>“Although the findings relate to direct marketing, I see no reason why the same or similar adverse effects wouldn’t occur for gambling advertising on TV or social media.”
Controlling/banning advertising for Alcohol and Tobacco results in significant health benefits. Sports gambling used to be illegal in many places or limited to specific places. Now that it's available in your pocket, like a pack of smokes or a flask of whisky, why wouldn't advertising triggers, direct or otherwise, be effective at encouraging susceptible people to partake? This is not a surprising result. It's the inaction of most governments that is surprising.
I used to work for a (now defunct) wagering operation. From my understanding even internally the marketing and business guys would’ve preferred the advertisements to be banned. It’s such an effective customer acquisition tool that the only way to compete is to spend insane amounts on marketing, because if you don’t, all of your competitors are and you’ll go bust. A ban would drastically level out the playing field and make things more sustainable.
The only ones that don’t want the ban are the ones selling the advertising slots. No way they’re giving up the gravy train.
And the 2nd level consequence of that levelling the playing field would be more competition, and fewer huge, powerful gambling companies. Fewer, huge companies have the money and skills to buy politicians (exhibit one: "prediction markets"). Banning ads would be a net positive for the addicts, and net negative for politicians, hence it won't happen in our current universe.
I wonder if they would overturn that if sufficient evidence of harm were demonstrated. They've been remarkably consistent about permitting violations of constitutional rights where the government can unambiguously demonstrate a pressing need.
And yet SCOTUS has carved out a number of exceptions where they felt it was clearly necessary. Disorderly conduct and noise ordinances are examples. It's not the end of the world but (very approximately) being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
> being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
Because most of the time if you can argue “they won’t do a good job at capitalism [going to work]” then everyone goes “oh no no no we can’t have that.”
Then why was it possible to ban cigarette commercials on TV? Or is it just that they cannot ban the ads in general? You have no right to the airwaves, so television access is easy to restrict.
It's everywhere on YouTube, usually as a 'hidden' ad in the alt-right manosphere (e.g. the recent Nick Shirley video he wears a sweatshirt for a gambling site throughout, with constant name drops of it that aren't over ads).
Disgusting behavior, especially coming from those who often claim their content is to improve things. Hypocrites across the board.
Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association, Inc. v. United States (1999) makes it illegal for the government to ban advertising of legal gambling in the US.
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.
“Parachute Use to Prevent Death and Major Trauma When Jumping from Aircraft: Randomized Controlled Trial.” BMJ, vol. 363, 2018, k5094.
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
> Conclusions Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice.
Anthropic is already starting to do this regularly with "usage promotions" [0] which is another way of a casino giving free $20 spins to gamblers (vibe-coders in this case) to keep gambling - or in this case, keep spending tokens on Claude.
I brought this up previously [1] and recently [2] it and I made that accurate comparison as a form of gambling and got immediately flag'd despite that being correct.
> I brought this up previously [1] and recently [2] it and I made that accurate comparison as a form of gambling and got immediately flag'd despite that being correct.
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.
How do you define "gambling" though - the YouTube ads I see for crypto trading apps and outright betting apps look very similar. Mind you I don't gamble or "invest" in crypto...
Crazy how we (the US) just decided as a society that gambling was not only not illegal anymore but that it was perfectly reasonable to integrate it deeply into every sporting event possible in a span of about five years.
And not just sports, but world events where insiders can have the financial incentives to make terrible things happen.
But say that, and the same non sensical asinine crowd that spammed about crypto future or NFTs will tell you that's just to have more accurate information and you don't get it.
As an extension of that kind of betting, a sitting President owning a crypto coin, and private social media platform he bolsters with his official duties, are shocking departures from norms around self-enrichment.
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 course but at least it's not falsely advertised.
So the gambling ads should be things like, that moment where your wife finds out you've drained the family's savings and the house is about to be re-possessed. Yeah.
Just ban it. The only defense for our lives being flooded with advertising is that it helps markets be more efficient.
But the most efficient gambling provider is the one that extracts the most money from its customers. Helping gambling companies be successful is a net loss to society.
By that argument the companies that are 'most efficient' are the ones that extract the most money. Efficiency is a property of both sides of the equation, and by that light I would say the most efficient gambling provider is the one that charges the least money for the most excitement about the result (which is the positive outcome that gamblers are purchasing, essentially). But to me the ill effects on those who are addicted is enough that the advertising should just be banned anyway.
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!
I think an honest gambling ad would include wins and losses at an appropriate ratio and emphasize the excitement as opposed to the payout. I do think the majority of people engaging in gambling engage with it in that way (even if I don't understanding it), and that the people it effects so extremely negatively are a smaller minority. But, a) that smaller minority still likely makes up a very large fraction of these companies income stream, and b) the harm is large enough that banning the advertising is still I think the better option, anyhow.
No. A lot of the Australian ads play on the "this gimmick feature means if you lose you win!"
What it aleays means is you still win or lose a bet they just shuffled the permutations so that you win and lose in different outcomes.
