6 ms·
Gambling addicts will really gamble on anything, won’t they? It’s a bit strange to see degenerate gambling dressed up as “predictions”.
by nkrisc 6mo ago
Gambling addicts will really gamble on anything, won’t they? It’s a bit strange to see degenerate gambling dressed up as “predictions”.
- gwerbin 6mo agoThis looks less like gambling addiction and more like a scam executed for profit.
- chneu 6mo agoYes, gambling. That's literally what gambling is, a scam.
- qup 6mo agoGambling takes many forms. If you and I flip a coin for $100, there's no scam.
- testing22321 6mo agoSooner or later someone will rig the coin
- chucksta 6mo agoPotential for fraudulent activity makes something a scam? That list is gonna be long
- Tade0 6mo ago"Gaming"[0] companies are audited for the expected value each coin toss/slot machine roll etc. has - typically it's a high and unusually precise percentage, like e.g. 95.1681%. The scam in is advertising, that emphasizes how much you can potentially win, even though obviously on average the house takes those few percent each time. [0] A term they like to use to describe themselves.
- testing22321 6mo agoWith regards to gambling, yes. The list is all of it.
- hyperhello 6mo agoOr a spherical cow.
- mint5 6mo agoIt’s a scam when the house takes $1 from that $100 each time. These unlicensed internet gambling halls most certainly take their cut, whatever that amount is.
- scottyah 6mo agoIt's only a scam if they don't disclose that. If the house brought the two people together I'd say it's fair as services rendered. I don't get mad when a bar charges more than the base cost of the alcohol.
- HDThoreaun 6mo agoYour definition of scam is terrible
- mint5 6mo ago“ If you and I flip a coin for $100, there's no scam.” statistically over a time with a fair coin, they’re coming out even. Add in the house taking a cut each time, now everyone but the house is guaranteed to lose. Sounds like a scam to me
- HDThoreaun 6mo ago> now everyone but the house is guaranteed to lose. Gambling is about more than making money. Most gamblers do not expect to win, they do it because its entertaining. Paying $1 for the opportunity to participate in the coin flip is something many people are happy to do. Negative EV does not equal losing because you forgot to include the entertainment value. Scams involve deception. There is no deception in a business that is upfront about taking a fee to match gamblers.
- mint5 6mo agoIf gambling wasn’t about the money then it wouldn’t be centered around money.
- wongarsu 6mo agoThis instance is what you could call a scam, maybe even fraud. But in the absence of manipulation or insider knowledge predicting the weather is pretty close to gambling. As is "does bitcoin go up or down in the next five minutes" or "how many tweets will Elon Musk post in the next couple days" (all real bets on Polymarket)
- SirFatty 6mo agoAnd who fueled the profits? Gamblers?
- close04 6mo agoA lot of gambling is a scam executed form profit. I call it a scam because it's not always fraudulent, it's persuasion and a dash of misleading info. Often one party unduly influences the outcome or has information that the other can't have. Whether it's corruption to predetermine the result of a match, or knowing that the star player will miss it, or a gambling machine that suggests a higher expected payout than the real one, or even a casino's rules that arbitrarily decide whether your win was legitimate or not, in practice the industry is more scam than legitimate business.
- alansaber 6mo agoWe rename everything to make it cooler to sell. Probably been a thing since the times of the sea people.
- troyvit 6mo agoI'm a "holy crap how do they keep getting the weather so wrong" addict and it's as irrational as being a gambling addict in that weather forecasts have improved a lot. I've never been tempted to gamble until now, where I realize I can put my money where my (irrational) mouth is. All that said, gambling addiction is like a disease, same as any other. Holding folks who have it in contempt is about the same as holding alcoholics in contempt. It ignores the fact that it's a real affliction and not a lifestyle choice. Polymarket is taking advantage of that affliction.
- cyclopeanutopia 6mo agoYou seem to ignore the fact that most people know how bad alcohol, gambling, cigarettes and other addictive things are, yet they still choose them and then suffer consequences. If you asked someone whether they wanted to get ass cancer and they told you: "yeah, yolo", wouldn't it be a contempt-worthy choice? It would.
- troyvit 6mo agoNah I just have compassion for people. For one thing, not everybody knows how bad those things are. If all you see is that "fun uncle" who's always drunk, you learn that drinking isn't so bad. Couple that with being bombarded by positive messages around drinking and the popular belief that anything in moderation is OK, and you end up doing them. The very act of doing them obscures the consequences you are suffering. That's chemical. The same thing happens with gambling, but it's a dopamine rush instead of an alcohol rush. I'm not saying people have no agency, I'm just saying there's a lot more going on than just agency.
- cyclopeanutopia 6mo agoI also have compassion, and come from (and live in) a country with pretty hardcore drinking culture. And yet even the "fun uncle" himself knows how bad it is. Before the family gathers and drinks vodka like there is no tomorrow, everyone is aware that it's poison, what they will feel tomorrow, that someone will need to take care of then uncle somehow, and nobody is really even pretending that it's just fun and harmless. Ultimately it's all about making conscious decisions or not. One could argue, maybe, that inability to make good decisions in obvious situations is the real disease, but it's not really a thing in our culture - or maybe it's actually the same thing you mentioned with chemicals: once you make the stupid decision to drink, vodka is also being used as an explanation for other stupid decisions, making it harder to see one's weaknesses? Not sure.
- ineedasername 6mo agoIt’s not gambling, these are legitimate financial instruments designed to allow proper risk management through appropriately market-set pricing on the value of that risk mitigation, and it’s doing this in a way that democratizes risk management in a way previously inaccessible to the public. j/k totally gambling
- vrganj 6mo agoHow is it any different from the stock market? (Whether you read this as a defense of polymarket or an indictment of shareholder capitalism might depend on your ideology)
- fleroviumna 6mo ago[dead]