even by a small amount, the amount of iterations it takes to solve the matching problem grows exponentially.

This statement is contradictory. Probably the author is using "exponentially" to mean quick growth. I suppose this is alright in common parlance, but I find it disturbing when people describe a function as exponential just because it is a superlinear polynomial.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#12

Post by euix » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

albntomat0 wrote: post #8

euix wrote: post #6

Some interesting stuff there. I think you could also frame it as a explore vs exploit problem. If we assume there is a successive series of partners you could meet but only in sequence and you choose whether to "attempt to exploit, i.e. form a relationship" or pass and continue to explore. At which point should you commit such that it maximizes the expected gain (marginalizing over your lifespan)? It's like RL game e…

What you describe is called the "secretary problem", among other names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

Yes I just realized that, I never knew the formal name of it.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#13

Post by automatoney » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

zwkrt wrote: post #2

This is especially interesting as same-sex dating is even more skewed toward online interaction, probably just due to the fact that we make up only ~5% of the population; any person we meet in public is straight 19 out of 20 times [1]. [1] https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/...

What I'm wondering about is what the attractiveness distribution looks like for gay men and lesbians (and also bi/pan people, although there's probably less data to pull from there). I would guess that for gay dudes it matches the bell curve shape - anecdotally my experience of online dating more closely matches what my straight female friends see in terms of getting matches being easy. And also my conceptualiztion of same-sex attraction is "I'm attracted to men in the same way straight men tend to be attracted to women" NOT "I'm attracted to men in the same way straight women tend to be attracted to men." But I'm super interested in seeing how that plays out, especially given other confounding variables of being gay. And I have no idea what the lesbian curve would look like - I suppose I would predict it looks like the pareto distribution, but I have no idea.

Also the prevalence of "boyfriend twins" matches with what the site says - they end up with a partner of almost identical attractiveness because the curves for both of them match, and there's no bias in who makes the first move.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#14

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #3

Why would having a larger pool make dating harder? I think the author is confusing the probability of a “stable marriage” with the probability of a relationship . What this says is you’d expect cheating to go up. As Chris Rock says, “you’re only as faithful as your options.”

It's in the article.

Basically, dating in our modern world of few meaningful social connections is a vicious cycle for women. Men rate attractiveness on a normal distribution, women rate attractiveness on a pareto distribution. (ie. 80% of men are "meh" or worse to women.)

I've seen this in action in my personal and professional lives. Smart, attractive women end up implementing (knowinginly or unknowningly) a complex rules engine for screening an endless pool of available men. (Male criteria for engaging a woman online is very low.) When you are a 29 year old female only considering seriously dating attractive jewish/catholic/athiest, asian/black/hispanic/irish/white/etc men 6'1" or taller in professional jobs (generally speaking or a specific gig) who have attribute X, Y, or Z, you're screwed.

Men will usually stop filtering earlier. They still get into awful relationships, but they don't filter out 80% of the population.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#15

Post by k__ » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

"the top 20% of men hold 80% of cumulative attractiveness in the eyes of women" - OKCupid stats

As a guy who lives polyamorous, this is an interesting observation.

Many guys told me that they try the poly life, because if they don't have to be "the one" for a women, their potential partners would give them a chance even if they aren't a 100% fit.

Somehow, only a few guys end up with multiple women.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#16

Post by pengaru » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

anikan_vader wrote: post #11

>> The first graph demonstrates the O(n²) complexity of the algorithm. We can see that as the community grows larger, even by a small amount, the amount of iterations it takes to solve the matching problem grows exponentially. This statement is contradictory. Probably the author is using "exponentially" to mean quick growth. I suppose this is alright in common parlance, but I find it disturbing when people describe a…

Whenever I visit family in the midwest this phenomenon makes me twitch.

It seems people out there have taken to using "exponentially" as a pseudo-scientific word meaning "a lot". i.e. "you're making my job exponentially more difficult"

Edit: fixed typo :)

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#17

Post by mc32 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

zwkrt wrote: post #2

This is especially interesting as same-sex dating is even more skewed toward online interaction, probably just due to the fact that we make up only ~5% of the population; any person we meet in public is straight 19 out of 20 times [1]. [1] https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/...

I don’t think that’s necessarily true just as it would be for divorced seniors. People don’t typically randomly try to meet someone on the street (usually it’s against norms and may be categorized as “creepy”).

Most people meet the kind of people they are attracted to in places where they are likely to congregate.

In other words hardly any population has uniform distribution.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#18

Post by mistersquid » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

arvarik wrote: post #5

EGreg wrote: post #3

Why would having a larger pool make dating harder? I think the author is confusing the probability of a “stable marriage” with the probability of a relationship . What this says is you’d expect cheating to go up. As Chris Rock says, “you’re only as faithful as your options.”

Right, I should have made that a bit clearer. Modern dating is harder because the pursuit of a stable marriage is harder. Although this is all assuming people date to get married.

> Although this is all assuming people date to get married.

Tongue firmly in cheek, I bet a not insignificant number of people get married to stop dating.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#19

Post by fredowozhere » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #15

"the top 20% of men hold 80% of cumulative attractiveness in the eyes of women" - OKCupid stats As a guy who lives polyamorous, this is an interesting observation. Many guys told me that they try the poly life, because if they don't have to be "the one" for a women, their potential partners would give them a chance even if they aren't a 100% fit. Somehow, only a few guys end up with multiple women.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐑𝐀, 𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐥, 𝐌𝐆𝐓𝐎𝐖, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨𝐬

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#20

Post by theFeller00 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #3

Why would having a larger pool make dating harder? I think the author is confusing the probability of a “stable marriage” with the probability of a relationship . What this says is you’d expect cheating to go up. As Chris Rock says, “you’re only as faithful as your options.”

>why would more choices make making a decision harder

fucking what?