The stable marriage problem and modern dating • Hacker News Board

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#171

Post by k__ » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

mobilejdral wrote: post #136

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the top 20% of men hold 80% of cumulative attractiveness in the eyes of women" - OKCupid stats Also seems to hold up on Tinder: https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...

When men swipe right on almost every single woman no matter their interest it results in the women having tons of matches to pick from. There is no incentive to not pick from the top of the list. Even after reading through the profiles and discarding many of the men with a big enough pile there is only so much time in the day to talk with the guys so why not start with the more attractive ones?

AFAIK you can't swipe right only a few times a day.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#172

Post by likelybear » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #155

likelybear wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard no's are fine in the classic stable marriage problem. "Remain single" gets added as an option to each person's preference list, then you can run Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance more-or-less as normal with each person on the accepting side starting with "remain single".

The original formulation of the problem is looking for a bijection / perfect matching. That isn't always possible if "remain single" is an option. I agree with you and your sibling that modifying the problem is possible, but it won't always produce a perfect matching which is what I meant by unsolvable.

Given this appears in Gale and Shapley 1962, I'd say it is part of the original formulation (though they do it by saying people are simply not allowed to apply to colleges where they'd be a hard no rather than apply and be rejected). They're looking at stable matchings for college admissions, not perfect matchings.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#173

Post by zzzzzzzza » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #59

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised that while men apparently rate women's attractiveness on a bell curve, women seem to rate men on a Pareto distribution. Considering how much I hear about beauty standards and how they harm women, I almost never hear anything about male beauty standards. If society is to be improved by having more realistic female beauty standards, then there's apparently a lot more headroom for society to be impr…

Unrealistic beauty standards are absolutely a problem for both men and women, the difference is that in society, men can be valued for other things (occupation, knowledge, athletics) and that is much less true for women.

men can be valued for other things (occupation, knowledge, athletics) and that is much less true for women

very strongly disagree, maybe this is true in some subset of the dating world, or non western countries, but that's it.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#174

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #112

I am interested in how dating apps are changing humanity. Starting with three assumptions: 1. Over several generations of successful partnering, Human cognition has become really good at estimating someone's "rank" as a potential mate (in the stable marriage problem sense). 2. Language, modern UX design schemes and dating apps do not have sufficient bandwidth to communicate all the signals needed to "rank" a potentia…

>3. Dating apps present the lowest bandwidth signals first (photograph, age, height etc) and expand out to higher bandwidth signals after an initial screening (Language, communication, cultural similarity etc in messages).

The rest can be usually be surmised with a quick chat about where you grew up/live, the universities you attended, the firm you work at, and what you do for a living. After that, any nuances would probably require spending time with the other person, when the other person finally lets their guard down and you can see who they might be in the long term.

It could also be trivial for one of these dating apps to pull credit reports and incorporate them when offering matches, as well as asking the candidates to submit their last 3 to 5 years of tax returns.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#175

Post by klyrs » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

likelybear wrote: post #172

klyrs wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original formulation of the problem is looking for a bijection / perfect matching. That isn't always possible if "remain single" is an option. I agree with you and your sibling that modifying the problem is possible, but it won't always produce a perfect matching which is what I meant by unsolvable.

Given this appears in Gale and Shapley 1962, I'd say it is part of the original formulation (though they do it by saying people are simply not allowed to apply to colleges where they'd be a hard no rather than apply and be rejected). They're looking at stable matchings for college admissions, not perfect matchings.

Fair enough :)

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#176

Post by k__ » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #170

k__ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. When you value intimate encounters with people you care about, there is an upper limit, even if you have multiple women waiting to date you. The only ways to get those numbers up without going casual is to remove other things from your life or get bisexual partners so you can consolidate, and well, even that has its limit.

The upper limit is, what, 4 or so new partners a day? That's probably how some rock and porn stars live (at least a part of their lives). But even being far below that limit (e.g. one new partner a month for a few years) will statistically place in the extreme tail.

I said, without going casual, so the limit is far lower.

