zlacker

>>jimbob+(OP)
The older I get the more I hate gambling. When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things like this.

Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive.

This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these forces

>>snapca+0M2
My real wake-up call was the introductory class in my data science master's program. We spent a whole week learning about all the clever tricks Harrah's data scientists found to keep people in the gambling halls. The course's instructor really lionized Harrah's for doing this, and loved to talk about how much profit it made for the company.

For my part, I was horrified. I couldn't find a way to see some of these tricks the use as anything but a form of highly evolved confidence artistry. Legal con artistry, sure. But a legal scam is still a scam. Even if the people getting scammed never wise to the scam, it's still a scam.

The arguments about tax revenues and suchlike don't make me feel any better about it. All I see in their success is a demonstration that a great many people will happily turn a blind eye to abusive behavior if they believe they can materially benefit from doing so. And, of course, they never do, anyway. The promises of professional con artists that our communities will benefit if we grant them imprimatur for their operations turned out to also be a scam. Con artists pulling a con; quelle surprise!

>>bunder+Q33
Its interesting to think many of the techniques the casino's used to keep people gambling going back to the 60's and 70's are the same ones facebook, twitter and youtube all employ now in one way or another today. I had the same reaction you did in your data science class when I took several psychology classes and they talked about the same psychological tricks. You quickly realize how easy it is to manipulate the human brain and by proxy, human behavior.

Reminds of the quote from Joshua the computer in War Games: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

>>burnin+hi3
If it's so easy... surely you've figured out how to become fabulously wealthy? I'm curious which tricks you use.

I am calling bullshit here. There's a popular narrative that we've somehow hacked the code of the human brain and can program people to do anything we want, against their will. Nonsense. The best you can do is move the needle a few percentage points across a statistically large number of humans. This is not something to worry about.

>>stickf+2u3
> surely you've figured out how to become fabulously wealthy

You mean, by starting a big casino, hiring thousands of people, advertising all over, etc.? A small investment like that?

> The best you can do is move the needle a few percentage points across a statistically large number of humans.

That may be true, but a "few percentage points" is enough to create enormous profits, if you do what I said above. Giving the house a 54% advantage instead of 51% makes a big, big difference.

>>Albert+pv3
It's obviously not that easy. Casinos go bankrupt left and right. Hell, one famous former president is responsible for three of them.

>>stickf+yC3
Yes, but those casinos didn't go bankrupt from players collecting too many winnings. It's still a business and if you don't get enough customers in to keep the lights on you fold.

Customer acquisition and retention is still hard. Especially when you're not the only gambling parlor in town. You're selling an addictive product which is extremely effective over a population but you don't have a moat to make sure they're addicted to specifically you.

But government and society don't care about a specific business, they're counting the number of people addicted by the industry in total.

This thread is fun because the kind of black and white thinking neuro-spicy internet commentator on HN doesn't have an intellectual framework that can capture why alcohol, cannabis, and Oxy might be allowable but not heroine. And then an analyze gambling and sports betting in that framework. It's why the arguments keep circling forever.

>>Spivak+DD5
Thanks. Having a good average profit over a player's bets gives you a head start, but (a) the amount of their bets, (b) the number of players, and (c) their loyalty all determine your gross profit. All of those are factors you have to work on.

And then your costs have to be less than that.