

Y Combinator Pushes The Envelope - bootload
http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/YCombinator-Pushes-The-Envelope.aspx

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attack
The idea that each person has a unique set of traits that will only allow
"deep compatibility" with another person who has another unique set of traits
is a theory that seems to be only believed by people who don't have a lot of
experience with relationships (no offense!).

Maybe the details of the implementation could change my mind, but in the end
this would probably be useful for little other than a marketing gimmick.

Is now really the best time for the online dating world? The best times seemed
to be shortly after the big sites we have now had just came into existence.
Now there social stigma of actually using them as such has become
overpowering. Bars though, don't really have this problem.

~~~
TomOfTTB
The success rate of a eHarmony.com would seem to disagree with you. In fact
I’d argue that the field of mathematics in general disagrees with you. Time
and time we find that mathematics can determine things that we never dreamed
it could. Things like “game theory” prove that the deeper we delve into
statistical analysis the more we are able to determine what someone will and
won’t do. I’m not saying its ever going to be 100% accurate but if we can
determine that x guy and y girl live happily ever after 85% of the time if
they share z traits that still gives us the ability to match people far more
successfully than we do now.

~~~
attack
The success of their marketing or of actually getting people hooked up? If
they were so successful then they'd lose all of their customers because they
would no longer need the site...

> I’m not saying its ever going to be 100% accurate but if we can determine
> that x guy and y girl live happily ever after 85% of the time if they share
> z traits that still gives us the ability to match people far more
> successfully than we do now.

Go ahead and even begin to try to find data to back up that big assumption. No
metric with such high correlation exists. This is my point.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Well, I guess my question to you would be: What would prove it to you?

The position you seem to have taken right now is that you believe no metric
exists and no matter who says there is one you won't believe it.

eHarmony has shown several reporters verifiable numbers proving 90 member
every day. I've never heard anyone dispute that claim. The only dispute is
what percentage of their members that actually represents. But lets say its a
pathetically small percentage, 20% or so.

The fact that they've achieved even limited success seems to indicate that the
idea has merit and that refinement of that idea could yield better results.

That's a theory backed up by mathematics. In the end relationships are just
two people choosing to join together and stick with each other which means a
discipline such as game theory which has been shown to effectively predict the
future actions of people could be a prototype for predicting relationship
success. Because staying in a relationship with someone is just a behavior.

------
endlessvoid94
Every once in awhile I'll feel very similar, like, "whoa, how cool is it that
we have all these potential ways of making technology work for us?"

It really is. It isn't cheesy. It's inspiring and exciting.

------
benjamincanfly
Melodramatic post. "Technology is cool."

~~~
TomOfTTB
Hey Ben,

I wrote the post in question and I actually registered with Hacker News for
the first time just to reply to you.

As far as your comment goes, I apologize in advance for being harsh, but get
over yourself.

Being aloof might be cool in high school but if your over the age of 18 you’re
old enough to realize that the world is too harsh to turn down any opportunity
to be in awe of it. The reason I chose to share my observation is because it
made me feel good about the world we live in and I thought it might make
others feel the same way. Quite frankly, I wish more people would do the same
and I wish you wouldn’t discourage them from doing so.

So yes, "Technology is cool" and we could all use as many reminders of that as
we can get our hands on.

~~~
bootload
_"... I wrote the post in question and I actually registered with Hacker News
for the first time just to reply to you. As far as your comment goes, I
apologize in advance for being harsh, but get over yourself. ..._ "

HN is attracting its share of _"1 quip snipers"_ , trolls that criticise but
not really bother to expand why & generally make a nuisance of themselves ~
<http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html> but we're not all like this.

 _"... But if you look outside of that self imposed box you see there's so
very much left to do in technology ... Now I've found that dating someone
gives me a tremendous opportunity in bars because rather than be a part of the
dating rat race I actually get to observe it as an outsider which is really
enlightening ..."_

This was the standout part of the post that struck a chord with me. It's the
reason I posted it. A hard problem at the moment I see at various levels is
the _"human"_ matching problem. I often wonder the reasons why this problem is
tackled so badly in software? Is it because the same thing that makes nerds
good at computing also degrade their ability to undertand _"human matching"_?

It's not just dating where solutions to this problem can be applied. It could
also be applied to anywhere you have a requirement for recruiting individuals
to interact with other people. Part of the reason why the problem domain is
not well understood by nerds could also be covered by the _"homo-logicus"_ ,
_"homo-sapiens"_ divide Alan Cooper describes in "Inmates are running the
Asylum". Funny enough this idea also partially explains Trolls. Nerds posting
insults like jocks giving wedgies.

The big problem with the matching humans from what I can gather talking to
people who try pure software solutions, is the lack of ground-truth. What
appears on a site just doesn't match real life. Nothing beats the opportunity
to evaluate a human in real-life. Any augmentation to help filter this process
may have pay-off in a lot of other areas.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Well first, thanks for posting this. Always nice to know someone enjoyed a
post. On what you said...

The big problem with the matching humans from what I can gather talking to
people who try pure software solutions, is the lack of ground-truth. What
appears on a site just doesn't match real life. Nothing beats the opportunity
to evaluate a human in real-life. Any augmentation to help filter this process
may have pay-off in a lot of other areas.

I think you’re right that people lie but I think statistics can, to a certain
extent, help with that. To give an example, let’s take a guy who loves Gilbert
and Sullivan musicals but is ashamed of it so he says he hates theater
productions. But then in response to other questions he reveals more truthful
answers.

Eventually, a statistical measurement will determine that Women who love
musicals match best with guys who claim not to as long as they fit those other
traits. So the computer never manages to decode the lie but it still, through
the magic of statistics, manages to make the match just the same.

I’m sure we’re years and years away from actually getting to the point of
having an effective system like this but just the fact that we seem to have
the power to do it is pretty amazing.

