Dan Ariely

Really interesting psychology involved with pricing and how we deceive ourselves when it comes to prices and anchor points. I recommend Dan Ariely's work (http://danariely.com/) - Predictably Irrational

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini is one of my favorites Also Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely he's got a great blog too http://danariely.com/ make sure to check out the videos section

I highly recommend Dan's blog.. http://danariely.com/

"It's not a gender thing, it's an effort thing." Then why are there vast asymmetries along gender lines in virtually all aspects of dating? Look at OkTrends (http://blog.okcupid.com), or Dan Ariely's posts on the subject (http://danariely.com/tag/dating/), or this post from a woman http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men) which indicates high dating success for women putting in low effort. Are men and women just putting in different amounts of effort? The question is then, why is that the case? And that case arises from historical gender roles. It is a gender thing. Your "many people ..." statements are platitudes that are true no matter what follows ("Many people are smart; many people are dumb."), and do nothing to support what you "suspect."

Related hack: When you can't make progress and choose between two comparable options, Dan Ariely (behavioral economist) recommends you flip a coin. As you flip it, the impact of a potential decision might prompt you to realize the outcome you truly want. However, there is a caveat: "The coin trick is indeed only useful for cases where the two options are of the same type (two cameras, two movies, etc). In your example, one option is more tempting in the short term (chocolate cake) while the other is better in the long term (fruit). In such cases we should not trust our gut feelings to drive us to the best decisions." http://danariely.com/2013/01/05/ask-ariely-on-stretching-time-coining-…

Agreed, their supply chain management and component agreements were disruptive to the industry. However, that didn't stop them using behavioral nudges to make buyers also think the price was cheap. The use of the price anchor was great because a) it was regularly published in the press so it couldn't be seen as being too 'salesy' and b) it was significantly higher than the actual price thus the manufacturing price was disruptive and the perceived value (via the price) was disruptive. Further Reading: Dan Ariely: http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-1-%E2%80%93-the-…

Anyone interested in relative ratings should look at Dan Areily's[1] Predictably Irrational. He is an economist who writes about behavioral economics and decision making. I've often thought about some start-up ideas around relative ratings, and this book was the reason [1] - http://danariely.com/

Coming from a psychology background myself, I would say yes, we definitely underestimate how external factors affect our decision-makings. Peer pressure is one obvious influence, but I would personally say the biggest influences come from factors we're not even aware of. Some I can think of at the top of my head are the way we're influenced by: - our fear of loss - our first impressions (which usually influence all subsequent decisions/habits) - our sense of ownership of an idea/opinion/product - our self-fulfilling expectations (something you expect to be great will usually be great) - and so much more we're usually not aware of For more on the topic, a very readable and engaging book on behavioral-economic influences is Predictably Irrational. At his blog, he shares some of the book's interesting ideas and findings about different factors: http://danariely.com/the-books/

This is a type of discussion that comes up often. There are some very important things to consider to avoid causing unintentional harm. First, understand the difference between social norms and market norms (I like this overview: http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%80%93-the-… and how the introduction of market norms crowd out social norms (this is a good overview: https://natewkratzer.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/market-norms-are-crowdin… Now that you have the necessary context, you can understand why I'm extremely doubtful that VC's can realistically have a large positive impact on the open source community. Open source projects need donations in talented engineer time, not in money. There isn't enough money available to compensate for the man-hours invested in open source projects. Open source projects are successful because they motivate contributors with social capital rewards of some kind and because they allow many different actors to combine human resources to eliminate shared costs/problems. If some kind of wealthy supervillain wanted to destroy open source the best way to do it would be to inject a lot of money into the system, get everyone to start thinking in terms of how much they will be paid per hour to contribute to the project. It would be peanuts. Now the market norms would eclipse the social ones and they would mostly stop contributing. It would probably…

It is pretty simple if you watch or read Dan Ariely: http://danariely.com/2011/10/06/upside-of-irrationality-chapter-9/ It is a known problem in behavioral economics called the identifiable victim effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect Basically "Vivid, flesh and blood-victims are often more powerful sources of persuasion than abstract statistic". Most people love Lions and think they are awesome, and hate seeing them caged in zoos. Now we hear about this one lion minding it's own business being lured from a preserve and being killed by some rich American guy .... the lion becomes the flesh and blood victim. Problem like hyperinflation and massive death, while obviously much worse (and horrible) are much harder for the human mind to understand and just become a statistic. It is extremely scary that this is a problem but it is fairly well known and studied. Stalin even knew about the problem: "one man's death is a tragedy, a millions deaths are a statistic" I obviously agree with you, just pointing you to why it is happening.