But emotiionally they sell it as them giving you a chance. Pretty manipulative.
Examples would be like "money back if your horse comes second" or "bet on horse coming 3rd 4th or 5th" or "if your team is up at half time we count it as a win".
It shouldn't even be allowed to exist, there are literally zero positive outcomes for anyone. On aggregate, people just lose money. And no, it's not entertainment.
And for the operator, they make money by... doing nothing? That's a huge red flag. Usually if that's the case, then the business is not legitimate.
Study seems flawed– it preselects two different audiences (allow/not-allow offers mapping to something like low/high interest in gambling), then attributes the offers as the cause rather than the effect of selecting different audiences.
The second paragraph of the article somewhat misrepresents the study.
There wasn't a group that chose to opt out, and another group that chose not to. Everyone agreed to be in the study, and then a random half of the cohort was removed from the mailing lists.
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 money from them while in their own domain.
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.
There's a certain poker quip which I like to use and apply to other contexts, such as active investing: "If you look around the table can't tell which player is the sucker, you're the sucker."
In other words, beware entering into a game where the rules ensure somebody will be victimized. This is especially true when many of the existing denizens spend much much more time and effort and finagling than you'll ever want to match.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- W.O.P.R, War Games (1983)
It was actually free money assuming you had the resolve to stop once you claimed the bonus (presumably most people didnt). As long as you were laying the other side of your bet on an exchange you could extract the full value of your free bets risk free.
I collected a few grand back then, however those sort of promotions are now illegal where I live.
There are sometimes free lunches out there to be had. They’re playing the averages and accepting some losses if they know they’ll make it up from other customers. But you’d better be sure you’re not one of the suckers if you do it.
It was truly a wild time. All the books desperate for action in this new online gambling world (US). I went from book to book, took "advantage" of their promos, never collected a dime. When I was up, I bet more. Hit zero? Go to the next book. Their lines were better anyway ;)
I hate this kind of research. Or well, I hate that it has any influence at all, that it matters.
This kind of research being that which shows an obvious harm that we all know about. It should have zero influence because it is blindingly obvious. Namely because if the title wasn't true, betting companies wouldn't be spending lots of money on it in the first place. But they are, as everyone who lives in the UK can tell. So we know. So this study shouldn't influence policy in the slightest. But it does.
I hate it because there's by definition a gap of years between A. all of us knowing that a phenomenon is harmful B. the study coming out. And then another gap of many years between the study and actual policy changes.
Here's my request to people in academia who do studies like these - which is admittedly a tiny percentage of academia. Just fudge the numbers and publish it a year earlier. Use LLMs to generate the text. It would be a huge boon to society. We all know it's true, so you're not doing anything wrong. Your quest for honesty is hurting everyone. The actual data is pointless.
It's like gathering real data on whether pigeons will indeed eat sunflower seeds if thrown on the ground in front of them, versus just making it up. Maybe such a study hasn't been done yet, but it literally doesn't matter because we know the outcome. There's zero gain from actually doing the study versus saying that yes, pigeons will generally do so.
I mean if it didn't make the gambling organizations more money they wouldn't do it. Gambling industry has always been about how much wealth it can extract from the punters without being regulated for it.
Hopefully this research ends up being used to justify more gambling regulations, but governments are addicted to the gambling lobby donations so who knows what will happen.
That’s real interesting - being bombarded with offers is kind of a huge turnoff for me. Wonder if there’s some kind of correlation between that, and my general distaste for gambling/betting.
Gamblers are the whales of that industry. The industry is well aware of that and well aware of how much harm they can cause. But their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
Same as pay-to-win freemium games. Find the whales and milk them for all you can. For every high-spender who can afford it they know full well the other 99 cannot. They know they are ruining some people's lives. They know they use dirty psychological manipulation tactics. Their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
There are many jurisdictions where the companies are not allowed to ban 'winners', but the companies often respond by lowering those users' bet size limits.
No different than big tech and their divisive algorithms. Or big pharma and side effects. Or big manufacturing and environmental harm (including harm to the people living around manufacturing companies).
It is an inherent property of unchecked capitalism to externalise and ignore any unwanted costs. Or on the flip side of that coin, profit from causing damage to others, where possible.
Also there’s a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If one entity is scrupulous that doesn’t mean another will. Obviously if they had any morals they’d see the bright line.
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 with investing and never got a good answer. He was certainly smart enough that he could have had fun with the research and chance.
Then there was a market downturn and his investment advisor had to talk him down from selling in a panic, and I was like "oh... It's not an information problem at all. It's entirely an emotional regulation problem"
> I asked a couple times why he didn't replace gambling with investing and never got a good answer
There's a simple answer, which is that gambling is fun, and investing is not fun (my guess.) Your coworker is a pleasure seeker, like everyone is to some degree.
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 access to that with a habit could already be an issue.
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.
I'm not sure it's irrational to sell in a market downturn. It's a way to pad your emergency savings rather than try to catch a falling knife later when you're already fired. Of course if you sell more than you need to survive a layoff, then that's probably not smart.
