"Take the 8^8 test and the likelihood of someone else answering in the exact same pattern as yourself is 1 in 16,777,216"
That requires A) the distribution of answers is even across all 8 options, and B) there are zero correlations between any two answers in the quiz.
Not to mention that the 8 questions have to pretty accurately split the space of human personalities down into eigen-answers that explain the most variance in personality.
And there's just no way to do pick these questions without having the data to analyze in the first place.
Thank you for putting into clear words my gut impression that this wouldn't produce the intended result.
I wonder if you couldn't do better with binary questions. I'm reminded of the site http://www.correlated.org/.
Suppose you were to ask a bunch of binary questions, and then use some statistics to find questions that have fairly evenly distributed and non-correlated results, then take 24 of the best questions by those criteria (arbitrary, but 2^24 = 8^8) and find matches.
So basically, ask a whole bunch of binary questions, find ones with roughly 50-50 answers that don't correlate with each other, make the match-ups based on those and ignore the others.
It could be argued that certain types of people are more likely to exist and thus more are matched.
EG:
The very first question about what you do at a party.
The "sit on the couch and observe" type of person is probably one of the more rare options than the "center of attention" or "dancing with people" or whatever other options there were (I forget the options I didn't pick myself)
I'm not a party goer and there wasn't an option to not attend the party. So I'd be on the couch watching other people. Not particularly a popular thing to do at parties.
The survey instrument could be perfectly constructed and the methodology still grossly flawed.
Because the population only consists of people who are willing to take the test [and have internet access and speak English etc.] generalizing the data is problematic at best.
It's fascinating (not being snarky) that this post has received about 50+ votes since I first saw it, and I've not once been able to pull the site up completely (never made it past the bot detection, and most of the time, won't even come up).
So I'm trying to understand the phenomenon:
- HN folks are bookmarking it for later based on comments (even though it may/may not be worthy of a +1)
- HN folks are +1'ing it based on the idea derived from the comments
- Those +1'ing it are actually able to make it through (though it doesn't seem so based on most of the comments)
The fascinating part to me is that, assuming it's one of the first two, how much +1's an (arguably) broken link can get based on comments.
The idea sounds interesting, and the site may very well be +1 worthy.
HN traffic can crash a site. Do you know how many thousands of PVs HN can send to a site? That out of those thousands, 50 would +1, that isn't a stretch.
Also, you also have to account for people who clicked +1 in the early life of the link, where it wasn't being crushed, and lead more people to it.
Very few of us are lucky enough to come across our
soulmate within our lifetimes. We tend to choose our
friends and spouses from the limited pool of people
available in our immediate vicinity: students at our
schools, people who live in our neighborhoods,
colleagues at our workplaces. Statistically, it is
extremely unlikely that we will come across our
soulmate.
First off, the notion of "soulmate" is bogus romantic nonsense, and the notion that the person most compatible with us is just like us is demonstrably false. My father and I were very similar to each other and fought and argued all the time, because we were both cantankerous, ornery and contrary.
My life-partner and I--who are as close to "soulmates" as anyone can be to that basically ridiculous idea--are very similar in some respects, very different in others. The areas where we complement each other are as important as the ones where we reinforce each other.
More importantly, the claim that there is some great unexplored mass of humanity where our "soulmate" lurks is bogus. There are only 5000 people in the world. Maybe fewer. If there were more we wouldn't keep running into each other all the time.
That is, the number of people in our tribe is surprisingly small, and anyone who is sufficiently similar to us to answer the questions the same way is already almost certainly a member of it, so dipping into the pool of random strangers across the world is unlikely to improve the odds much in most cases, and citing an anecdote or three--which some people will be tempted to do--does not change this fact. The human social graph is full of islands.
Finally, to work as advertised the test requires that answers to the questions are uncorrelated, which is almost certainly not the case. So most people will find themselves with hundreds of "soulmates", a very few will have none. Unique matches will be extremely rare.
It's a superficially fun idea that turns out to be more of a monument to the failure to understand probability than anything else.
There is NO way that performance should be so bad given current load.
Some of the questions are frustrating. For instance question #4 is "YOU SAVE AN OLD LADY'S LIFE. IN GRATITUDE SHE GIVES YOU $100,000. WHAT DO YOU DO WITH MOST OF IT?" The obvious answer for me is, "Save it." But all possible answers are ways to spend it or give it away. I chose "Move to a nicer neighborhood", but that really is NOT who I am...
There seems to be an awful lot of gratuitous negativity going on here.
