khafra comments on Feed the spinoff heuristic! - Less Wrong

49 Post author: CarlShulman 09 February 2012 07:41AM

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Tags: academia science verification contrarianism parapsychology

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Comment author: khafra 11 February 2012 01:15:23AM 4 points [-]

Contrary evidence:

“To date, there is no compelling evidence that any online dating matching algorithm actually works,” Finkel observes. “If dating sites want to claim that their matching algorithm is scientifically valid, they need to adhere to the standards of science, which is something they have uniformly failed to do. In fact, our report concludes that it is unlikely that their algorithms can work, even in principle, given the limitations of the sorts of matching procedures that these sites use.”

Comment author: Desrtopa 12 February 2012 05:57:40AM *  3 points [-]

I don't know if any of the dating sites they reviewed use a similar system to OkCupid (users answer questions and also pick how they want matches to answer those questions and how important they are to them,) but I don't think OkCupid was included in that study. The author wrote that the matching algorithms of the companies they reviewed are proprietary, and were not shared with the researchers, but OkCupid's matching algorithm is publicly available.

Comment author: thomblake 13 February 2012 04:36:38PM 0 points [-]

In fact, our report concludes that it is unlikely that their algorithms can work, even in principle

That's a rather strong claim. Matching people up completely at random can work in principle.

Comment author: khafra 13 February 2012 06:05:26PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps by "work" they meant "do better than letting people choose solely based on reading a short essay and seeing a picture," although that sounds difficult to make precise. Maybe just "do better than random." We might have to wait until they publish.

Comment author: thomblake 13 February 2012 06:26:05PM 1 point [-]

Again, it's the "even in principle" I was objecting to. Picking people at random can in principle do better than letting people choose solely based on reading a short essay and seeing a picture. And uniformly random algorithm A can in principle do better than uniformly random algorithm B.

Saying something isn't possible "even in principle" specifically means that it cannot happen in any logically possible world - that's the entire difference between saying "even in principle" and leaving it out. It can't even accidentally win.

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