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.
I like it in principle, but the pathologically addicted already make additional accounts and pay other people to acquire them.
So it may help by stopping some people from getting to that point, but as a safety net, an important chunk of the victims will still punch right through it.
Yeah, I mean I just don't see the point of a roundabout rule like that if the goal is to kill the companies - which it should be - just kill the companies directly.
Someone could create a market where problem gamblers can buy wagering power (the ability to risk more after reaching their own loss cap) from non-gamblers unless you force physical in person gambling with ID checks.
Gambling should return to being legal in Vegas and on reservations, 24/7 gambling anywhere is very problematic.
It genuinely is, and I’d sooner see regulation targeting it than someone’s multileg parlay. There’s a much clearer line between alcohol on demand and public misconduct or injuries from DUI, than gambling and a more nebulous societal harm.
They can but most non gamblers wouldn't partictpate. Many non gomblers won't particitate because they might go to vegas this year and so want the chance.
vegas is cheap. Not free, but cheap to get to compared to most other tourist traps. There are a fair amout of free trips to vegas those hopes will keep a lot away.
and most people have ethics and so would not sell. Maybe to someone in the family, but strangers.
If you were friends with an alcoholic it would be pretty shitty to give them a bottle of vodka for their birthday.
People are not machines, it’s not as simple as deciding whether to do something or not. You have stronger and weaker days. Temptation makes it harder to do what is in your best interests, even if you’ve decided on another day that you’d rather not partake.
Getting concrete about gambling: lots of people decide not to gamble and just don’t. Lots of people decide they don’t care whether they gamble and they do. But there are also many people in the middle, who would rather not gamble, but find that they sometimes act against their own best interests, and their own past resolutions to not gamble. Bombarding these people with offers of free bets increases the likelihood that they will gamble on their weaker days.
When I hear takes like yours, I feel very jealous. I would love to always act in my own best interests and according to some policy I predetermined. But that’s just not my experience of how life works.
I feel like you’re trying to force some sort of binary here, but I’m trying to say that you may choose not to gamble in general, on day X, but find that you do gamble later.
In fact I would say that many gambling addicts have _chosen_ _not_ to gamble in some sense, but in another moment they do find that they choose to. There’s a temporal aspect to this.
Advertising gambling to those people makes it less likely that they will follow through on their choices.
Do you always do literally everything you choose with a clear head? Never procrastinate, get angry, feel sad, whatever? It’s really hard for me to see your perspective on this.
I think it becomes philosophically clearer if we view it as a fight between multiple minds--or contextual operating modes--in the same person. The practical and ethical question for outsiders is which one we want to favor in the fight with the other(s).
"I want to eat this bucket of ice cream... But I also really want to not want to."
I wish that mark pilgrim had not taken his blog off-line… He had a very insightful and moving peace about alcoholism and described it in a very striking and understandable way.
It's a misunderstanding because addiction is a habit where the transition cost of adopting the habit is low and the transition cost to exit the habit is high.
This means you can say people voluntarily got into their addiction, but you cannot say they voluntarily stay in their addiction.
Cigarettes are a good example. It is easier to wean off from cigarettes and switch to vaping and then quit vaping, than to quit smoking directly.
This is because the transition cost from smoking to vaping is much lower.
I understand moral arguments but also see how others might not. I think it might be more useful to view this from a societal perspective. Is it to society's benefit to ensure gamblers don't ruin their own lives? To answer that question, what's the cost to society when a gambler ruins their life?
Lost savings means an impoverished individual and potentially an impoverished family and children. These draw support resources from the state and community, are more likely to turn to crime, and are less likely to develop into contributing members of society.
Help me understand the difference between preying on gambling addicts vs preying on gullible old people to get them to buy $500 in apple store gift cards.
Both are scummy but it's not clear how to regulate the latter without huge collateral damage whereas the former is quite straightforward (because there's effectively no societal benefit to begin with).
If we totaly forbid gift cards, which is the huge colleteral damage? If you want to send $500 to John, just write a check in USA or bank transfer in the rest of the world.
Gambling is basically a scam (house always wins) and thus should not be a legal transaction you can make. What moral responsibility do we have to allow companies to scam people?
Because they're not knowledgeable or consenting. You don't know your odds, and the house makes sure of it. And if you're addicted, you don't really consent.
Exhibit A: Tobacco. Prior to regulation, it was advertised widely and thought to be not that bad.
Once we regulated knowledge and consent, use plummeted.
For knowledge, we display pictures on the pack and carton of people in agony dying of lung cancer. We tell them the odds. For consent, we mitigate by saying "WARNING: nicotine is an addictive chemical. Nicotine can be more addictive than Heroine".
The fallacy here is that markets are naturally free and government intervention makes markets less free. That's rarely the case. Often, intervention makes the market more free.
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
Because harm does not guarantee control.
When it becomes compulsive, it’s not a simple cost-benefit choice anymore. People can know it’s hurting them and still feel driven to keep doing it.
