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sixes_and_sevens comments on Where to Intervene in a Human? - Less Wrong
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There are a few answers to this:
OKCupid does actually ask quite a lot of personal questions, which people do answer. A few years ago the answers were kept private, but now users have the option to make them public, and there exists a certain amount of pressure to do so. I imagine this change results in less honest / accurate answers, but you would still be surprised what people admit to.
The service wouldn't have to tell you it was keeping track of your self-esteem over time, and matching you with concordant suitors at points when you'd both be most vulnerable to each other's charms. It would just ask you questions, like a curious but candid friend.
The questions I proposed above were gauche semi-serious examples. There are probably a number of more subtle questions that would correlate strongly with self-esteem without setting off alarm bells in the people that answer them.
Part of the reason for me talking about it is how unpalatable and creepy the idea is, and how a lot of the factors surrounding people being attracted to each other are not available to dating website service providers without a lot of effort they're probably not prepared to invest. There are probably some areas they can capitalise upon, however.
This isn't something that requires alarm bells. This is a dating website. Full signalling and screening mode is activated as a matter of course. It is extremely unlikely that I could benefit from giving the system evidence that I have low self esteem so I am not going to do so unless all else is compellingly not equal. I suppose this also requires being able to judge what questions have what self-esteem connotations but that isn't too hard.
It occurs to me that I play OkCupid as a min-maxing munchkin. (I recommend this. It seems to work!)
I don't find it especially creepy. Sounds useful. I want the website to take whatever information I give it and connect me with people in the most effective way possible. Anything I don't want it to know I will not tell it (I will lie to it if necessary).
Elaborate, please?
I would bet a sizeable sum of money that most users do not approach OKCupid in the same way you or I do, consciously or otherwise.
Some supporting evidence.
That's the sort of thing this algorithm is supposed to flag up.
I hope you aren't on Twitter.
Oh sweet Jesus there are more than five pages...