Comment by jncfhnb

2 days ago

I saw an episode of this and felt the contestants didn’t seem that interested in winning the money. Just romance. I was curious how suboptimally they tended to play.

Everything is lined up for sub-optimal play.

For a start, the setting is an emotive one. It's not just a numeric game with arbitrary tokens, it's about "the perfect romantic partner." It would take an unusually self-isolating human to not identify who they feel their perfect match should be and bias towards that, subconsciously or consciously. We (nearly) all seek connection.

Then, it's reality TV. Contestants will be chosen for emotional volatility, and relentlessly manipulated to generate drama. No-one is going to watch a full season of a handful of math nerds take a few minutes to progress a worksheet towards a solution each week coupled with whatever they do to pass the time otherwise.

  • I'd watch a game show where you put a variety of math nerds on each team and watch them argue about the optimal strategy. Who's strategy will win? The quant analyst or the bioinformatician? Tune in next week!

  • We need a ManningCast version of the show. For those unaware, ManningCast is a show following an NFL game with special guests and nontraditional commentary and analysis. Think of it kind of like having the Mannings in the living room while watching an NFL game.

    In my hypothetical version of "Are you the one?", the math nerds would be giving commentary and explaining the math behind how they'll solve "Are you the one?" while also hilariously explaining how foolish the contestants' theories are.

  • > No-one is going to watch a full season of a handful of math nerds take a few minutes to progress a worksheet towards a solution each week coupled with whatever they do to pass the time otherwise.

    Um, what about those of us who watch Blood on the Clocktower streams?

That's because the real game is occurring both before and after the show in modern reality tv competitions. The goal is to be entertaining and get social media followers and potential invites to further reality tv shows.