The dopamine rush of gambling means the brain can get stuck chasing relief, hope, or reward, despite also knowing that it is destructive.
> If gambling orgs do something that you know causes harm, why isn't the a legal sense of responsibility?
Because it’s not that easy to prove responsibility in the face of powerful money lobbying and victim-blaming. Shame and stigma around addiction means people don’t come forward. Freedom argument comes in that not everyone who gambles is an addict, so restricting it takes freedom away. The same argument is used to push the personal responsibility angle.
Ultimately I think the way the gambling orgs cover their ass is by advertising gambling addiction helplines and adding small disclaimers to call those lines if you have a problem: “that’s it, legislators, we are clearly giving them the tools to help themselves, and that shows us exercising responsibility. Bombarding gamblers with offers is simply marketing and creating engagement for our business, you can’t make that illegal.”
Do they have moral responsibility to not exploit addicted gamblers? I would argue, yes, they do. But unless you prohibit all gambling marketing, how would you accomplish this moral responsibility even if the gambling company agreed it had it? It’s not like addicts identify themselves or that you can filter your marketing easily to people without problems. This is why the solutions have been on outlawing the whole thing, because it’s really hard to operate as a business without the societal cost.
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
Because they're stupid. Gamblers are idiots, gambling companies prey on the dumb. Anyone who understands the very basic math behind the games understands that it's pointless to play, you'll just lose more the more you play. That's the whole point. It's not even a secret, you can find the exact odds for each game.
Poker is different as you're playing other players rather than the house but it's still a negative sum game as the house takes a cut so you have to be better than the others to play. And if you're a reasonably intelligent person you'll just bet a little and accept your losses and move on. Or not play at all. Idiots will do dumb stuff like bet way more than they can afford, then they won't have money to pay their mortgage, rent etc and so on. People call it an addiction but I'm pretty sure it's mostly just being really really stupid. Can't be addicted to gambling if you aren't dumb as a rock.
>“Although the findings relate to direct marketing, I see no reason why the same or similar adverse effects wouldn’t occur for gambling advertising on TV or social media.”
Controlling/banning advertising for Alcohol and Tobacco results in significant health benefits. Sports gambling used to be illegal in many places or limited to specific places. Now that it's available in your pocket, like a pack of smokes or a flask of whisky, why wouldn't advertising triggers, direct or otherwise, be effective at encouraging susceptible people to partake? This is not a surprising result. It's the inaction of most governments that is surprising.
I used to work for a (now defunct) wagering operation. From my understanding even internally the marketing and business guys would’ve preferred the advertisements to be banned. It’s such an effective customer acquisition tool that the only way to compete is to spend insane amounts on marketing, because if you don’t, all of your competitors are and you’ll go bust. A ban would drastically level out the playing field and make things more sustainable.
The only ones that don’t want the ban are the ones selling the advertising slots. No way they’re giving up the gravy train.
And the 2nd level consequence of that levelling the playing field would be more competition, and fewer huge, powerful gambling companies. Fewer, huge companies have the money and skills to buy politicians (exhibit one: "prediction markets"). Banning ads would be a net positive for the addicts, and net negative for politicians, hence it won't happen in our current universe.
Are you claiming that advertising doesn't increase the total gambling spend?
No - it clearly does. But I’m saying look at where the advertising money is going to understand why it’s going to be hard to ban it.
The US Supreme Court made it illegal for states to ban gambling ads, as a first amendment issue. I think it was a bad decision.
I wonder if they would overturn that if sufficient evidence of harm were demonstrated. They've been remarkably consistent about permitting violations of constitutional rights where the government can unambiguously demonstrate a pressing need.
The 1A does not have an exception for harm.
Not true. Generally the law must be evaluated by the “strict scrutiny“ standard.
And yet SCOTUS has carved out a number of exceptions where they felt it was clearly necessary. Disorderly conduct and noise ordinances are examples. It's not the end of the world but (very approximately) being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
> being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
Because most of the time if you can argue “they won’t do a good job at capitalism [going to work]” then everyone goes “oh no no no we can’t have that.”
If that were the case than libel and slander would be legal.
Then why was it possible to ban cigarette commercials on TV? Or is it just that they cannot ban the ads in general? You have no right to the airwaves, so television access is easy to restrict.
Correct, broadcast tv is easy
It's everywhere on YouTube, usually as a 'hidden' ad in the alt-right manosphere (e.g. the recent Nick Shirley video he wears a sweatshirt for a gambling site throughout, with constant name drops of it that aren't over ads).
Disgusting behavior, especially coming from those who often claim their content is to improve things. Hypocrites across the board.
I see Kalshi promoted on many sports highlights videos on YouTube.
Makes sense, it’s high in protein.
Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association, Inc. v. United States (1999) makes it illegal for the government to ban advertising of legal gambling in the US.
That was because they allowed advertising for some forms of (legal) gambling but not others.
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.
