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We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

derekthompson.org

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Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#341

Post by cortesoft »

Barrin92 wrote: post #134
bluetidepro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired. Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

this is a false equivalence. Amazon and Meta have caused plenty of damage, companies in our capitalist economies are bad etc. But shipping you books or connecting you to other people isn't inherently evil. There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is. It's been a vice in virtually every culture for thousands of years. It's akin to peddling drugs. The practice itself is corrosive and destroys people. It'…

> There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is.

I think this is waaaay too black and white. Gambling can be fun, and there isn't anything wrong with enjoying gambling in a healthy manner. It is very comparable to drinking, I think. I refuse to apologize for enjoying the occasional drink or the occasional game of poker.

I like a poker game with friends, I enjoy sitting at a blackjack table for a few hours sometimes. I have even enjoyed entering a few poker tournaments.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#342

Post by ragall »

Gambling is flourishing not because we're in a low-trust world, as the article says, but because the living conditions of an increasingly large part of the population as such that they cannot hope of ever achieving a comfortable life. We're returning to the social dynamics that dominated much of history (if you consider how much gambling was a scourge, from ancient Rome to thousands of years of history in China).

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#343

Post by zarathustreal »

amrocha wrote: post #331
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don’t have any enemies. Nobody cares about you. Nobody is coming to hurt you or your family Do you think the U.S. and Israeli militaries have personal vendettas against each and every civilian we've killed in Iran? Of course we don't. We can barely count them. Just because you aren't personally on your community's adversary's radar doesn't mean they aren't a threat. (To be clear, I don't believe Iran was a thre…

[flagged]

You’re significantly worse off assuming your government is adversarial than cooperative, regardless of what reality may be, and the majority of us know that. It’s why the chaos psyops aren’t working. We’re not happy with our government but apes together strong

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#344

Post by furyofantares »

blitzar wrote: post #62

Americans may be shocked to hear that in the rest of the world gambling has been a thing for centuries. We also have people under the age of 20 drinking alcohol. I am not suggesting in any way that gambling is good - but it wasnt invented last week in america

[dead]

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#345

Post by loeber »

comprev wrote: post #219
jackfruitpeel wrote: post #88

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

Gambling and weapons (or "defence" depending on perspective) are two industries I refuse to work on principle. On my deathbed I want to look back on life and feel I've made a small positive impact on the world.

If your deathbed is at the hands of an adversary that beat you because you didn't have any weapons, do you think your views might change?

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#346

Post by WalterBright »

jmyeet wrote: post #289
taurath wrote: post #94

The entire country seems built on taking advantage of people, from my vantage point right now. Whether it’s attention, drugs, or business/legal leverage, everyone is out for advantage and they’re not even pretending to care about people they affect.

I saw someone say recently "hobbies are a luxury" and I tend to agree. Think back decades ago and you had a single person or a family supported by a single income who could afford the rent or to buy their house and put their kids through college. By the late 1970s and 1980s the balance had shifted to where more households than not had both parents working. Then people started having multiple jobs. This was in part be…

> The problem is capitalism

Capitalist countries build walls to keep people out.

Socialist countries build walls to keep people in.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#347

Post by llmthrow0827 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #194
jackfruitpeel wrote: post #88

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

> I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to prey on a subset of humanity This triggers thoughts. I don't like people being taken advantage of. At the same time, I like my personal liberties. It feels like you can spin this idea for nearly anything. Apparently 25% of alcohol sales are to alcoholics. That sucks and you could spin this has the liquor companies taking advantage, but I have tons of…

Personal liberties are overrated, and a functioning society is underrated. OnlyFans, sports betting, and junk food appeal to some people with low impulse control and high time preference in the short term, but have massive negative consequences on everyone in the long run.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#348

Post by amrocha »

zarathustreal wrote: post #343
amrocha wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You’re significantly worse off assuming your government is adversarial than cooperative, regardless of what reality may be, and the majority of us know that. It’s why the chaos psyops aren’t working. We’re not happy with our government but apes together strong

[flagged]

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#349

Post by WalterBright »

adamandsteve wrote: post #152
Barrin92 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a false equivalence. Amazon and Meta have caused plenty of damage, companies in our capitalist economies are bad etc. But shipping you books or connecting you to other people isn't inherently evil. There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is. It's been a vice in virtually every culture for thousands of years. It's akin to peddling drugs. The practice itself is corrosive and destroys people. It'…

Between these I think Amazon is less bad. It's a monopoly & monopsony which causes a lack of innovation and (eventually) higher prices but it's also a much more efficient way to sell things and it doesn't destroy the fabric of society or anything. Meta though is just as bad if not worse than any gambling site out there. Its products are optimized to destroy your attention span, feed you polarizing content, destroy yo…

Amazon is not a monopoly. See Walmart, Ebay, etc. Lots of companies sell products online.

> (eventally) higher prices

I have not noticed Amazon charging higher prices than others. The difficulty in charging higher prices is competitors emerge.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#350

Post by TheCowboy »

andrewflnr wrote: post #305

How much of this is fixed if a person is only able to bet token amounts on each outcome? Let's get crazy and make it $20. A few crazy people might run Sybil attacks but it'll be a lot more limited and obvious. Not that I'm opposed to consigning all these gambling apps back to the fiery depths from which they came, but if you do want to preserve the ability of healthy people to have a little bit of fun, limiting the b…

PredictIt operated with $850 limits for years, and overall this seemed fine. Limits of various sizes might make sense depending on the subject, where the risk of penalty greater outweighs the potential profits.
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