The site was on Reddit yesterday, now it's on the front page of HN. Maybe the author can't throw a lot of resources at it, or they used the project as an excuse to learn a new stack. Who knows.
Maybe it was slow for you. Maybe it's not a mathematically sound idea. Maybe the questions aren't ideal. The CAPTCHA isn't ideal.
I don't see anyone being "mean," and I don't see anyone criticizing the author. Yes there's some negativity, but it's not negativity for the sake of being negative---they are fair points.
The idea of being 1 in 8x8 is a novel idea to me, but after reading a few comments here I found that it's not really sound.
One thing that really stands out to me that I haven't seen explicitly mentioned here is the fact that humans are not simply 8 dimensional. At a party, maybe sometimes I like to chill at the couch for a bit, then get to meet some new people, exchange some numbers, meet up with friends, etc...
And the same goes for any other question. $100k can go a long way, but I'd like to save some, spend some, donate some, etc.
Like I said, I like the idea of the project, but the idea that any open-ended question can have only 8 unique answers is not so sound.
There's a difference between gratuitous negativity and criticism of an idea. To quote the article introducing the guideline:
> By [gratuitous negativity] we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment.
I would say that what I've seen here tends to be constructive. Even the criticisms of speed are not gratuitous - they're about an important issue affecting the site.
I do see some comments that are needlessly negative, so props for the reminder, but I wouldn't call it "an awful lot".
> There seems to be an awful lot of gratuitous negativity going on here.
There isn't much negativity above your comment, no-one above you has criticized the speed or the CAPTCHA. Were you referring to a specific comment without using the reply-to feature? Are you saying the HN community is "mean" about it?
Most people on HN are very positive even if the project is slow, because everyone knows what it means to be on the top page of HN.
This whole thing has been done before and in a way that allowed the questions to be crowdsourced, not just one person coming up with what he/she thinks are meaningful.
On OKCupid, There are thousands of questions, many of them penned by users. You choose which questions to answer, then mark how important this question is to you. You also choose the answer you want your partner to have. For example:
Are you looking for a partner to have children with?
[] yes
[] no
Answer(s) you’ll accept
[] yes
[] no
Importance
[] a little
[] somewhat
[] very
If this question were not at all important to you, you would just not answer it.
IIRC, OkCupid also has a "not at all important" option; that way, you could answer "yes" to the hypothetical question without caring about someone else's answer (while at the same time providing an answer for somebody else who does care about the answer).
It's cool, but it kind of reminds me of Ok Cupid back in the day when they would ask you 200 questions about your personality, and then it would match you with people who gave similar answers. I went on dates with a couple people who were 99% matches, expecting love at first sight, only to find that in real life we didn't click at all. It seems that there are many dimensions to human interaction that are not easily captured by these kinds of quizzes.
Took quite a while due to the site crashing several times, but I finished it.
I think of it as an interesting experiment - even if nothing ends up coming from it.
My largest concern is there are about 3 questions where I was torn between two answers. I'm thinking I should create email addresses to "cover every base" by alternating my answers on those 3 questions in every permutation. On the other hand, I would feel a bit bad for using up some of the "freebies" that legitimate people might miss out on and have to pay the small fee.
@ColinWright
>8^8 should be thought of less as a scientific black box, but as a friend who claims to know someone you'll hit it off with, and wants the two of you to get together. It might be wrong, but it could very well be right.
> On the other hand, I would feel a bit bad for using up some of the "freebies" that legitimate people might miss out on
I wonder what the legality of publishing their questions and answers are. If we can duplicate their questions and answers, people could find each other on twitter with a hashtag: #my8x8is{answer 1}{answer 2}...{answer 2}
Yeah, the site is painfully slow. A site with a multiple choice test should handle thousands of users at a time with a tiny server. How is this thing made?
I know this sounds mean-spirited, but it's not. I'd be interested to know how this was developed as an example of what not to do. I wonder what the architecture is (and how it could/should be improved).
To prevent abuse, we need to ensure that
everyone taking the 8^8 test is a human
and not a bot. Click on all of the icons
below that represent animals.
And then the site is so slow it only shows me 5 of 7 images, the other two failing to load.
Good one.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cute idea, although I have to say that I'm not sure I'd get along with someone who thinks exactly as I do.
Edit: I've passed the spam test and started the "test" - most of the answers are "none of the above" or "any one of these 4". The usual frustrating experience. I mean:
At a party you...