You'll enjoy this one:
“Parachute Use to Prevent Death and Major Trauma When Jumping from Aircraft: Randomized Controlled Trial.” BMJ, vol. 363, 2018, k5094. https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
> Conclusions Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice.
Is this real?
The BMJ publishes an annual Christmas joke paper.
For example, "The survival time of chocolates on hospital wards: covert observational study".
It likely is :). The participants jumped off of an airplane that was on the ground.
Anthropic is already starting to do this regularly with "usage promotions" [0] which is another way of a casino giving free $20 spins to gamblers (vibe-coders in this case) to keep gambling - or in this case, keep spending tokens on Claude.
I brought this up previously [1] and recently [2] it and I made that accurate comparison as a form of gambling and got immediately flag'd despite that being correct.
[0] https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14063676-claude-march...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381597
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429184
> I brought this up previously [1] and recently [2] it and I made that accurate comparison as a form of gambling and got immediately flag'd despite that being correct.
Well FWIW I see you and agree with you.
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.
More than end-point, it's about harm throttling. Cigarettes will kill you, but there's only so many cigarettes you can smoke per day.
Limit gambling to symbolic amounts (maybe a monthly limit of the minimum salary in that country), and see how it goes.
You might even have gambling companies lobbying to increase the minimum salary!
How do you define "gambling" though - the YouTube ads I see for crypto trading apps and outright betting apps look very similar. Mind you I don't gamble or "invest" in crypto...
One thing the UK did was to ban gambling companies from accepting credit cards.
Fun fact: gambling companies increasingly also invest in mental health service companies, so that they can profit from both sides.
That's what they mean when they say the house always wins.
Horizontal integration
Crazy how we (the US) just decided as a society that gambling was not only not illegal anymore but that it was perfectly reasonable to integrate it deeply into every sporting event possible in a span of about five years.
We didn't decide that, btw.
And they say crypto has no use cases.
And not just sports, but world events where insiders can have the financial incentives to make terrible things happen.
But say that, and the same non sensical asinine crowd that spammed about crypto future or NFTs will tell you that's just to have more accurate information and you don't get it.
As an extension of that kind of betting, a sitting President owning a crypto coin, and private social media platform he bolsters with his official duties, are shocking departures from norms around self-enrichment.
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 course but at least it's not falsely advertised.
So the gambling ads should be things like, that moment where your wife finds out you've drained the family's savings and the house is about to be re-possessed. Yeah.
Just ban it. The only defense for our lives being flooded with advertising is that it helps markets be more efficient.
But the most efficient gambling provider is the one that extracts the most money from its customers. Helping gambling companies be successful is a net loss to society.
By that argument the companies that are 'most efficient' are the ones that extract the most money. Efficiency is a property of both sides of the equation, and by that light I would say the most efficient gambling provider is the one that charges the least money for the most excitement about the result (which is the positive outcome that gamblers are purchasing, essentially). But to me the ill effects on those who are addicted is enough that the advertising should just be banned anyway.
south park alcohol commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Cg8klY9JI
I love Matt and Trey XD
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!
I think an honest gambling ad would include wins and losses at an appropriate ratio and emphasize the excitement as opposed to the payout. I do think the majority of people engaging in gambling engage with it in that way (even if I don't understanding it), and that the people it effects so extremely negatively are a smaller minority. But, a) that smaller minority still likely makes up a very large fraction of these companies income stream, and b) the harm is large enough that banning the advertising is still I think the better option, anyhow.
At this point I question whether they should even be allowed to advertise.
No. A lot of the Australian ads play on the "this gimmick feature means if you lose you win!"
What it aleays means is you still win or lose a bet they just shuffled the permutations so that you win and lose in different outcomes.
But emotiionally they sell it as them giving you a chance. Pretty manipulative.
Examples would be like "money back if your horse comes second" or "bet on horse coming 3rd 4th or 5th" or "if your team is up at half time we count it as a win".
They are just offering a different wager!
It shouldn't even be allowed to exist, there are literally zero positive outcomes for anyone. On aggregate, people just lose money. And no, it's not entertainment.
And for the operator, they make money by... doing nothing? That's a huge red flag. Usually if that's the case, then the business is not legitimate.
Study seems flawed– it preselects two different audiences (allow/not-allow offers mapping to something like low/high interest in gambling), then attributes the offers as the cause rather than the effect of selecting different audiences.
The second paragraph of the article somewhat misrepresents the study.
There wasn't a group that chose to opt out, and another group that chose not to. Everyone agreed to be in the study, and then a random half of the cohort was removed from the mailing lists.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.70369
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 money from them while in their own domain.
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.
> while in their own domain
There's a certain poker quip which I like to use and apply to other contexts, such as active investing: "If you look around the table can't tell which player is the sucker, you're the sucker."
In other words, beware entering into a game where the rules ensure somebody will be victimized. This is especially true when many of the existing denizens spend much much more time and effort and finagling than you'll ever want to match.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- W.O.P.R, War Games (1983)
All too often I look over at other tables and see that the suckers are friends and family.