I don't work much, and besides friends and alone time I can handle 4 partners.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#177

Post by tropdrop » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #112

I am interested in how dating apps are changing humanity. Starting with three assumptions: 1. Over several generations of successful partnering, Human cognition has become really good at estimating someone's "rank" as a potential mate (in the stable marriage problem sense). 2. Language, modern UX design schemes and dating apps do not have sufficient bandwidth to communicate all the signals needed to "rank" a potentia…

The lowest bandwidth signals are not enough to secure reproductive success. It would be enough only in the scenario where the lured (with a nice photo) dating app user is immediately kidnapped when meeting the photo fabricator for the first time (and "prompted," to put it delicately, to reproduce). Even then, there is birth control.

The higher bandwidth signals (shared values, etc.) are what is used to determine a suitable match for reproduction, especially in more developed societies. You can see those values occasionally supersede actual romantic compatibility when it is common in some professionally competitive places (less time for dating - Bay Area, New York...) for two people in their 30s to agree to have a child together outside of marriage and with shared custody only because they

a) want a child b) have not yet found a suitable romantic partner c) the reproductive "partner" has shared values

That, in my opinion, is more likely to change humanity, especially as the above article demonstrates how much harder dating has become for everyone.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#178

Post by pc86 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

toby wrote: post #80

watwut wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because long term marriage is a lot about your tendency to create long term emotional ties to people. It is also about your willingness to think about relationship itself and put work on it. It is also about selection, but much more about ability to weed out abusive people and selfish people and so on. Of course also compatibility, clean freak will never be happy with messy person. And those abilities form a lot in c…

I agree with this generally. For most people I know in happy marriages it's not because they figured out exactly what they wanted and found "the one" -- as much as they love their partners there are probably a lot of people they would have been happy with.

Yes, if you're not religious it's actually pretty ridiculous to believe that there is a "perfect person" for you. To paraphrase The Office, if that were true they're probably in China or India anyway so most of the readers here are out of luck.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#179

Post by neutronicus » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #134

zwkrt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP of the thread here. Things that straight people stereotypically do that gay men stereotypically do not understand: - Treating every person you date like a potential spouse instead of a potential friend - Getting upset when your partner finds someone else attractive - Caring about how many sexual partners someone has had in the past - Remaining sexually monogamous in a relationship that has lost its sexual energy (…

> Things that straight people stereotypically do that gay men stereotypically do not understand: - Bog down with mortgages and children instead of hopping around the world, partying.

Why are those the only two choices? This is definitely how every woman I have dated (including my wife) has seen it - if we ain't raisin' kids in a house we damn well better be burning a fuckton of jet fuel. Not willing to entertain "just work a lot less" as even a joking third path.

I opted for a kid and a mortgage because at least this way maybe one day me "and my son" will build an electromagnetic rail accelerator[1] and remote-controlled gliders and fly them around together.

The serious answer to that question is probably because straight couples mostly have biological children, with the associated biogenic time pressure driving FOMO. Adoption or surrogacy can in theory be put off indefinitely and I imagine a lot of male-male couples wind up doing just that.

[1] Terminology intentionally changed from "rail-gun" to emphasize peaceful applications to my gun-hating wife.

Re: The stable marriage problem and modern dating

#180

Post by abnercoimbre » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

zwkrt wrote: post #130

Enginerrrd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>See, we wouldn't know how to answer this! Certain ways our straight friends describe their love interests sound foreign to us.. That sounds intriguing. Care to elaborate at all with any examples?

GP of the thread here. Things that straight people stereotypically do that gay men stereotypically do not understand: - Treating every person you date like a potential spouse instead of a potential friend - Getting upset when your partner finds someone else attractive - Caring about how many sexual partners someone has had in the past - Remaining sexually monogamous in a relationship that has lost its sexual energy (…

This is within the same ballpark of stuff I was thinking about!

Also, we're both Seattle-area engineers, leading very career-oriented lives. One reason for marrying would be to mitigate financial risk when one of us tries to do something crazy.

Funny enough, our simple desire to leave a professional legacy has helped our immediate family greatly (e.g. I'm the one my parents or straight siblings go to for big cash emergencies, etc.)