4 ms·

How is that the same? You can earn real money in a physical casino, here you cannot

b112 3y ago
For most people, you can't earn anything at a casino. Almost no one comes out ahead, because no one leaves when ahead. They just keep playing, until all their money is gone. Sounds like these apps are more honest.
beremaki 3y ago
Addiction is not related to the potential benefits of the habit. You can get addicted about anything depending on your personal dispositions. Simply said lot of "games" are disguised Skinner boxes, people with addictive personalities are very vulnerable to those.
dartos 3y ago
Addicts don’t gamble in order to make money, that’s just what gets you in the door. Once you’re in that addiction cycle, you crave the dopamine rush and play just for the feeling of maybe winning back a big loss even when in reality a big win probably won’t even make you break even. It’s why people just sit in front of slot machines for hours on end.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  Actually the dopamine rush isn’t in winning. Slot machines are all flashing lights, overwhelming colors, patterns, and matching patterns designed to provide dopamine rushes purely through stimulation. The point isn’t even in the potential of winning anymore, it’s getting lost in matching patterns and pretty lights where the world disappears for as long as possible. Slot machines are designed to maximize engagement and winning actually interrupts it with rewards (slot machine addicts have actually reported being upset when the slot machine pays out, because it ruins their trance like state!)
  - nullstyle 3y ago
    Actually thats making a ton of assumptions about the experience of gambling on slots. The world is more complicated than some Atlantic articles on casino design, unfortunately. Go play some slots with a group of friends and realize it.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
      The literal casino designers have explicitly laid out all their tricks about it. The fact you can see the other symbols not involved in the lines gives a feeling of a near miss. There are several machines which incorporate eyes to invoke parasocial relationships with the players. Multiple lines beyond the three, with obscure multiplier rules, also give a sense of mastery and understanding of mechanics as if it’s not a random number thing. And the fact is that pattern matching is inherent satisfying to people, so presenting endless pattern matching game is… well.. yeah…
      - nullstyle 3y ago
        None of what you said refutes my point: The human experience of gambling (including slots) is much more broad than the designers influence upon it and more value can be had than from the winnings and the losings of money. It's more than just shiny lights, and us gamblers aren't zombie lemmings shoving every paycheck into the void. Go gamble with a group of people, watch the diversity of their experiences and I bet you'll see gambling is more than your reductions. There is nuance to this that you are missing.
btbuildem 3y ago
If you could earn real money in a physical casino, casinos would cease to exist. Edit for clarification: excluding the staff, who obviously earn wages there, if the average person made any money gambling in an average casino, casinos would quickly go bankrupt.
- xDetoursx 3y ago
  You can earn real money in casinos, that's why they do exist. They pay out just often enough for people to believe that they are one pull away from hitting a jackpot. If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I recently saw a good video[1] covering the history and appeal of gambling machines. My takeaway is that the primary reason people play these is not because they think they're going to win money. This especially true of pachinko where "cashing out" is a convoluted process of trading balls for prizes for cash. > If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist This is self evidently false based on the linked article. Random chance games that have no possibility of ever having a net payout attract tons of players and make a lot of money. I think the problem is analyzing this with the economic "rational consumer" model of human behavior. Gambling is not rational but extremely popular because people are not rational. The whole industry is a trap that feeds users dopamine rewards in exchange for money. Once you're in, the payouts have little to do with it. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jQIHqkudgNY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jQIHqkudgNY
  - sebastianz 3y ago
    His point is that the average person that walks into a casino loses money by definition, as the casino designs its offers in that way. If the average person would win money, the casino would cease to exist.
  - im3w1l 3y ago
    This whole article is about apps that are up-front about never paying out cash. Money turns into points, points can be lost or turn into more points. But points never ever turn back into cash. And yet people play.
afavour 3y ago
You don’t earn real money in a physical casino, you earn chips. You’re correct that those chips are exchangeable for real money but the chips still serve a very real purpose: to dissuade you from picking up the cash and walking out. The vast majority of people who win chips plug them straight back into the casino games and end up leaving with nothing. It’s all about the addiction to gambling itself, winning money is merely a potential bonus. So the end result is not a whole lot different than these apps.
- baobabKoodaa 3y ago
  Purpose of casino chips is more practical and less nefarious than you imagine. Try playing a poker game with banknotes and coins and you'll see what I mean.
redhale 3y ago
You are correct that the thing these people are addicted to is not the chance to win real money. So in that sense it's not the same as other casinos. But the government regulates plenty of addictive things that are not "winning real money". The thing in common is a for-profit company taking advantage of a weakness of human nature, which in some cases leaves a meaningful number of people financially destitute. I think there's at least an argument to be made that it's worth putting up some protective measures.
- sneak 3y ago
  I think there is a stronger and more general argument to be made that the government should not be in the business of telling people how or if they can spend their money on things they want to spend it on. Spending significant fractions of one’s income servicing one’s chosen addictions (alcohol and tobacco and reckless spending of money principally among them) is a long and great tradition enjoyed by an huge portion of society and it seems utterly contrary to the idea of basic liberty to get involved in impeding that. Most addicts love their addictions; most of the ones that don’t eventually stop.
  - afavour 3y ago
    The problem with that logic is that when someone bottoms out on their addiction they become a burden society has to pay for.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    It's one thing to enjoy a vice, it's another to intentionally manipulate someone else into falling deeper and deeper into that vice to your benefit. Prohibiting that kind of behaviour isn't the same as prohibiting the vice itself. The sociopaths that gleefully exploit human psychology for their own financial gain should be stamped out. > Most addicts love their addictions; most of the ones that don’t eventually stop. Source? This doesn't match up with any addict I've interacted with or seen in media. The majority seem to fall between being unaware, in denial, or deeply unhappy about it but are unable to break their dependency.
  - redhale 3y ago
thefounder 3y ago
I think it has little to do with earning money. That's just the hook. It's a human condition/disease. Just like the hoarders. You need to experience addiction first hand to understand it, be it video games, smoking, collecting useless stuff, or just any kind of addiction.
lxgr 3y ago
In a pretty significant way, you also can't "earn" money in a physical casino, negative EVs and everything. There is a very limited set of circumstances in which playing a game with negative EV can be rational (e.g. if your utility function for money isn't linear); everything else seems like a more or less thinly disguised attempt to exploit certain properties of the human mind's/brain's reward system. (It's a philosophical question on whether consent can even theoretically be given to that exploitation.) I'd argue that the magnitude of the expected loss per game (i.e. everything or only a fraction of it – but in iterated games it's always everything as well) is much less relevant than that.
- schrodinger 3y ago
  Certainly see your point, but there is still a difference. In a real casino, you _may_ come out ahead on isolated events, even though over an infinite time horizon you won't. With these apps, that's not even a minuscule probability!

