Targeted Marketing

by Kieran Healy on February 25, 2008

Amazon just suggested I should buy Causation and Counterfactuals edited by Collins, Hall and Paul. Maybe this means the Amazon recommendation engine is broadening its scope, and we’ll soon see suggestions like, “People who bought this book also married …”

{ 9 comments }

1

Henry (not the famous one) 02.25.08 at 5:26 pm

Married to a metaphysician? Sounds like the set-up for a Woody Allen joke, circa 1962, to us philistines.

2

RICKM 02.25.08 at 5:37 pm

Does anything in the book deal with historical reasoning and counterfactuals?

3

Kieran Healy 02.25.08 at 7:02 pm

In the sense I think you have in mind, not really.

4

Kenny Easwaran 02.25.08 at 10:16 pm

Isn’t it sort of the other way around (with both the marriage and reading)? “People who married you also wrote…”

5

will u. 02.25.08 at 10:38 pm

What does that Doc Edgerton apple/bullet photo have to do with counterfactual reasoning?

6

Kieran Healy 02.25.08 at 11:20 pm

If the gun hadn’t fired, that photo wouldn’t be on the cover, for one thing.

7

SCM 02.26.08 at 5:32 am

What would be cool is if it still recommended that specific book even if you weren’t married to Laurie.

8

Patrick Nielsen Hayden 02.26.08 at 5:26 pm

Amazon frequently recommends that I buy books which I, in fact, acquired and edited for Tor.

9

Kieran Healy 02.27.08 at 2:32 am

What would be cool is if it still recommended that specific book even if you weren’t married to Laurie.

Ha! Yes indeed.

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