It was actually free money assuming you had the resolve to stop once you claimed the bonus (presumably most people didnt). As long as you were laying the other side of your bet on an exchange you could extract the full value of your free bets risk free.
I collected a few grand back then, however those sort of promotions are now illegal where I live.
There are sometimes free lunches out there to be had. They’re playing the averages and accepting some losses if they know they’ll make it up from other customers. But you’d better be sure you’re not one of the suckers if you do it.
It was truly a wild time. All the books desperate for action in this new online gambling world (US). I went from book to book, took "advantage" of their promos, never collected a dime. When I was up, I bet more. Hit zero? Go to the next book. Their lines were better anyway ;)
“… you never take an 'easy profit' deal from someone who is in the business of making money from them while in their own domain…”
Laura ingalls wilder said it best, in Farmer Boy:
“never bet your money on another man’s game”
Isn't it the same for tobacco and alcohol ads?
This feels like what the Robinhood app does to me
I hate this kind of research. Or well, I hate that it has any influence at all, that it matters.
This kind of research being that which shows an obvious harm that we all know about. It should have zero influence because it is blindingly obvious. Namely because if the title wasn't true, betting companies wouldn't be spending lots of money on it in the first place. But they are, as everyone who lives in the UK can tell. So we know. So this study shouldn't influence policy in the slightest. But it does.
I hate it because there's by definition a gap of years between A. all of us knowing that a phenomenon is harmful B. the study coming out. And then another gap of many years between the study and actual policy changes.
Here's my request to people in academia who do studies like these - which is admittedly a tiny percentage of academia. Just fudge the numbers and publish it a year earlier. Use LLMs to generate the text. It would be a huge boon to society. We all know it's true, so you're not doing anything wrong. Your quest for honesty is hurting everyone. The actual data is pointless.
It's like gathering real data on whether pigeons will indeed eat sunflower seeds if thrown on the ground in front of them, versus just making it up. Maybe such a study hasn't been done yet, but it literally doesn't matter because we know the outcome. There's zero gain from actually doing the study versus saying that yes, pigeons will generally do so.
Personally, I prefer my authoritarianism without a side of academic misconduct, thank you very much.
I mean if it didn't make the gambling organizations more money they wouldn't do it. Gambling industry has always been about how much wealth it can extract from the punters without being regulated for it.
Hopefully this research ends up being used to justify more gambling regulations, but governments are addicted to the gambling lobby donations so who knows what will happen.
That’s real interesting - being bombarded with offers is kind of a huge turnoff for me. Wonder if there’s some kind of correlation between that, and my general distaste for gambling/betting.
Super shocking (sarcasm).
Gamblers are the whales of that industry. The industry is well aware of that and well aware of how much harm they can cause. But their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
Same as pay-to-win freemium games. Find the whales and milk them for all you can. For every high-spender who can afford it they know full well the other 99 cannot. They know they are ruining some people's lives. They know they use dirty psychological manipulation tactics. Their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
The worst thing is that gambling companies are free to ban you if you win too much.
So if you're still there it's just because you're being milked.
There's a a giant market for second hand accounts on betting websites for this very reason.
Not only winners but anyone that looks like to know what is doing.
By that I mean that they try to detect and ban any pattern that may be math / ML derived or arbitrage seeking.
I have been banned on an account that was loosing money (around -15eur) and the bet was 2.96eur - yep fractional bets is a big no - no.
So while it is possible to find better odds and win in the long run based on stats and ML with a 3% - 5% profit they will ban you before you do.
There are many jurisdictions where the companies are not allowed to ban 'winners', but the companies often respond by lowering those users' bet size limits.
This is my favorite line to bring up amongst my gambling addicted friends :)
They are not big fans
> Same as pay-to-win freemium games. Find the whales and milk them for all you can.
This is what happened to EVE Online and many other MMORPGs.
No different than Big Tobacco right? They loved researching all the things that weren’t linked to smoking.
No different than big tech and their divisive algorithms. Or big pharma and side effects. Or big manufacturing and environmental harm (including harm to the people living around manufacturing companies).
It is an inherent property of unchecked capitalism to externalise and ignore any unwanted costs. Or on the flip side of that coin, profit from causing damage to others, where possible.
Absolutely
Ha, well, opinions sure vary here. I'm sure it has nothing to do with that Upton Sinclair quote about "understanding"
No need to be cryptic. What are you trying to say?
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Also there’s a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If one entity is scrupulous that doesn’t mean another will. Obviously if they had any morals they’d see the bright line.
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 with investing and never got a good answer. He was certainly smart enough that he could have had fun with the research and chance.
Then there was a market downturn and his investment advisor had to talk him down from selling in a panic, and I was like "oh... It's not an information problem at all. It's entirely an emotional regulation problem"
I should sell a "meditation for investors" course
> I asked a couple times why he didn't replace gambling with investing and never got a good answer
There's a simple answer, which is that gambling is fun, and investing is not fun (my guess.) Your coworker is a pleasure seeker, like everyone is to some degree.
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 access to that with a habit could already be an issue.
