Links 3.28
–Subject to Change: Tips for Good Email Subject Lines
(Getting your email read is the most important part. Learn how to catch the eye)
–Seth Godin on how to virally market your book
(You have to give content away before it can spread via word of mouth)
(It’s a cool way to track the sales of books on Amazon. But their registration process sucks. I’m not sure why.)
(Check the stats of sites, Alexa rank, technorati ran, google page rank, del.icio.us, rss, etc. Great tool. Hat tip to TechCrunch for the last two.
(The ultimatum game is an experimental economics game in which two parties interact anonymously and only once, so reciprocation is not an issue. The first player proposes how to divide a sum of money with the second party. If the second player rejects this division, neither gets anything. If the second accepts, the first gets his demand and the second gets the rest. Proof that humans don’t always act rational, and that game theory can’t always be used to explain projected action)
I still don’t understand that Ultimatum Game. Why would anyone ever accept anything less than an even split, when the involvement of both parties is completely equal?
Nevermind, I read that wrong; I didn’t register the “If the second player rejects this division, neither gets anything” part. Although the game is kind of faulty, since the first player who makes the demand is automatically in a position of advantage since the second player must take what he proposes, or get nothing. Still an interesting concept though.
Agh, I’m not sure how your comment approval process goes but forget that last comment. For whatever reason the wiki wasn’t reading well to me before, but now I see it is more a psychological game than one of rationality. Delete that first comment too if you will.
Don’t worry about it. It jumped out at you precisely because you’re an intelligent person. Game theory teaches us that people will act rationally–assuming they live in some sort of vacuum where pride or respect or grudges don’t exist. Ultimatum Games flip that on its head, saying that people consider more factors than their cold, immediate self-interest. It would seem like they’d take a penny over nothing–and indeed they would if humans could pretend that the future didn’t exist. But no one wants to give off the impression that they’re a sucker or a chump. Such assumptions might work with computers but not will real, normal people.