Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#21

Post by beachstartup »

fiatmoney wrote: post #14
burgers wrote: post #11

The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff conclusions. For example: > As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13 percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated African-American women 25 percent less attractive. That is an insane generalization going on. What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who tend to participa…

Why is it "dangerous"?

because it doesn't subscribe to his fantasyland world where all people are equal in the sexual marketplace.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#22

Post by nether »

beloch wrote: post #12
cbhl wrote: post #5

I really enjoyed reading OkTrends posts, but having near radio silence for three years (apart from one post last July) followed by a full-on PR blitz for a new book (comes out on Tuesday) makes me a little sad. This piece almost makes it sound as if Rudder has been blogging based on OkCupid results this whole time... and if you go to the OkTrends site, you see huge inline placement for Rudder's new book.

OKTrends went dormant when OKCupid was sold to the company that operates match.com. I don't know what Rudder's involvement with OKCupid was after that, but he was no longer one of the owners. He might have still worked there, but kept his blog silent under pressure from management.

Pressure from management? Sam Yagan is still the site's CEO. Also the pressure must have failed because he's releasing a whole book about his findings now, not just blog posts.

You people are ridiculous.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#24

Post by Natsu »

nether wrote: post #22
beloch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OKTrends went dormant when OKCupid was sold to the company that operates match.com. I don't know what Rudder's involvement with OKCupid was after that, but he was no longer one of the owners. He might have still worked there, but kept his blog silent under pressure from management.

Pressure from management? Sam Yagan is still the site's CEO. Also the pressure must have failed because he's releasing a whole book about his findings now, not just blog posts. You people are ridiculous.

Most of us have not forgotten the "why you should never pay for a dating site" analysis that vanished, nor will we any time soon.

EDIT: Might as well link to it while I am at it - http://machinesentience.com/why_you_should_never_pay_for_onl...

Also, I know the explanation they gave. I don't give a damn whether anyone was pressured into taking it down and they never bothered to actually explain what was wrong with the original analysis, identify the 'public sources' used, or to do anything but try to bury the story with a cheap excuse and hope we'd all forget.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#25

Post by burgers »

beachstartup wrote: post #17
burgers wrote: post #11

The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff conclusions. For example: > As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13 percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated African-American women 25 percent less attractive. That is an insane generalization going on. What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who tend to participa…

> That is an insane generalization going on. yes, it can be shocking to be presented with plainly spoken, cold hard facts when you grow up in and are surrounded by a sterile bubble of non-fact-based discourse. especially in a topic as taboo as dating, sex, race, and marriage. this is called cognitive dissonance. trust me, as an asian american male, none of the cold facts of reality were ever hidden from me behind a f…

So while its fun to play around with data, these are not real insights. The very idea that they can think some metric you've gathered via an online app can determine whether someone finds someone else attractive is goofy. But then publicly publishing that narrative, which is straight up pseudo science, is dangerous as people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say stuff like, "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that they all think black women are ugly".

Grow up and take some responsibility for the world around you.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#26

Post by burgers »

Hermel wrote: post #16
burgers wrote: post #11

The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff conclusions. For example: > As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13 percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated African-American women 25 percent less attractive. That is an insane generalization going on. What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who tend to participa…

They report correlation, not causation. What you ask for, is that they should put much more effort into researching cause and effect or not publish the data at all. But I for one prefer having data in this form than none at all. Anyone who is reading hackernews every now and then should know about "correlation != causation" by now.

No, I think if they are going to make the generalizations, they need to publish the data they used to make those generalizations. Its the fact that okCupids data is private and proprietary combined with the publishing of correlations that is unethical.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#27

Post by beachstartup »

burgers wrote: post #25
beachstartup wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is an insane generalization going on. yes, it can be shocking to be presented with plainly spoken, cold hard facts when you grow up in and are surrounded by a sterile bubble of non-fact-based discourse. especially in a topic as taboo as dating, sex, race, and marriage. this is called cognitive dissonance. trust me, as an asian american male, none of the cold facts of reality were ever hidden from me behind a f…

So while its fun to play around with data, these are not real insights. The very idea that they can think some metric you've gathered via an online app can determine whether someone finds someone else attractive is goofy. But then publicly publishing that narrative, which is straight up pseudo science, is dangerous as people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say stuff like, "I read online that they…

> "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that they all think black women are ugly"

what you're doing is called "projection" - you're taking your own thoughts, and assuming others have the same ones.

ironically, i bet you're a white guy - because all of the black, latino, asian guys i know talk about this stuff openly. in general, my white friends find this kind of talk extremely unsettling and uncomfortable.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#28

Post by mpweiher »

Chinjut wrote: post #20
paulhauggis wrote: post #18

I'm still not sure why this article is equating preference with racism. If I'm attracted to white women and I'm white, it has nothing to do with racism.

What does it have to do with?

Preference.

See Wikipedia.

"Racism consists of both prejudice and discrimination based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples" ... "In sociology and psychology, some definitions only include consciously malignant forms of discrimination.[4][5] While some consider any assumption that a person's behavior is tied to their racial categorization is inherently racist, regardless of whether the action is intentionally harmful or pejorative, because stereotyping necessarily subordinates individual identity to group identity"

So if you just prefer one group, that's not racist, as far as I can tell. If you make claims about a group's behavior based on race, that's racist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#29

Post by jeorgun »

paulhauggis wrote: post #18

I'm still not sure why this article is equating preference with racism. If I'm attracted to white women and I'm white, it has nothing to do with racism.

Individual preference (it seems to me) isn't racist, but in aggregate it at the very least raises questions about where those widespread preferences come from.

Re: OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

#30

Post by burgers »

beachstartup wrote: post #21
fiatmoney wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it "dangerous"?

because it doesn't subscribe to his fantasyland world where all people are equal in the sexual marketplace.

This has nothing to do with my "fantasyland" or wanting everyone to be equal. Its about making racial and other generalizations without publishing the full data with it. Racial and gender generalizations are dangerous things for a society. If you are going to go down the road of pointing out these things, you need to do it with extra caution and transparency.
Post reply on HN