The Love Machine - Implications?

A Romantic Comedy idea similar to the Machine Of Death stories. A Machine that can show and tell people who their soul mate is. Or is they are destined to die alone.

What are the implications of this premise?

Someone with an idealistic view of love might ditch their partner because they found out they're not soul mates.

Depends on how it's integrated into the world. For example, some sort of... dystopian?... world where this is how people are matched up would be different from a person randomly finding it. I'd expect the vast majority of people end up partnering with people they wouldn't be "soulmates" with, because mutual love and respect are enough. In a world with that sort of machine, people might consider this possibility closed to them because soulmates are actually a real thing and that's the standard they set for themselves—the premise itself states that anyone without a soulmate would be considered "destined to die alone". I'd also expect a significant proportion of the population to be thought to be "destined to die alone" because there is no one perfect for them. (Most obvious storyline would be a pair of people who aren't soulmates learning they can still initiate romances the way people do in real life, but I suppose that's not romantic comedy-esque. Also nearly indistinguishable from any dystopian romance with arranged marriage as part of its premise, possibly, but that's just a guess since I don't read those.) Similarly, people who are soulmates might expect that having a soulmate means you're never supposed to argue or compromise, and/or have to work for your happiness, so when it doesn't all magically fall into place for them, they find it harder to deal with than people with more realistic expectations.

If it's just a newly-introduced plot device into the world we have now, I'd expect that the machine would reveal the vast majority of people are not with their soulmates, even if they make each other happy, even if they could continue to make each other happy for the rest of their lives. Most soulmates that are found would not be easily accessible. Depending on how soulmates are defined, it's also possible each person's ideal partner would change over time, depending on the kind of person they are when they use the machine; people's personalities can change in different ways depending on the people and events in their lives, and different traits might be encouraged or diminished if they partner with different people. The actual evidence that comes up could make it seem like the machine just doesn't work so they throw up their hands in exasperation and abandon it.

I was thinking I would set it weeks or so after the machine is released to the public. The main character is a young man whose girlfriend of 2 years just broke up with him because she was told she isn't going to end up with him.

And you may misunderstand the machine. It doesn't tell you who you soul mate is, who that perfect person for you is. It tells you who you will end up with.

@Saturn: You said "tell you who your soul mate is".

If that's the case (which is not what the original post says, but makes the "...end up alone" part make more sense), then it opens up a whole can of worms about predestination.

Still have to establish how they know it works. It's essentially a maker of oddly specific and limited prophecies, but any time it works, it'd look like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and any time it doesn't, people just would just be like, oh yeah, well just wait a few years. And once you know the future, you can do whatever you like to try to change it, presumably; I can imagine someone refusing to initiate a relationship with someone out of sheer spite regarding fate and destiny. (I know I would, though it'd never be relevant for me.) There would be very valid reasons for scepticism. Many people who leave their current partners because some newfangled machine says said partner won't be their terminal partner are probably just looking for an excuse to get out of the relationship, I'd guess.

And also, taken literally, it sounds like it only tells you who you'll be with at the end of your life. If you're married for 50 years and split up, does it tell you you'll die alone? If you have two partners and love them essentially equally for 20 years apiece? What if your future partner dies before you? What if you marry someone and you do have good relations with them, but also you'll have an affair for the majority of it? What if you're into polyamory?

That about sums up my take on it.

Human interactions are nowhere near simple enough for any prediction to be meaningful.

It tells you who you end up with - fine, but what about all the ones before then (given she's married at the moment and the events that will "free her up" won't happen for a number of years)

And ultimately, we all die alone - even if we go out by the bus-load.

On a similar track, there are various ways of being "with" someone—two people can be partners without being married, and would the machine detect that as not being alone? And on the flipside, two people can cohabit and just be friends and never initiate a romance, which could outwardly look a lot like a couple that (for example) can't get married because the law says so. And people can marry each other for convenience but not actually romantically love each other (maybe seeing others on the side, maybe not). And people can end up in abusive relationships they never manage to leave, in which case the machine has given a horrifying condemnation. Exactly what is the machine looking for, and how detailed is its output?

For a different side of realism, if it's possible to launch a lawsuit against the company that created these machines, probably for destroying relationships and marriages and etc, that will definitely happen. Even if not, a media firestorm and angry blog posts are to be expected. Probably death threats against and maybe even actual murders of the people involved in releasing the machine, if those people exist.

Even if it was specific enough for "you're going to be involved with him, him, him, him, him and him, but all the relationships will eventually fail" is going to have serious ramifications - as in "what's the point even trying, then?"

This would happen.

Amusing, but not really. It's already been established that OP didn't actually mean soulmates, as opposed to the still-not-well-defined future mates. Even if it was about soulmates, though, the machine directly skips most of the difficulty found in that what if, since it'd show you your soulmate directly.