b112 3y ago

For most people, you can't earn anything at a casino. Almost no one comes out ahead, because no one leaves when ahead. They just keep playing, until all their money is gone. Sounds like these apps are more honest.

beremaki 3y ago

Addiction is not related to the potential benefits of the habit. You can get addicted about anything depending on your personal dispositions. Simply said lot of "games" are disguised Skinner boxes, people with addictive personalities are very vulnerable to those.

dartos 3y ago

Addicts don’t gamble in order to make money, that’s just what gets you in the door. Once you’re in that addiction cycle, you crave the dopamine rush and play just for the feeling of maybe winning back a big loss even when in reality a big win probably won’t even make you break even. It’s why people just sit in front of slot machines for hours on end.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Actually the dopamine rush isn’t in winning. Slot machines are all flashing lights, overwhelming colors, patterns, and matching patterns designed to provide dopamine rushes purely through stimulation. The point isn’t even in the potential of winning anymore, it’s getting lost in matching patterns and pretty lights where the world disappears for as long as possible. Slot machines are designed to maximize engagement and winning actually interrupts it with rewards (slot machine addicts have actually reported being upset when the slot machine pays out, because it ruins their trance like state!)
- nullstyle 3y ago
  Actually thats making a ton of assumptions about the experience of gambling on slots. The world is more complicated than some Atlantic articles on casino design, unfortunately. Go play some slots with a group of friends and realize it.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    The literal casino designers have explicitly laid out all their tricks about it. The fact you can see the other symbols not involved in the lines gives a feeling of a near miss. There are several machines which incorporate eyes to invoke parasocial relationships with the players. Multiple lines beyond the three, with obscure multiplier rules, also give a sense of mastery and understanding of mechanics as if it’s not a random number thing. And the fact is that pattern matching is inherent satisfying to people, so presenting endless pattern matching game is… well.. yeah…
    - nullstyle 3y ago
      None of what you said refutes my point: The human experience of gambling (including slots) is much more broad than the designers influence upon it and more value can be had than from the winnings and the losings of money. It's more than just shiny lights, and us gamblers aren't zombie lemmings shoving every paycheck into the void. Go gamble with a group of people, watch the diversity of their experiences and I bet you'll see gambling is more than your reductions. There is nuance to this that you are missing.