...listen in fear at the sounds of people who enjoy other people, observe small material details as though you were an anthropologist encountering alien beings, depend on searching for beer to consume time, and occasionally find someone who is amused by your off-kilter humor, but who ultimately is not really anyone you're likely to form a meaningful sober bond with?
Oh, apparently I have to actually be remotely ok in social settings. Seriously, what the fuck.
yeah. About six of the eight questions offered no selection that was in any way a meaningful answer for me. So apparently this matching algorithm it going to find that one in sixteen million person that randomly selected six out of eight answers the same, and completely agrees with me on two points.
The point is that, like many polls, the questions are very leading, and take a distinctly biased approach. For example, the question about what to take away that would change who you are. The options are all very idealized, and sound like they come off a dating website (ok..., maybe that what this intends to be.) Almost none of the possible answers seem likely to be an answer in keeping with the "being honest" directive. If the question was more of "what is your idealized opinion of yourself" it might have a real answer.
I can't speak on behalf of anyone else, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want someone just like me as a best friend.
To assemble an effective RPG party, you need multiple roles, like warrior, wizard, cleric, and rogue. Effective RL social circles work the same way. I'm more of an interjecting quipsniper or a technical sidebarbarian, and I really rely on other people to carry the majority of a conversation. If I were to hang out with a copy of myself, there would be no conversation to add zingers, counterpoints, and trivia to.
There's only so much of that crap that other people can take before it gets annoying, so there's not much use in adding two to the same party, unless they're scripted, like Crow and Tom Servo.
Also, I have a theory of conversation that keys on conversational coefficients. If a group of people are having a conversation, you add together their coefficients. If the sum is one, you have a very natural, comfortable conversation. If it is less than one, you experience some uncomfortable lulls. If it is greater than one, some people get interrupted, can't finish sharing their thoughts, or are excluded. If the coefficient approaches two, separate simultaneous threads of conversation will form, and participants will spontaneously rearrange or split themselves between conversations so as to make each one have a coefficient sum as close to one as is possible.
People don't have a fixed coefficient. They can adjust it within a certain range, that is somewhat dependent on atmosphere and subject matter. For instance, a lecturer who can teach an entire class without losing the attention of the audience can stretch up to 1.0 for conversations, but probably only for that one topic. Someone who has trouble yielding conversational priority may have a lower limit somewhere above 0.5. I suspect that most people can easily handle a range from 0.2 to 0.5. But I max out at probably a 0.4, on very few topics, so my "soul mate" would need to be much more talkative than I am, not at the same level, because it would take at least three of me to have a good conversation.
Presumably many more people are taking the test. They should have just hosted this on whatever google sheets does with questionnaires. It seems a bit silly to want millions of people to take your quiz, but not have the resources available to serve it.
There is a widespread idea that the way to find true love is to spend all your effort searching for one optimal partner.
Here is an alternative algorithm: spend some effort finding a good enough partner, and at least as much effort building a good relationship with him or her.
I like this site: it shows the widespread idea in its purest form. Kind of a reductio ad absurdum.
[+] [-] gattis|11 years ago|reply
That requires A) the distribution of answers is even across all 8 options, and B) there are zero correlations between any two answers in the quiz.
Not to mention that the 8 questions have to pretty accurately split the space of human personalities down into eigen-answers that explain the most variance in personality.
And there's just no way to do pick these questions without having the data to analyze in the first place.
[+] [-] DanielStraight|11 years ago|reply
I wonder if you couldn't do better with binary questions. I'm reminded of the site http://www.correlated.org/.
Suppose you were to ask a bunch of binary questions, and then use some statistics to find questions that have fairly evenly distributed and non-correlated results, then take 24 of the best questions by those criteria (arbitrary, but 2^24 = 8^8) and find matches.
So basically, ask a whole bunch of binary questions, find ones with roughly 50-50 answers that don't correlate with each other, make the match-ups based on those and ignore the others.
[+] [-] Nadya|11 years ago|reply
EG: The very first question about what you do at a party.
The "sit on the couch and observe" type of person is probably one of the more rare options than the "center of attention" or "dancing with people" or whatever other options there were (I forget the options I didn't pick myself)
I'm not a party goer and there wasn't an option to not attend the party. So I'd be on the couch watching other people. Not particularly a popular thing to do at parties.
[+] [-] aidenn0|11 years ago|reply
How many people have you killed?
a) 0
b) 1-9
c) 10-99
d) 100-999
e) 1000 or more
[+] [-] brudgers|11 years ago|reply
Because the population only consists of people who are willing to take the test [and have internet access and speak English etc.] generalizing the data is problematic at best.
