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As a layperson, I think Kahneman's work is brilliant and I can't wait to read the book, but do understand that to the actual evil scientists - research psychologists - he is Donald Knuth, not, um, whoever's hot in CS these days. They think his ideas revolutionized the field a few decades ago, and it's great that he finally got his book published, but meanwhile, we've learned a lot and that whole dual-system thing is kinda quaint.

So lucky for us, if Facebook were really basing their designs around what is more Poor Richard's Almanac than the Bible, we can build far more compelling experiences than Facebook using actual cutting-edge psychology - and I feel kinda lucky to get paid to do just that.



Any recommendations for books that are less "quaint"?


Dan Ariely at MIT has picked up where Kahneman and Tversky left off in terms of behavioural economics. He has written a few books.

That said, Kahneman Tversky and Ariely dont deal with scene perception - which is what you would want to look into if you were interested in planting ads. They all started off as vision researchers then shifted into deeper cognitive work.

If you want some scene perception look into Dan Simons or Ron Rensink.


From one of our evil scientists:

  Why [Everyone Else] Is a Hypocrite -Kurzban
  How The Mind Works -Pinker
  The Stuff of Thought -Pinker
  The Evolution of Human Sexuality -Symons
  Where Mathematics Comes From -Lakoff & Nunez
  Passions Within Reason -Frank
  Culture of Honor -Nisbett & Cohen




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