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No, you fundamentally do not understand the problem. You are willing to abstract everything from the equation apart from the outcome, and that is so wrong. Mon
by c048 3y ago
No, you fundamentally do not understand the problem. You are willing to abstract everything from the equation apart from the outcome, and that is so wrong.
Money is a specific representation of the 'want' that drives gambling. That the outcome is getting more money or more some other representation does not matter. All that matters to the human brain is that the 'want' is satisfied.
Gambling becomes a problem when a person is willing to spend a harmful amount of 'input': usually time and/or money. This is either due to a personality flaw or due to manipulation of people into believing that the odds are in their favor, making them increase their input.
There is only not a problem when either of the following conditions is met:
- The 'input' is not at risk of damaging anyone.
- The chance of obtaining the 'want' does not modify the 'input' to become harmful.
- The 'want' is not interesting to anyone.
- robotresearcher 3y agoThat definition covers collecting model trains or old bottle caps, if the expense is harmful to the collector. And few people would call that gambling.
- worrycue 3y agoThere is still a payout in those games - it’s just not money. Sunk cost fallacy still plays a role. Frankly, the addictive part is in the randomness of the payout. What the payout is isn’t particularly important. The fact that games don’t payout money could be seen as worse - you have zero chance of recovering your expenditure.
- robotresearcher 3y agoYeah, I get it. But buying stuff you want but can't afford is not what anyone else means by 'gambling'. Compulsively spending your mortgage payment on model trains, heroin, or hookers is harmful addictive behavior. But it's not gambling.
- c048 3y agoIt's not gambling because there is no randomness directly between an input and output (and subsequential outputs). Unless you want to argue that the lack of clear resolution of an item as chance (be it either due to lack of knowledge or testability). For all intents and purposes it will be considered a direct purchase, and is also why microtransactions are an entirely different 'problem' from online gambling.
- stubish 3y agoYes, I think we first saw this with cigarette cards. And people did feel compelled to buy the cigarettes for a chance at completing a set. With todays understanding of gambling and addiction, I think the only thing stopping us calling it gambling is that it is not a big enough problem to investigate and legislate. Anyone here get in trouble for digging through a box of cereal for the toy at the bottom?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>You are willing to abstract everything from the equation apart from the outcome, and that is so wrong. So are governments, apparently. They don't care about the psychological impact of gambling. They still allow alcohol, subsidize corn syrup, and permit a number of otherwise harmful personal life choices. They care that it becomes insidious enough to cause crime rings. Or simply that it becomes a channel of funding that the govt. cannot easily tax. none of that matters for a video game as of now, so I'm not surprised most countries are still arguing about it. They are talking past each other. even under your definitions, you can argue that "the want isn't interesting" is still a valid defense for these lawmakers. Even the internet community has its share of people bashing others for playing video games or watching various TV shows. If these assumed millennials can't take games seriously, how will the boomer governments?
- lobocinza 3y agoThere's the argument that usage of drugs like alcohol increase government costs with health and law enforcement. Gaming may make your life more miserable and more sedentary but as you stay at home it generally is a win for government.