For me, I find it easier to do something that I personally want. I am a user that I know well. I have accurate data on what I actually spend money on. I can identify people like me. This sequence is a good seed. I know all the places my money goes, so go to those places and ask people who are there. If you make something that you like, but other people (similar to you) don't like - don't pursue that. If you make something that you like, and others like you also like it and want to give you money for it, then go go go. I made http://traxda.com because I wanted a 3" lift kit and not a 6" lift kit. 10 years later, so have 120,000 other people. (found people at auto related places) I made http://sascase.com because I wanted to protect my Ipad from my kids. 3 years later, so have 3000 other people. (everyone has a phone, did nothing but have the case on mine) I once bought 27 truck loads (48 foot trailers) of old man truck accessories. $2,000,000 worth of product for $150,000. The only problem is that it was product that I would never, ever, ever, buy. So while the values were correct, and I sold a lot of it ($1M before I gave up, net loss of money -150K), it was a market that I didn't understand, I didn't like and I did not know enough to even ask the right questions. It was a huge disaster, one that lasted 5 years before I gave up. Lost time was worse than the lost money. Stupid stupid stupid of me. I got the basic business equation right, but I did not get the subtle…

I think if you ask most people battling health issues or have eating problems whether they could force their future selves for the next month to be not allowed to order dessert, they would choose to. They wouldn't trust themselves in the heat of the moment. There's a fundamental disconnect we have between our short term and long term interests, and it manifests in all kinds of problems people end up with, including their health, finances, and relationships. There's an overwhelming body of psychological evidence that suggests that these issues are real, prevalent, exploitable and exploited. To give an example, there's evidence that shows that we're more likely to succumb to temptation when we're mentally exhausted. If that's not bad enough, actively resisting temptation is exhausting! [1] That's why putting a snack bar full of M&Ms, Snickers, and apples near a bunch of stressed out engineers leads to a more unhealthy workplace (guess which snack is always left over). You can say that the engineers are free to not partake, and I say there's more freedom to focus on other things in their absence. To bring it back to this topic, I think computers need mechanisms to help people with self-control, and a great first step is to curtail software that exists to exploit people with poor impulse control. There's a saying that I am reminded of: "The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master." 1) http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/

https://www.codementor.io/ sort of fits your requirements. But behavioral economics says: > Sometimes asking someone to do something for nothing is more powerful than paying them. [1] Also, StackOverflow incurs zero monetary cost. There is a stark difference in people's behavior towards zero cost, even if the price difference is only 1 cent. [2][3] [1]: https://danariely.com/why-bankers-would-rather-work-for-000-than-500k/ [2]: https://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/zero.pdf [3]: https://youtu.be/WS1bwMdgmKc

The question isn't if cryptocurrencies are valuable and represent real innovation. The question is if the current valuation of crypto currencies is strangling their ability to innovate. One reason could be the high valuations are creating a tunnel vision that's hyper-focused on realizing returns rather than adding additional value. Here's one theory: http://danariely.com/2008/11/20/what%E2%80%99s-the-value-of-a-big-bonu…

Right. opt-out vs opt-in. http://danariely.com/2008/05/05/3-main-lessons-of-psychology PS. Kindly explain why Google Maps really wants to stalk my location even when not using it actively. It's been forced down Android users a few years ago via a "Yes/Not now" dark pattern, it's coming on iPhone under the guise of "share location with your friends". PS2. Kindly explain why anyone would ever trust Google to not expand their data acquisition behavior once the sensors are in place. For example, GPS, but always on mics and cameras in the future.

