How casinos distract • Hacker News Board

Re: How casinos distract

#11

Post by th5 » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 8:13 AM UTC

dhbanes wrote: post #4

This is interesting… but I admit I found it a bit odd that point 1 was about "how round everything is on the casino floor", directly followed by an example of the Venetian's color scheme complete with a photo example showing not a single round feature... This is a very interesting subject, perhaps worthy of a more scientific study.

In the text it said he switched out that image from the original venetian to the casino ventian, so maybe you saw the old version. In this one, I counted 16 circles/round objects if you include the archways in the doorway.

Re: How casinos distract

#12

Post by einhverfr » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 8:22 AM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #6

The sensory overload both attracts an audience to the spectacle, and interrupts normal rational thinking. A double win! But, interestingly, you can see the place differently if you change the 'soundtrack'. If you're in Las Vegas and have a good set of ear-sealing headphones – for example rubber earbuds – try listening to your own choice of music while strolling around. It creates sufficient detachment to let you view…

One thing I suspect that is missing in both the above assessment and the article is that if you interrupt normal thinking with overload, and you force focus on something, you get the beginnings of a hypnotic, or at least quasi-hypnotic state. That state is familiar in computer games, and it is the same thing I see in casinos (disclaimer: I haven't spent any significant time gambling in them but some do have good food!).

Bright lights, flashing lights, disruptive sounds you have to tune out.... It narrows your sense of reality just as say a computer game does, and that also helps ensure that people play suboptimally.

I am less convinced by the color scheme arguments, since colors associations are extremely culturally bound.

Re: How casinos distract

#13

Post by rdtsc » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 8:45 AM UTC

Last time (and only time) I was in Vegas all I could see is decrepitude and sadness. One incident that stuck with me was how an old man had a heart attack ( I am guessing ) while playing coin slots. The ambulance came and took him away. Not sure why but that just seemed so sad to me.

Re: How casinos distract

#14

Post by sopooneo » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 8:47 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #2

Also, when you go to a Casino that is on the ground level, there will be more escalators going down than going up. The music they incessantly play in the background has sounds vaguely like a slot machine paying out. Casinos are among the worst examples of an artificial environment to control behavior. It really is like a zoo. Makes museums that force exiting through the gift shop look benign. As someone with an addic…

Down to the other six levels?

Re: How casinos distract

#15

Post by sopooneo » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 8:51 AM UTC

alanfalcon wrote: post #10

nonce43 wrote: post #9

Slot machines use a bunch of interesting psychological techniques. They are set up to produce "near misses", where the reels show you almost win, with the winning symbol just below the pay line. They create losses that appear as wins - you win less than you put in, so it feels like a win even though you lost money. They use a mapping so the odds of a reel stopping on something good are less than its physical fraction…

The worst part is that no matter how much you know that this is the case, it can be exceptionally hard not to be taken in by that "man, I was thiiiis close" feeling. I'd throw the famous Wargames quote in here, and not playing is, for me, definitely the only time I "win", but instead I'll quote everyone's favorite philosophical physicists: "So I started betting, and right away I lost five dollars in succession — one,…

I love that you don't even name him, but have faith that the vast majority of the readers here know exactly who you mean.

Re: How casinos distract

#16

Post by flomo » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 9:10 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #2

Also, when you go to a Casino that is on the ground level, there will be more escalators going down than going up. The music they incessantly play in the background has sounds vaguely like a slot machine paying out. Casinos are among the worst examples of an artificial environment to control behavior. It really is like a zoo. Makes museums that force exiting through the gift shop look benign. As someone with an addic…

Many casinos also have the gambling floor organized around a long snaking curve, with several off-shoots. The distance from say the lobby to the restaurants often seems like a long walk - but if you look at the hotel map, they're right next to each other. The intent is obviously to turn people around and have them get disoriented amidst the sea of slot machines.

Re: How casinos distract

#17

Post by corin_ » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 9:22 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #2

Also, when you go to a Casino that is on the ground level, there will be more escalators going down than going up. The music they incessantly play in the background has sounds vaguely like a slot machine paying out. Casinos are among the worst examples of an artificial environment to control behavior. It really is like a zoo. Makes museums that force exiting through the gift shop look benign. As someone with an addic…

> it really is a surreal/joyous experience - you feel like everyone is cheering you on - like a celebrity almost

I can't be the only one who finds that annoying? When I'm in a casino in London that's one of the things that limits how much I bet on a hand, the fact that I don't want to be a spectacle - many times I've played big enough hands that a small crowd will form to watch even if I'm alone on a table... and it's just a little weird in my opinion.

edit: Weird from my point of view, not weird that they do it - I too enjoy watching over the shoulder of people as they play.

Re: How casinos distract

#18

Post by corin_ » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 9:26 AM UTC

I was a little disappointed in this article, I thought the author set himself up for a really good piece, then started building up the ideas, then... ended, when I was expecting much more in terms of actual ideas.

Re: How casinos distract

#19

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 9:37 AM UTC

"There's a well-known study by Shiv and Fedorikhin showing that if you tax people's working memory by making them remember a 7-digit string of numbers, people are more likely to make a less-optimal decision (they chose to eat chocolate cake versus the more healthy fruit salad option)."

I'm not sure how the Shiv experiment proves anything. I personally would always choose the chocolate cake, no matter how much time I had to spend on the decision - I just don't like fruit salads, at least not as much as cakes. And one doesn't eat desserts all the time, so it's not much of a problem anyway. 'Optimal' != 'healthy', and I bet (pun intended) that when choosing dessert many people optimize for feeling, not for health.

(Maybe this effect was documented using some other experiments, but sometimes when I read psychology stuff, I start do doubt both my and researchers' sanity, because I can't figure out how little shifts of behavior over e.g. a chocolate cake, tested on a small (< 1k) sample are really giving us any valuable insight, and are not just random noise)

Re: How casinos distract

#20

Post by veidr » Sun, Feb 19, 2012, 9:48 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #13

Last time (and only time) I was in Vegas all I could see is decrepitude and sadness. One incident that stuck with me was how an old man had a heart attack ( I am guessing ) while playing coin slots. The ambulance came and took him away. Not sure why but that just seemed so sad to me.

I share your sentiment. I moved my first software company (now defunct) to Reno, NV from California in 2002, in what seemed like an unmitigated financial success. For the price of a decrepit office in the Bay Area, we could rent a huge McMansion with a view, offices upstairs, full kitchen, three bathrooms with showers, various rooms for meetings or storage or indoor ballgames, and ten minutes drive away from anything... What I failed to factor in was the profoundly depressing nature of every day seeing senior citizens in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks robotically pulling levers on slot machines or feeding money into video poker. Even if you avoid the casinos, you see it at the gas station, supermarket, etc... It's grotesque, but somehow when it's old people spending the last remaining days of their lives doing it, it becomes profoundly sad. Even more so to think that some poor old sucker spent literally the last day of his life that way.