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.
I'm not sure it's irrational to sell in a market downturn. It's a way to pad your emergency savings rather than try to catch a falling knife later when you're already fired. Of course if you sell more than you need to survive a layoff, then that's probably not smart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem
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.
I like it in principle, but the pathologically addicted already make additional accounts and pay other people to acquire them.
So it may help by stopping some people from getting to that point, but as a safety net, an important chunk of the victims will still punch right through it.
Adding friction helps
Interesting approach but crack is illegal and still people are addicted to it.
your point is not clear to me. alcohol is legal and people are addicted to it
For the same reason it isn't outlawed to begin with. It makes some wealthy, influential people even wealthier. They, not we, control our government.
Sounds like a worthwhile use of the taxpayer's dollar.
you can even make gamblers pay to apply for the license
I was being sarcastic. Bitterly, sourly, saltily sarcastic.
That effectively destroys the industry, since 90% of revenue comes from 10% of customers.
yeah, good. okay.
Yeah, I mean I just don't see the point of a roundabout rule like that if the goal is to kill the companies - which it should be - just kill the companies directly.
It was a supreme court decision that started this whole thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
FWIW, I'm not American, and wasn't replying to a thread in context of the legal specifics around gambling in America.
Some gambling companies may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
Someone could create a market where problem gamblers can buy wagering power (the ability to risk more after reaching their own loss cap) from non-gamblers unless you force physical in person gambling with ID checks.
Gambling should return to being legal in Vegas and on reservations, 24/7 gambling anywhere is very problematic.
Alcohol should only be legal in pubs and bars; alcohol in Disney World, on planes, and in grocery stores is very problematic.
A lot of jurisdictions restrict alcohol sales to liquor stores for this very reason.
You probably meant it as a quip but alcohol in every grocery store and definitely on planes is problematic.
It genuinely is, and I’d sooner see regulation targeting it than someone’s multileg parlay. There’s a much clearer line between alcohol on demand and public misconduct or injuries from DUI, than gambling and a more nebulous societal harm.
I think you're being a bit dramatic
They can but most non gamblers wouldn't partictpate. Many non gomblers won't particitate because they might go to vegas this year and so want the chance.
> Many non gomblers won't particitate because they might go to vegas this year
I’m pretty sure you would see so many people selling their quotas that the price would be dirt cheap.
At the most basic level: how many can afford to go to Vegas? This would be sure money. They’d take it when they need it.
vegas is cheap. Not free, but cheap to get to compared to most other tourist traps. There are a fair amout of free trips to vegas those hopes will keep a lot away.
and most people have ethics and so would not sell. Maybe to someone in the family, but strangers.
your market idea makes no sense, and it could be outlawed easily.
If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
If gambling orgs do something that you know causes harm, why isn't the a legal sense of responsibility?
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
That's not how addiction works.
I highly (and regularly) recommend reading Gabor Mate's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts"
It's an enlightening read on addiction that will make you more empathetic for addicts of all types: gambling, substances, shopping, whatever.
Definitely worth a look if you find yourself asking "Why don't they just stop?"
https://www.amazon.com/Realm-Hungry-Ghosts-Encounters-Addict...
If someone cannot stop gambling, then what moral responsibility do gambling organizations have when giving them offers?
If you were friends with an alcoholic it would be pretty shitty to give them a bottle of vodka for their birthday.
People are not machines, it’s not as simple as deciding whether to do something or not. You have stronger and weaker days. Temptation makes it harder to do what is in your best interests, even if you’ve decided on another day that you’d rather not partake.
Getting concrete about gambling: lots of people decide not to gamble and just don’t. Lots of people decide they don’t care whether they gamble and they do. But there are also many people in the middle, who would rather not gamble, but find that they sometimes act against their own best interests, and their own past resolutions to not gamble. Bombarding these people with offers of free bets increases the likelihood that they will gamble on their weaker days.
When I hear takes like yours, I feel very jealous. I would love to always act in my own best interests and according to some policy I predetermined. But that’s just not my experience of how life works.
It seems like a gambling addiction is the same as not having the capacity to choose not to. Is that a misunderstanding?
I think… sort of.
I feel like you’re trying to force some sort of binary here, but I’m trying to say that you may choose not to gamble in general, on day X, but find that you do gamble later.
In fact I would say that many gambling addicts have _chosen_ _not_ to gamble in some sense, but in another moment they do find that they choose to. There’s a temporal aspect to this.
Advertising gambling to those people makes it less likely that they will follow through on their choices.
Do you always do literally everything you choose with a clear head? Never procrastinate, get angry, feel sad, whatever? It’s really hard for me to see your perspective on this.
People in Gambler’s Anonymous (GA) would definitely disagree with this characterization.
The same way sober alcoholics would disagree with a similar statement about alcohol addiction.
Please correct me! Gaps in my understanding are opportunities to learn something new.
I'd like to know the difference between the characterization of being "powerless over alcohol" for example and not having the capacity of choice.