That’s related to the concept expressed by behavioural economist, Dan Ariely: “consumers don’t value goods and services solely by their utility, … but also a sense of fairness relating to how much effort was exerted” [1]. In that quote, I’d probably qualify the word effort as “perceived effort”. http://danariely.com/2010/12/15/locksmiths/

I think the original source is on a youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM . The video aggregates data from multiple sources: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-ameri… http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest… http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.htm How reliable these sources are, I'm not sure. If the information is wrong, I wouldn't blame it on Upworthy, it's a distribution channel after all.

Thanks for the feedback. Agree, if you say it in a conversation, but it works well for Dan because he links to it from his website: http://danariely.com/about-dan/

A lot of people are opposed to there being a distribution more extreme than their emotions tell them is reasonable. Consider what most Americans say the "ideal" level of wealth inequality would be: http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ and http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2010/09/theor… Now consider how much wealth inequality there would be in an excessively fair society: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-equalland.htm… Clearly, people are determining their "ideal" without doing the math. This makes it hard to take their opposition to "this change in distribution" seriously as well.

An important thing to keep in mind is that #1 here is the state of the affairs after the fact, i.e., when people can see many games that are apparently free built using the IAP concept. Dan Ariely noted that the mobile app industry has done this to itself by ... well better read in his own words: http://danariely.com/2011/12/25/the-oatmeal-this-is-how-i-feel-about-b…

His opinions in the interview are much more nuanced than the linkbait title suggests. A better title would be, "Dan Ariely says nice things about College, but in the end he's still doubling down on MOOCs." http://danariely.com/tag/mooc

One of the issues with the app store is the "power of free". A number of studies in psychology and behavioural economics have shown that people over-value free stuff. You can read an example here: http://danariely.com/2012/02/05/audience-with-a-dragon-tattoo/ Once you allow free apps they become too attractive -- the simplest way to dominate a category full of paid apps is to offer your app for free. Then we see the race to the bottom that currently afflicts the app market. If there was a minimum app cost, say 99c, free-to-play would not be the issue it is today. BTW, I originally heard this point made by Dan Ariely (linked above.)

Dan Ariely has written about research around this topic: http://danariely.com/2009/08/05/the-trouble-with-cold-hard-cash/

Obama makes the right call on the suits. Here's Dan Ariely on "ego depletion": http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/

So I believe you are wrong on thinking it is unnecessary stress, based upon some research done by Dan Ariely on students getting their work done with and without deadlines. You have to read his book Predictably Irrational for the full story, but here's a synopsis: http://danariely.com/2010/08/30/back-to-school-2/ Long story short is that without deadlines people tend to push off work to the latest possible moment, at which point they tend not to be able to do as much as they thought they could in that short time space, so it actually causes more stresses on them than it would have to have had a series of deadlines along the way.

Here's a much better article on the topic by Dan Ariely. This is one of his primary areas of research, and he addresses it in his books (including a description of his experiments). http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/ I made a separate submission for the above link, it deserves it.

Having read Dan Ariely's post about "a note to Zuckerberg..." (http://danariely.com/2012/05/16/the-facebook-ipo-a-note-to-mark-zucker… I think the title better rephrased as "facebook IPO succeeds in not 'popping'..." instead! Edit: I would summarize the post, but I would then spoil some of the drama of reading it as written.

Dan Ariely has made an app that does something like this, although instead of looking at the number of hours it takes to pay for something he compares it to what alternatives you could buy, so if you like coffee and you want to book a book you see how many coffees you would have to give up to get the book, similar but equally interesting concept. You can see his app here, its the first one Oranges2Apples http://danariely.com/apps-tools/

It applies whenever you are spending money - you consider the alternatives, but humans do not do so rationally. By how you frame your 3 options, you can push people to buy the one you want. Here is an other example from Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, showing three options: http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-1-%E2%80%93-the-…

Came over here to wonder that lying about the provenance of the items you're selling is a bit beyond the windy side of the law, but apparently they make it clear that the stories are fictitious! http://danariely.com/2009/12/25/the-significant-objects-project/#comme…