The one time I was in a casino I accompanied a coworker who gambled to one of the low dollar casinos in Colorado. What I noticed were poor people who came with $100 and wanted--or needed--to leave with $200, and of course the business model says that very few of them did. I bought a $10 bucket of quarters out of boredom and after 10 or so minutes I had $11.25, which is an incredible annualized return but not what gamblers are looking for. I noticed people going from one machine to another--"this one is cold", "maybe this is the right one", etc. It was very sad, and I learned that low dollar gambling can be insidious when the players are poor and look to the casino for money they need. The big dollar losses may make better headlines, but the self-delusion and suffering are the same.
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#162> Or was he the victim—as the suit alleged—of a system carefully calibrated to prey upon his weakness, one that robbed him of his money, his hope, and ultimately his life Isn't this all businesses in a capitalist system? Try to get as money as you can from people legally.
Of course you're right. The quoted statement is part of a broader attack on self-responsibility that is taking place in the western world. We all are poor poor beings who bear no responsibilities for our flaws. Bad at school? It's a mental disorder. Gambling addiction? It's a bug in the brain. Everybody else is responsible for one's woes. This way of thinking is incredibly toxic and prevents human flourishing. To blame other people for your faults is to deny yourself the opportunity for betterment. And I say that as someone who doesn't necessarily believe in free will.
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#163Does anyone else think certain video games are the equivalent of slot machine? I'm not just talking about simple phone games, but more complex, team based pick up games as well - if you rely on a matchmaker that knows to an approximation the skill of each player, is it not randomizing ones chance to win? I live with gaming addicts and used to be one - they spend every waking hour on their pcs while not at work. It's…
I played WoW 40-50 hours a week in a "ranked" raiding guild for about four years. It was the exact same sensation for me when loot would drop in new raids that I feel winning a few bucks at the casino. I eventually quit cold turkey. I'm not sure I regret those four years, I made some great friends, many of whom I still keep in touch with, but it was no doubt an addiction, and it cost me a decent amount of "real life"…
Depends on how you look at it. With a social game like WoW, you get back what you put into it and it depends on what you wanted to achieve.
I played quite heavily for about 2.5 years while I was still in school, in the early days of the game. Probably close to 12,000 hours. But to me, those hours were actually a great investment for following reasons: 1) When I started out, I set out to play in the best global PvE guild. After two years, I achieved that and played with them for another 6 months; and 2) two years later, I had an idea for a gaming related app that took me two months to build and eventually made me $250k. Wouldn't have had that idea without my WoW experience.
Climbing as a random player to joining a top guild showed me that you can achieve anything reasonable in life if you put your mind to it. WoW had 11 million players at the time and for a while I was considered a top 100 player in the game. In a way, it gave me a sped up view of life. And honestly, I'm grateful for that because I probably wouldn't be where I am now!
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#164> Or was he the victim—as the suit alleged—of a system carefully calibrated to prey upon his weakness, one that robbed him of his money, his hope, and ultimately his life Isn't this all businesses in a capitalist system? Try to get as money as you can from people legally.
Can you expand on your statement? Some questions come to mind:
- Is capitalism in and of itself good?
- Are humans purely rational beings? Should they be treated as such?
- Does legality imply ethics? If it's legal does that mean it's good?
- Laws change. Does that mean that ethics change at the same time as laws?
- If people want to create laws and regulations that prevent them from making common mistakes at the expense of pure freedom, is that okay?
There's limited information in your comment, so please don't take these questions as an assumption on my part of what you believe.
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#165Here is my proposal to eliminate problem gambling forever: scrap all laws restricting gambling. I know this might sound surprising (ok possibly crazy) but hear me on... Today it is extremely expensive to open a casino. I'm not sure what the laws for offline casino are, but license costs for a new online casino are 100s of 1000s to millions USD per year. Subsequently there are very few companies that compete in this s…
It will never happen, since the state wants its cut.
Also, why open a Casino? That's expensive. It's much cheaper to run your own daily numbers game. The old street level games were popular because the "policy kings" apparently took less than the state does in legal lotteries.
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#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's a fair analogy at all. Care to expand on it?
I was down voted to -3, so why should I expand anything? I should have know that the HN crowd loves its drugs and will not listen to facts and reason.
If you look around the threads here, dismissive once sentence replies are usually downvoted. You have to actually put "facts and reason" in your comment for us to listen to it.
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#167> Or was he the victim—as the suit alleged—of a system carefully calibrated to prey upon his weakness, one that robbed him of his money, his hope, and ultimately his life Isn't this all businesses in a capitalist system? Try to get as money as you can from people legally.
Of course you're right. The quoted statement is part of a broader attack on self-responsibility that is taking place in the western world. We all are poor poor beings who bear no responsibilities for our flaws. Bad at school? It's a mental disorder. Gambling addiction? It's a bug in the brain. Everybody else is responsible for one's woes. This way of thinking is incredibly toxic and prevents human flourishing. To bla…
> This way of thinking is incredibly toxic and prevents human flourishing. To blame other people for your faults is to deny yourself the opportunity for betterment.
This is a non-sequitur. Someone taking a stance against gambling doesn't mean they are problem gamblers.
> Bad at school? It's a mental disorder.
It goes without saying that not everyone who is bad at school has a mental disorder, but having a mental disorder can obviously have an adverse effect on performance at school.
If you google for "Correlation between mental disorders and school marks" you can find some studies that seem to indicate that there is a correlation[0].
> Gambling addiction? It's a bug in the brain. Everybody else is responsible for one's woes
What else would you call it? It has a negative expected value yet I've meet otherwise very smart people who gamble far more than they can afford desperate to make money. Doesn't remove responsibility, but why should we as a society be expected to accommodate businesses that hurt individuals?
[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814...
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#168My first job out of Uni was making "games" for slot machines. My soul is forever damaged (not joking). I have horror stories over how much thought goes into the "design." In a given jurisdiction (State/Province/County) there will be rules about the payout percentage. Anywhere from 90 to 98%. So lets assume 95% percent payout. In the long run, you give me a dollar, I give you back $0.95. Most of the time its zero, som…
Most of the slots these days are just cabinets with touchscreen LCDs, a bill changer, a player's card reader, and a computer running software. Of course it's evil, but I'm surprised they aren't split testing the reward frequencies, and then having the software adjust automatically to the one that generates the most total action for the game. That way they wouldn't have to ripoff other manufacturers' games when they s…
Gaming regulators prohibit many on-the-fly changes to machines while on the floor. Online casinos certainly could and probably are doing some variation of this though, and all those manufacturers sell "at home" software versions of their machines and would be smart to be doing split testing of player behavior in that software.
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#169If you are interesting in learning more about some of the art of creating addiciting products, I'd recommend Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products[0]. Great book that lays out some of the foundations in an easy to understand way. It is specifically designed for the tech scene and has lots of relevent examples of how most of the programs we use daily either intentionally (or unintentionally) designed to be addictive.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Product...
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#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the slots these days are just cabinets with touchscreen LCDs, a bill changer, a player's card reader, and a computer running software. Of course it's evil, but I'm surprised they aren't split testing the reward frequencies, and then having the software adjust automatically to the one that generates the most total action for the game. That way they wouldn't have to ripoff other manufacturers' games when they s…
Gaming regulators prohibit many on-the-fly changes to machines while on the floor. Online casinos certainly could and probably are doing some variation of this though, and all those manufacturers sell "at home" software versions of their machines and would be smart to be doing split testing of player behavior in that software.
I'm aware, but most gambling regulations are heavily influenced by lobbyists. If the industry realized how much more money they could make from this, they would get it approved.