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Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

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Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#91

Post by toraway »

epolanski wrote: post #18
abcde666777 wrote: post #10

I've always found the marketing around gambling (and most things really) completely disgusting. As a society I think we're far too tolerant of these things. A lot of the ads basically go along the lines of: 'you could win big and have a great time, awesome! (disclaimer: will probably ruin your life)'. It should be like it is with smoking - photos of lung cancer patients on the package. People will still do it of cour…

And gambling, same as prediction markets, has literally no positive social outcome.

Okay, but have you considered that thanks to Polymarket, society was able to intuit within mere minutes that Khamenei was most likely dead when the odds jumped to 99%?

No more need to rely on MSM or governments, it's all just math and data (odds jumped entirely based on Reuters newswire update posting a quote from an unnamed Israeli source).

And as a bonus, people lost a bunch of money "winning" that trade!

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#92

Post by Marsymars »

Invictus0 wrote: post #17

why can't we have a law that just caps your gambling losses? Everyone gets a federally issued gambling license tied to your ID, if you lose more than X amount the casino is no longer legally allowed to let you play. Casual gamblers can still enjoy, problem gamblers get cut off; just like with alcohol at the bar.

That effectively destroys the industry, since 90% of revenue comes from 10% of customers.

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#93

Post by jbxntuehineoh »

Marsymars wrote: post #92
Invictus0 wrote: post #17

why can't we have a law that just caps your gambling losses? Everyone gets a federally issued gambling license tied to your ID, if you lose more than X amount the casino is no longer legally allowed to let you play. Casual gamblers can still enjoy, problem gamblers get cut off; just like with alcohol at the bar.

That effectively destroys the industry, since 90% of revenue comes from 10% of customers.

yeah, good. okay.

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#94

Post by FabHK »

rimbo789 wrote: post #3

The legalization and expansion of gambling was a massive mistake and should be undone as soon as possible.

Indeed. I seem to recall reading that among all addictions, gambling addiction had the highest suicide rate. I haven't been able to find a good source on that lamentably, but it seems plausible to me in the sense that many other addictions (alcohol, sex, heroin, etc.) have some sort of end-point built in at which you stop, and typically have only harmed yourself.

With gambling you can gamble away your kid's college savings, or the retirement savings for you and your spouse. Seems that you can wreak havoc beyond yourself even more so than with other types of addiction.

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#95

Post by jbxntuehineoh »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #22
snarfy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop? That's not how addiction works.

If someone cannot stop gambling, then what moral responsibility do gambling organizations have when giving them offers?

new policy proposal: internment camps for libertarians

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#96

Post by szge »

mothballed wrote: post #42

When online sports gambling started in the US they were offering $500-$1000 of free bets to sign up. Very tempting to sign up, even though I don't gamble anymore than about once a decade, but I decided whoever did that offer was probably smarter than me about who would win out in the end. I've been around the block long enough to know you never take an 'easy profit' deal from someone who is in the business of making…

I'm in Canada where the promotions aren't quite as aggressive, but I've collected in the ballpark of $10k over the past three years through these free bet sportsbook promotions as well as collecting daily bonuses from this new wave of "sweepstakes" online casinos.

To make the "free" money and not ruin your life, You must have the discipline to look at things from a purely numbers perspective. It has to be mechanical and not emotional. If some action is +EV, and bet sizing is correct relative to variance, then you should perform the action. Never chase losses with a -EV bet.

The terrible thing about gambling is that there is no limit to how much you can lose, and you can also lose way more money than you actually have. It's a dangerous game.

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#97

Post by eucyclos »

jacquesm wrote: post #75
eucyclos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how incentives could be better aligned. Had an interesting case study where a coworker liked to gamble - he was fairly responsible, kept to his budget and treated it like an expensive hobby he enjoyed- but at the same time, he had someone else handle his retirement investments, which is an unpredictable payoff market where you come out ahead on average. I asked a couple times why he didn't replace gambling w…

I think your coworker was quite smart. Investing and gambling are close enough that for many parties they are indistinguishable. I've heard investing described as 'gambling for people with more money'. The biggest difference is that if you have enough money you can legally manipulate the market. If it's your retirement investment that might just be over the horizon far enough to get you into danger. Just having acces…

That's true, but if that was what was stopping him he could have got a no fees account and just used his casino budget to speculate on penny stocks instead. It would be like going to a casino that has better odds and that he can access on his lunch break... Ok I see your point.

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#98

Post by utopiah »

Can't wait to see how this (rather unsurprising yet important finding) is going to get abused for and with AI :

"Hey, I see we haven't chat / you didn't vibe code for few days now, how about you get 1000 free tokens and we just see where that lead us?"

It perfectly aligns with sycophantic interaction and then roulette outcome one gets, sure it might not work 100% of the time but it works most of the time and "I" as a user somehow "get it" more than AI researcher so "I" can get it to work for me.

Brilliant.

Re: Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm

#100

Post by abcde666777 »

snarfy wrote: post #12
abcde666777 wrote: post #10

I've always found the marketing around gambling (and most things really) completely disgusting. As a society I think we're far too tolerant of these things. A lot of the ads basically go along the lines of: 'you could win big and have a great time, awesome! (disclaimer: will probably ruin your life)'. It should be like it is with smoking - photos of lung cancer patients on the package. People will still do it of cour…

south park alcohol commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Cg8klY9JI

I love Matt and Trey XD
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