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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Human brains are pretty much physically incapable of understanding probability at an intuitive level. We're just bad at it; our brains are evolved to expect low probability but high magnitude events as disproportionately likely ("what if there is a tiger behind that bush?") and so we are very vulnerable to gambling scams. To be fair, demand for gambling (and sports gambling specifically) was around literally more than a millennium before the concept of capitalism even existed. It was just much harder to do without online banking and having to physically go to a bookie to make bets. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 16:56
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zoux posted:The fact that approximately 25% of all sports related content is now gambling related, while a lesser concern than gambling pathologies, loving sucks. it wormed its way in and it was half blatant half subtle, half insidious and half just kind of blundering its way in openly, and there were weird little flashpoints where it burrowed into the whole "eh i guess this is just legal now lol" status, like when there were outcome bets on elections that didn't get sufficiently pushed back on i was working in back bay and one day before the pandemic all the sudden a 100k square foot floor in the tower got taken up by Draft Kings and hundreds and hundreds of employees were getting onboarded and i realized looking at it that this was already pretty much a done deal that i had completely missed. internet gambling was absolutely a go and this was a forever thing already. it just pushed in through cultural inertia and lack of any political will to maintain against lobby
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Feb 12, 2024 16:56
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The fact that college sports and universities are now partnering and promoting sports gambling to their fans is also pretty wild. Online gambling is about as close to guaranteed easy money (for the house, that is) as you can get. The only thing keeping it down was the legal restrictions.
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Feb 12, 2024 16:57
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The fact that college sports and universities are now partnering and promoting sports gambling to their fans is also pretty wild. Gambling bans barely kept the lid on something that everyone was still doing or was desperate to do, like alcohol prohibition. I’m not surprised lifting them caused a practically instant shift towards acceptance.
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Feb 12, 2024 16:59
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i think a big problem is people here viewing voting as some grand act of altruism that actually helps people. it doesn't. for people who actually concerned about the people who are having their lives destroyed by colonialism, the patriarchy, and capitalism, there are countless other opportunities to actually help people, from volunteering to giving money, to a point where that worthless vote for the better genocider is completely irrelevant. lots of people won't vote for someone committing a genocide or running concentration camps, much less someone doing both. whoopie poo poo. as long as they focus on helping people the other 1460 days out of the presidential election cycle i don't care. the people trying to guilt people into voting for someone committing a genocide would do much better to put that time and energy into helping actual people rather than politicians. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 12, 2024 17:00
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Xombie posted:There was already sports gambling on phones before sports gambling was legal, though. They just called it "daily fantasy sports". You can put anything on an app and skirt the law about it. But like all addictions, you can't be addicted unless you've actually participated. Simply being available isn't what gets people hooked. You have to convince them to try it. Which is where advertising comes in. Daily fantasy sports got smacked down for a couple of years but yeah it was kind of an end around gambling laws that no longer exist. There's really not much popular support against gambling any more- in fact i remember the annoyance people felt when the US became a much more difficult place from which to play online poker once they started enforcing the law on online poker places. Now it's a free for all, and woohoo, every bit of sports coverage includes some stuff for the gamblers among us.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:00
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Xombie posted:There was already sports gambling on phones before sports gambling was legal, though. They just called it "daily fantasy sports". You can put anything on an app and skirt the law about it. But like all addictions, you can't be addicted unless you've actually participated. Simply being available isn't what gets people hooked. You have to convince them to try it. Which is where advertising comes in. Daily Fantasy Sports was slightly different in that it was playing fantasy football and claiming to be a game of skill because it involved decisions and input from the gambler. It was definitely an end run around gambling laws, but it is also slightly more work to set up your fantasy football team every week and start gambling than it is to just be allowed to go and click the "Put $5,000 on the Patriots to win tonight" button on your phone - where there isn't even a pretense of requiring any other work or input from the gambler. Somewhat relevant: Fan Duel's SuperBowl ad has appearances and buy-in from athletes, actors, celebrities, and even Carl Weathers from beyond the grave. It is totally enmeshed in the fabric of the sport and culture as a major part of sports itself now. https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1756841707839148110 Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 17:04
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Main Paineframe posted:Online gambling is about as close to guaranteed easy money (for the house, that is) as you can get. The only thing keeping it down was the legal restrictions. And the eventually lifting of legislation was inevitable so these companies (which already had an infrastructure for it any way) had literally everything ready to go at the flip of a switch as soon as it was legal. No runway was needed.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:06
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there was an article (https://www.ft.com/content/537bc62e-500b-4316-89db-594590a56d4a) in the FT a few months ago where they talked to a hedge fund manager who has come around on sports gambling companies. it doesn't sound great!quote:Chanos closed his short after witnessing the growth in riskier forms of betting through which operators are able to boost margins because the odds are less transparent. These include in-game bets, proposition bets where gamblers wager on certain events happening and multi-string, accumulator bets. the apps make it so, so much easier to place prop bets, in-game bets, ridiculous parlays etc, which have terrible odds. sure prior to these apps it was possible to lay five leg parlays with your bookie, but now you can do it on your couch, in the middle of a game, trying to chase bad money. this stuff is especially bad if you look at sports coverage now, which frequently promotes exactly these kind of long-odds, opaque, lovely bets. eta: here (https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2024/2/9/24067121/super-bowl-prop-bets-betting-guide) is a stupid guide to placing bad bets on a prominent sports website, including endorsing a three leg parlay as "a good bet" that the writer "truly, genuinely believe will cash". and uhh it did not in fact cash! only correct leg was the george kittle under catches. bad bet. lobster shirt fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 17:07
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Who will be Gen Z's Jimmy The Greek?