1. https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps
I think it becomes philosophically clearer if we view it as a fight between multiple minds--or contextual operating modes--in the same person. The practical and ethical question for outsiders is which one we want to favor in the fight with the other(s).
"I want to eat this bucket of ice cream... But I also really want to not want to."
I wish that mark pilgrim had not taken his blog off-line… He had a very insightful and moving peace about alcoholism and described it in a very striking and understandable way.
It's a misunderstanding because addiction is a habit where the transition cost of adopting the habit is low and the transition cost to exit the habit is high.
This means you can say people voluntarily got into their addiction, but you cannot say they voluntarily stay in their addiction.
Cigarettes are a good example. It is easier to wean off from cigarettes and switch to vaping and then quit vaping, than to quit smoking directly.
This is because the transition cost from smoking to vaping is much lower.
I understand moral arguments but also see how others might not. I think it might be more useful to view this from a societal perspective. Is it to society's benefit to ensure gamblers don't ruin their own lives? To answer that question, what's the cost to society when a gambler ruins their life?
Lost savings means an impoverished individual and potentially an impoverished family and children. These draw support resources from the state and community, are more likely to turn to crime, and are less likely to develop into contributing members of society.
Help me understand the difference between preying on gambling addicts vs preying on gullible old people to get them to buy $500 in apple store gift cards.
Both are scummy but it's not clear how to regulate the latter without huge collateral damage whereas the former is quite straightforward (because there's effectively no societal benefit to begin with).
If we totaly forbid gift cards, which is the huge colleteral damage? If you want to send $500 to John, just write a check in USA or bank transfer in the rest of the world.
Huh? I don’t think you should do either.
Gambling is basically a scam (house always wins) and thus should not be a legal transaction you can make. What moral responsibility do we have to allow companies to scam people?
You're asking the wrong question. Why should the government intervene in a transaction between knowledgeable consenting parties?
Because they're not knowledgeable or consenting. You don't know your odds, and the house makes sure of it. And if you're addicted, you don't really consent.
Exhibit A: Tobacco. Prior to regulation, it was advertised widely and thought to be not that bad.
Once we regulated knowledge and consent, use plummeted.
For knowledge, we display pictures on the pack and carton of people in agony dying of lung cancer. We tell them the odds. For consent, we mitigate by saying "WARNING: nicotine is an addictive chemical. Nicotine can be more addictive than Heroine".
The fallacy here is that markets are naturally free and government intervention makes markets less free. That's rarely the case. Often, intervention makes the market more free.
Only the moral obligation not to prey on the weak. Gambling addicts are sick. Taking advantage of a sick person makes you scummy.
new policy proposal: internment camps for libertarians
You won't take me alive! :P
It was legal up til a few years ago. Take a guess why it's not now (or just read the news).
| If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
If this is serious, lol. "Why are you addicted to X. Just stop, it's easy!"
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsNgQf-DaGU
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
Because harm does not guarantee control.
When it becomes compulsive, it’s not a simple cost-benefit choice anymore. People can know it’s hurting them and still feel driven to keep doing it.
The dopamine rush of gambling means the brain can get stuck chasing relief, hope, or reward, despite also knowing that it is destructive.
> If gambling orgs do something that you know causes harm, why isn't the a legal sense of responsibility?
Because it’s not that easy to prove responsibility in the face of powerful money lobbying and victim-blaming. Shame and stigma around addiction means people don’t come forward. Freedom argument comes in that not everyone who gambles is an addict, so restricting it takes freedom away. The same argument is used to push the personal responsibility angle.
Ultimately I think the way the gambling orgs cover their ass is by advertising gambling addiction helplines and adding small disclaimers to call those lines if you have a problem: “that’s it, legislators, we are clearly giving them the tools to help themselves, and that shows us exercising responsibility. Bombarding gamblers with offers is simply marketing and creating engagement for our business, you can’t make that illegal.”
Do they have moral responsibility to not exploit addicted gamblers? I would argue, yes, they do. But unless you prohibit all gambling marketing, how would you accomplish this moral responsibility even if the gambling company agreed it had it? It’s not like addicts identify themselves or that you can filter your marketing easily to people without problems. This is why the solutions have been on outlawing the whole thing, because it’s really hard to operate as a business without the societal cost.
“Stop being poor.”
Downvoting privileges can't come soon enough.
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
Because they're stupid. Gamblers are idiots, gambling companies prey on the dumb. Anyone who understands the very basic math behind the games understands that it's pointless to play, you'll just lose more the more you play. That's the whole point. It's not even a secret, you can find the exact odds for each game.
Poker is different as you're playing other players rather than the house but it's still a negative sum game as the house takes a cut so you have to be better than the others to play. And if you're a reasonably intelligent person you'll just bet a little and accept your losses and move on. Or not play at all. Idiots will do dumb stuff like bet way more than they can afford, then they won't have money to pay their mortgage, rent etc and so on. People call it an addiction but I'm pretty sure it's mostly just being really really stupid. Can't be addicted to gambling if you aren't dumb as a rock.