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This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563 Also, here's my .02 re-posted from the comment
by asnyder 13y ago
This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7098563
Also, here's my .02 re-posted from the comments section:
Rather than answer the questions that were important to him he decided to find a set of people he thought he would like then only answer the questions they care about, and not even the way he would naturally answer them, rather he used an algorithm to determine the weight that would be best to get the highest match %. The fact of the matter is he could've spent a fraction of the time just answering all the questions honestly and with his honest weights and he would've found high matches too. Furthermore, he could've narrowed it down to just the kind of people he wanted through a normal search and then filter their questions based on what's important to them (which is a normal question filter on OkCupid).
So in fact what he did was pretty bad, violates OkCupid's TOS in numerous ways and at the end of the day wasn't honest to himself as he created specific profiles for his targets.
Honestly, we should not be celebrating this.
To recap what he did:
1. Didn't want to answer questions, so let's find all the questions that are important to everybody from the categories of people he thinks he likes based on clustering and then browsing a profile or two of people in that cluster. (He did this by creating numerous fake profiles and having those bots answer all the questions so he could scrape his targets question)
3. Create specific profile for his targeted group. With words and information that he knew they would like.
2. Answer ONLY the set of questions deemed important to those people. He answered these with weights determined by an algorithm that determined the best weight to achieve the highest match% rather than honestly.
3. WIth new found 99% matches go on dates with these people and follow normal dating process.
Now that we see the above broken down we can see that it's really not good. In fact, he was only answering what they wanted, and created profiles for them. But he wasn't being honest with himself or with his answers. If we're trying to match with everyone, which is essentially what he did, it's not that difficult to do. The fact that he eventually found someone is great, but the information used was faulty. Obviously there's no way he would be 99% with that many people normally.
- cocoflunchy 13y agoYeah, I feel like all he did in the end is find a way of getting a lot of people interested in his profile (by tweaking the score so that it would be as close as 100% as possible) and then go on a lot of dates.The real issue here is probably the asymmetry in male/female messages and requests rates on OkCupid...
- fchollet 13y agoI always thought that the messaging asymmetry on dating sites was purely a reflection of the real-world asymmetry of dating, where females will almost never initiate a flirt sequence themselves. The universal expectation is that it is the role of the male to manifest interest in, and worthiness of, the female. Not that I agree with this, but it would be difficult not to observe it. I remember reading somewhere that there were actually more female users of these dating sites. So the difference would be purely one of behavioral habits. Thinking about it, I can't think of a single animal species where the female is the one seeking out the males. Then again, evolutionary analogies are very un-PC around here.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago> females will almost never initiate a flirt sequence It's the opposite. In environments like parties and bars women subtly initiate most interactions. They maneuver closer and do the glance thing.
- judk 13y agoThey do, but men don't notice that. Men initiate conversation regardless, or women go home wondering why no one responded to their cues.
- klipt 13y ago> or women go home wondering why no one responded to their cues Same reason they ignore certain men - lack of attraction.
- ahomescu1 13y agoWomen generally don't go up to men and start talking or flirting. Glancing/maneuvering isn't overt initiation.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThere's no analogue to that in online dating though.
- jcc80 13y agoI celebrate this. Two people found love and are getting married. I think it's great. He answered all questions truthfully but let the code determine the weight of each answer. It's not like he wasn't giving honest answers. And yes, he created two profiles, but then deleted one. He wasn't sure which group of women he'd match up with best. I guess you see this as fundamentally dishonest but I think the couple says it best: “People are much more complicated than their profiles,” she says. “So the way we met was kind of superficial, but everything that happened after is not superficial at all. It’s been cultivated through a lot of work.” “It’s not like, we matched and therefore we have a great relationship,” McKinlay agrees. “It was just a mechanism to put us in the same room."
- asnyder 13y agoYes, but he ONLY answered those specific questions that were deemed important to his target audience. The fact that he answered these honestly is great, but he left out the set of questions that was important to him which would give him differing results and be more honest for his date. Also, weighting is somewhat important, by having an algorithm maximize this defeats the purpose. Yes, if the point was to get two people in a room I could possibly go with that argument, but he could've spent a fraction of the time answering questions and then following up with people and end up in the same room. This feels like a rube golderberg machine for a date. In any case I'm of course happy for him, but it rubs me the wrong way that this lying, manipulation, and outright disregard for the other users is being celebrated.
- jcc80 13y agoWell, he did answer questions before but with thousands upon thousands to choose from it would be pure chance that he would answer the same ones as the type of women he was interested in. Is it wrong when a person does something they wouldn't normally do to get noticed? For example, is asking for directions when you're not really lost to strike up a conversation "lying and manipulation"? Literally, I suppose it is but I hope dating sites learn from him. The point should be to get more people together to have more chances for "success".
- jey 13y agoYou're right that under the assumption that the OkCupid algorithms actually work, the best strategy is to just answer the questions honestly. If they don't really work all that well, just gaming it to give good results would be a rational strategy.
- oafitupa 13y agoYeah he shouldn't be getting married now, he should be following the ToS of some website.
- xixi77 13y agoWhat's wrong with managing questions? Sure, there are maybe 5-10 questions I would actually care about, and 10-20 questions that might be somewhat helpful to define my personality, but the rest are quite optional. And when you don't care much, you can near-randomly pick an answer that turns out to be disliked by someone, and turn noise into a negative signal. So why answer that at all?
- Houshalter 13y agoHe said that he answered the questions honestly and didn't lie on his profile. It was merely a matter of exploiting OKCupid's algorithms to get himself recommended to women he liked. And he was quite successful; How many men get 20 unsolicited messages a day or easily get 88 dates with attractive women. You suggest he should just trust OKCupid's algorithms to find people, but that's assuming that their algorithms are good in the first place, and that there isn't much competition from other men doing the same thing.