If one is able to improve how people are matched, it would bring about a huge amount of utility for the entire world.

People would be happier, they would be more productive, there would be less of the divorce-related waste. Being in a happy couple also means you are less distracted by conflict in the house, which leads to people better able to develop themselves and achieve their personal goals. You can keep adding to the direct benefits of being in a good pairing versus a bad pairing.

But it doesn't stop there. If we accept that better matched parents raise their children better, then you are looking at a huge improvement in the psychological health of the next generation of humans. And well-raised humans are more likely to match better with each other...

Under this light, it strikes me as vastly suboptimal that people today will get married to the best option available in their immediate environment when they reach the right age.

The cutting-edge online dating sites base their suggestions on a very limited list of questions. But each of us outputs huge amounts of data, many of them available through APIs on the web. Favourite books, movies, sleep patterns, browsing history, work history, health data, and so much more. We should be using that data to form good hypotheses on how to better match people. I'm actually shocked at the underinvestment in this area as a legitimate altruistic cause.

If an altruistic group of numbers-inclined people was to start working together to improve the world in a non-existential risk reducing kind of way, it strikes me that a dating site may be a fantastic thing to try. On the off-chance it actually produces real results, Applied Rationality will also have a great story of how it improved the world. And, you know, it might even make money.

Thoughts? Any better options?