btbuildem 3y ago

If you could earn real money in a physical casino, casinos would cease to exist. Edit for clarification: excluding the staff, who obviously earn wages there, if the average person made any money gambling in an average casino, casinos would quickly go bankrupt.

xDetoursx 3y ago
You can earn real money in casinos, that's why they do exist. They pay out just often enough for people to believe that they are one pull away from hitting a jackpot. If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I recently saw a good video[1] covering the history and appeal of gambling machines. My takeaway is that the primary reason people play these is not because they think they're going to win money. This especially true of pachinko where "cashing out" is a convoluted process of trading balls for prizes for cash. > If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist This is self evidently false based on the linked article. Random chance games that have no possibility of ever having a net payout attract tons of players and make a lot of money. I think the problem is analyzing this with the economic "rational consumer" model of human behavior. Gambling is not rational but extremely popular because people are not rational. The whole industry is a trap that feeds users dopamine rewards in exchange for money. Once you're in, the payouts have little to do with it. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jQIHqkudgNY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jQIHqkudgNY
- sebastianz 3y ago
  His point is that the average person that walks into a casino loses money by definition, as the casino designs its offers in that way. If the average person would win money, the casino would cease to exist.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  This whole article is about apps that are up-front about never paying out cash. Money turns into points, points can be lost or turn into more points. But points never ever turn back into cash. And yet people play.

afavour 3y ago

You don’t earn real money in a physical casino, you earn chips. You’re correct that those chips are exchangeable for real money but the chips still serve a very real purpose: to dissuade you from picking up the cash and walking out. The vast majority of people who win chips plug them straight back into the casino games and end up leaving with nothing. It’s all about the addiction to gambling itself, winning money is merely a potential bonus. So the end result is not a whole lot different than these apps.

baobabKoodaa 3y ago
Purpose of casino chips is more practical and less nefarious than you imagine. Try playing a poker game with banknotes and coins and you'll see what I mean.

redhale 3y ago

You are correct that the thing these people are addicted to is not the chance to win real money. So in that sense it's not the same as other casinos. But the government regulates plenty of addictive things that are not "winning real money". The thing in common is a for-profit company taking advantage of a weakness of human nature, which in some cases leaves a meaningful number of people financially destitute. I think there's at least an argument to be made that it's worth putting up some protective measures.

sneak 3y ago
I think there is a stronger and more general argument to be made that the government should not be in the business of telling people how or if they can spend their money on things they want to spend it on. Spending significant fractions of one’s income servicing one’s chosen addictions (alcohol and tobacco and reckless spending of money principally among them) is a long and great tradition enjoyed by an huge portion of society and it seems utterly contrary to the idea of basic liberty to get involved in impeding that. Most addicts love their addictions; most of the ones that don’t eventually stop.
- afavour 3y ago
  The problem with that logic is that when someone bottoms out on their addiction they become a burden society has to pay for.
- Jochim 3y ago
  It's one thing to enjoy a vice, it's another to intentionally manipulate someone else into falling deeper and deeper into that vice to your benefit. Prohibiting that kind of behaviour isn't the same as prohibiting the vice itself. The sociopaths that gleefully exploit human psychology for their own financial gain should be stamped out. > Most addicts love their addictions; most of the ones that don’t eventually stop. Source? This doesn't match up with any addict I've interacted with or seen in media. The majority seem to fall between being unaware, in denial, or deeply unhappy about it but are unable to break their dependency.
- redhale 3y ago

thefounder 3y ago

I think it has little to do with earning money. That's just the hook. It's a human condition/disease. Just like the hoarders. You need to experience addiction first hand to understand it, be it video games, smoking, collecting useless stuff, or just any kind of addiction.

lxgr 3y ago

In a pretty significant way, you also can't "earn" money in a physical casino, negative EVs and everything. There is a very limited set of circumstances in which playing a game with negative EV can be rational (e.g. if your utility function for money isn't linear); everything else seems like a more or less thinly disguised attempt to exploit certain properties of the human mind's/brain's reward system. (It's a philosophical question on whether consent can even theoretically be given to that exploitation.) I'd argue that the magnitude of the expected loss per game (i.e. everything or only a fraction of it – but in iterated games it's always everything as well) is much less relevant than that.

schrodinger 3y ago
Certainly see your point, but there is still a difference. In a real casino, you _may_ come out ahead on isolated events, even though over an infinite time horizon you won't. With these apps, that's not even a minuscule probability!