4 ms·
Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one that's in whatever you measur
by lordnacho 1y ago
Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one that's in whatever you measure to be in your league (better than all the ones you saw previously, but I wonder how many people are really going with that). If you're on an app, that's a lot of people.
At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar.
But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match.
Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on.
If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.
- krackers 1y agoMaybe we need to spread the word about the optimal stopping rule [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
- 0x264 1y agoThe secretary problem is a bad way to formalise the problem of dating and the stopping rule doesn't work in that context, for a very simple reason. The secretary problem is a solution to the problem of having to make repeated choices. In essence it's a solution to the problem of having to choose a secretary every morning for the day. You can even say it's a solution to the problem of a computer process spending a few seconds consuming an infinite stream at the top of every hour for the next hour. It's not a solution to the problem of making a (hopefully) unique choice.
- KolibriFly 1y agoThere's less "maybe someone better is one swipe away" and more "this is who's here tonight"