[+] [-] jader201|11 years ago|reply
So I'm trying to understand the phenomenon:
- HN folks are bookmarking it for later based on comments (even though it may/may not be worthy of a +1)
- HN folks are +1'ing it based on the idea derived from the comments
- Those +1'ing it are actually able to make it through (though it doesn't seem so based on most of the comments)
The fascinating part to me is that, assuming it's one of the first two, how much +1's an (arguably) broken link can get based on comments.
The idea sounds interesting, and the site may very well be +1 worthy.
[+] [-] zxcvcxz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frandroid|11 years ago|reply
Also, you also have to account for people who clicked +1 in the early life of the link, where it wasn't being crushed, and lead more people to it.
[+] [-] Houshalter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] braaap|11 years ago|reply
At best, 8^8 might expose someone who ends up making a lot of the same decisions as me. Boring!
[+] [-] tjradcliffe|11 years ago|reply
My life-partner and I--who are as close to "soulmates" as anyone can be to that basically ridiculous idea--are very similar in some respects, very different in others. The areas where we complement each other are as important as the ones where we reinforce each other.
More importantly, the claim that there is some great unexplored mass of humanity where our "soulmate" lurks is bogus. There are only 5000 people in the world. Maybe fewer. If there were more we wouldn't keep running into each other all the time.
That is, the number of people in our tribe is surprisingly small, and anyone who is sufficiently similar to us to answer the questions the same way is already almost certainly a member of it, so dipping into the pool of random strangers across the world is unlikely to improve the odds much in most cases, and citing an anecdote or three--which some people will be tempted to do--does not change this fact. The human social graph is full of islands.
Finally, to work as advertised the test requires that answers to the questions are uncorrelated, which is almost certainly not the case. So most people will find themselves with hundreds of "soulmates", a very few will have none. Unique matches will be extremely rare.
It's a superficially fun idea that turns out to be more of a monument to the failure to understand probability than anything else.
[+] [-] rl3|11 years ago|reply
As you point out, too much similarity can adversely impact compatibility. Conversely, lack of similarity is often times a positive thing.
[+] [-] edem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btilly|11 years ago|reply
There is NO way that performance should be so bad given current load.
Some of the questions are frustrating. For instance question #4 is "YOU SAVE AN OLD LADY'S LIFE. IN GRATITUDE SHE GIVES YOU $100,000. WHAT DO YOU DO WITH MOST OF IT?" The obvious answer for me is, "Save it." But all possible answers are ways to spend it or give it away. I chose "Move to a nicer neighborhood", but that really is NOT who I am...
[+] [-] meric|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personjerry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hobarrera|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMakeA|11 years ago|reply
The site was on Reddit yesterday, now it's on the front page of HN. Maybe the author can't throw a lot of resources at it, or they used the project as an excuse to learn a new stack. Who knows.
Maybe it was slow for you. Maybe it's not a mathematically sound idea. Maybe the questions aren't ideal. The CAPTCHA isn't ideal.
Who cares? There's no need to be mean about it.
[+] [-] abustamam|11 years ago|reply
The idea of being 1 in 8x8 is a novel idea to me, but after reading a few comments here I found that it's not really sound.
One thing that really stands out to me that I haven't seen explicitly mentioned here is the fact that humans are not simply 8 dimensional. At a party, maybe sometimes I like to chill at the couch for a bit, then get to meet some new people, exchange some numbers, meet up with friends, etc...
And the same goes for any other question. $100k can go a long way, but I'd like to save some, spend some, donate some, etc.
Like I said, I like the idea of the project, but the idea that any open-ended question can have only 8 unique answers is not so sound.
[+] [-] Veedrac|11 years ago|reply
> By [gratuitous negativity] we mean negativity that adds nothing of substance to a comment.
I would say that what I've seen here tends to be constructive. Even the criticisms of speed are not gratuitous - they're about an important issue affecting the site.
I do see some comments that are needlessly negative, so props for the reminder, but I wouldn't call it "an awful lot".
[+] [-] tajen|11 years ago|reply
There isn't much negativity above your comment, no-one above you has criticized the speed or the CAPTCHA. Were you referring to a specific comment without using the reply-to feature? Are you saying the HN community is "mean" about it?
Most people on HN are very positive even if the project is slow, because everyone knows what it means to be on the top page of HN.
