Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by engtech 4980 days ago
We all have a list of demands/requirements (eg: non-smoker, likes dogs, will put up with my !@#$).

Not all people are as blunt about it as this women.

What's always funny about these lists is that they are only based on your previous experience and are not necessarily real predictors of future success.

If anything a good catch is someone who you want to be with despite the fact they don't score well on your list of requirements.

I've always thought OK Cupid had one of the more interesting matching algorithms because they ask the users questions to get an idea of them, and let people rank how important a match on specific questions are to them. eg: religion (or lack of) are very important to some people, and not as much to others.

3 comments

> "If anything a good catch is someone who you want to be with despite the fact they don't score well on your list of requirements."

I couldn't agree more. In any form, finding someone via a list of demands/requirements is such a close minded approach to finding someone to be happy with.

"If anything a good catch is someone who you want to be with despite the fact they don't score well on your list of requirements."

Right on. I read about a social experiment (I think it was "Blink" or similar book) where before going on speed dating sessions people filled out a questionnaire prioritizing the requirements that they wanted in their ideal mate. After speed dating they ranked their dates and itemized their features.

It turns out that there was no correlation between what the subjects wanted or thought they want a priori and the features of the people they liked the most. When asked about this they just rationalized matching the contradictory data (they adjusted the people they liked to the old values or adapted the values to the people they liked, don't remember).

> What's always funny about these lists is that they are only based on your previous experience and are not necessarily real predictors of future success.

Probably the same reason and the same problems as with the stereotypical bullet-point-list job requirements.