[+] [-] orthoganol|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sumitviii|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] insickness|11 years ago|reply
On OKCupid, There are thousands of questions, many of them penned by users. You choose which questions to answer, then mark how important this question is to you. You also choose the answer you want your partner to have. For example:
Are you looking for a partner to have children with? [] yes [] no
Answer(s) you’ll accept [] yes [] no
Importance [] a little [] somewhat [] very
If this question were not at all important to you, you would just not answer it.
[+] [-] yellowapple|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcoates|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LordHumungous|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nadya|11 years ago|reply
I think of it as an interesting experiment - even if nothing ends up coming from it.
My largest concern is there are about 3 questions where I was torn between two answers. I'm thinking I should create email addresses to "cover every base" by alternating my answers on those 3 questions in every permutation. On the other hand, I would feel a bit bad for using up some of the "freebies" that legitimate people might miss out on and have to pay the small fee.
@ColinWright
>8^8 should be thought of less as a scientific black box, but as a friend who claims to know someone you'll hit it off with, and wants the two of you to get together. It might be wrong, but it could very well be right.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|11 years ago|reply
I wonder what the legality of publishing their questions and answers are. If we can duplicate their questions and answers, people could find each other on twitter with a hashtag: #my8x8is{answer 1}{answer 2}...{answer 2}
[+] [-] hvm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oaktowner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azinman2|11 years ago|reply
And they at the bottom say 11k matches so far... too bad I like the premise!
[+] [-] mayli|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmakaze|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColinWright|11 years ago|reply
Good one.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cute idea, although I have to say that I'm not sure I'd get along with someone who thinks exactly as I do.
Edit: I've passed the spam test and started the "test" - most of the answers are "none of the above" or "any one of these 4". The usual frustrating experience. I mean:
How should I know?[+] [-] lips|11 years ago|reply
Oh, apparently I have to actually be remotely ok in social settings. Seriously, what the fuck.
[+] [-] abruzzi|11 years ago|reply
The point is that, like many polls, the questions are very leading, and take a distinctly biased approach. For example, the question about what to take away that would change who you are. The options are all very idealized, and sound like they come off a dating website (ok..., maybe that what this intends to be.) Almost none of the possible answers seem likely to be an answer in keeping with the "being honest" directive. If the question was more of "what is your idealized opinion of yourself" it might have a real answer.
[+] [-] naturalethic|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logfromblammo|11 years ago|reply
To assemble an effective RPG party, you need multiple roles, like warrior, wizard, cleric, and rogue. Effective RL social circles work the same way. I'm more of an interjecting quipsniper or a technical sidebarbarian, and I really rely on other people to carry the majority of a conversation. If I were to hang out with a copy of myself, there would be no conversation to add zingers, counterpoints, and trivia to.
There's only so much of that crap that other people can take before it gets annoying, so there's not much use in adding two to the same party, unless they're scripted, like Crow and Tom Servo.
Also, I have a theory of conversation that keys on conversational coefficients. If a group of people are having a conversation, you add together their coefficients. If the sum is one, you have a very natural, comfortable conversation. If it is less than one, you experience some uncomfortable lulls. If it is greater than one, some people get interrupted, can't finish sharing their thoughts, or are excluded. If the coefficient approaches two, separate simultaneous threads of conversation will form, and participants will spontaneously rearrange or split themselves between conversations so as to make each one have a coefficient sum as close to one as is possible.
People don't have a fixed coefficient. They can adjust it within a certain range, that is somewhat dependent on atmosphere and subject matter. For instance, a lecturer who can teach an entire class without losing the attention of the audience can stretch up to 1.0 for conversations, but probably only for that one topic. Someone who has trouble yielding conversational priority may have a lower limit somewhere above 0.5. I suspect that most people can easily handle a range from 0.2 to 0.5. But I max out at probably a 0.4, on very few topics, so my "soul mate" would need to be much more talkative than I am, not at the same level, because it would take at least three of me to have a good conversation.
[+] [-] flurpitude|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardonunez|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oh_sigh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masterminding|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JasonFruit|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisra|11 years ago|reply
You find someone, and then work your guts out to be lovable and to love, and you become soulmates.
[+] [-] dash2|11 years ago|reply
Here is an alternative algorithm: spend some effort finding a good enough partner, and at least as much effort building a good relationship with him or her.
I like this site: it shows the widespread idea in its purest form. Kind of a reductio ad absurdum.
[+] [-] Houshalter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6502nerdface|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] organsnyder|11 years ago|reply