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Feb 12, 2024 17:14
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FlamingLiberal posted:He would have been far more at home in the GOP clown car apperently he was backed by a bunch of GOP grassroots types in hopes that the dems would latch on but all its down is peel some chuds off for a while.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Human brains are pretty much physically incapable of understanding probability at an intuitive level. We're just bad at it; our brains are evolved to expect low probability but high magnitude events as disproportionately likely ("what if there is a tiger behind that bush?") and so we are very vulnerable to gambling scams. Yes, there's a reason why probability didn't even get started until the Early Modern period. Human beings are absolutely garbage at estimating it without formal education. Gambling is basically just a third party tax on people who don't understand math, which is why it's so important to actually teach it.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:17
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I am not a big gambling person at all, but if it’s going to be legal I say we just need to tax and regulate it. It has a lot of downsides but the corporate money is all-in on it and it’s too late now to roll this back.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:21
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yes, there's a reason why probability didn't even get started until the Early Modern period. Human beings are absolutely garbage at estimating it without formal education. It's a third party tax on the vulnerable. Statistically speaking (in every sense), *nobody* understands math. Training the whole population to a standard of math education where they are resistant to gambling scams is akin to proposing we solve traffic congestion by training everyone to grow wings and flap themselves to work every day.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:33
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FlamingLiberal posted:the corporate money is all-in on it and it’s too late now to roll this back. It would be really nice if there was any area of the modern economy where this was not true. Anyone else still remember when your phone rang and it was exciting because you probably wanted to talk to the person on the other end? Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 17:34
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Another really concerning aspect of the gambling situation is the fact that we don't really have a lot of resources for people who develop gambling addiction. Most mental healthcare providers aren't trained in providing treatment for it. That's a problem because gamblers present with unique needs and it's not just like treating any other addiction. So people who do develop problems are often left with nowhere to turn.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:36
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Legalizing sports gambling was on the ballot in California a couple years back and got absolutely destroyed. Oddly it still doesn't stop millions being spent on football ads for apps we can't legally use and home insurance from agencies who pulled out.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's a third party tax on the vulnerable. Statistically speaking (in every sense), *nobody* understands math. Training the whole population to a standard of math education where they are resistant to gambling scams is akin to proposing we solve traffic congestion by training everyone to grow wings and flap themselves to work every day. Not at all. You're massively overestimating how hard it is to teach enough probability to realize gambling is a scam. In terms of pure mathematical knowledge, something like craps is trivially, obviously a bad game unless you're the bank and all you need to know is how to work out the probability of two rolls of a die : something a child can learn in a couple of minutes. These aren't complicated proofs, you can get the idea by just chunking through the odds with normal calculations. It's unintuitive but not difficult. That's exactly what education is for. We could solve (or at least massively reduce) this with a minor update to the middle school curriculum.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:43
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can I just say "smart" gambling / stocks and other fin poo poo is also a great plague.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:44
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While I thought this was a good thing at the time, it's pretty cleary the opposite now The worst thing is, even if the entire court had a stroke and reversed themselves, the sports leagues probably don't want PAPSA back anymore
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Feb 12, 2024 17:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It would be really nice if there was any area of the modern economy where this was not true. No.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:44
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Xiahou Dun posted:
Cue the usual suspects of the right wing screaming about teaching our kids gambling in schools.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:45
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Like, the fact that the bookies are "legitimate" businesses instead of local, break-your-legs, dive-bar bookies is probably a good thing from a harm reduction point of view, but I can't see how the ease of access and the ubiquity doesn't totally overwhelm that small blessing
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Feb 12, 2024 17:47
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not at all. You're massively overestimating how hard it is to teach enough probability to realize gambling is a scam. In terms of pure mathematical knowledge, something like craps is trivially, obviously a bad game unless you're the bank and all you need to know is how to work out the probability of two rolls of a die : something a child can learn in a couple of minutes. These aren't complicated proofs, you can get the idea by just chunking through the odds with normal calculations. I don't think it's quite this simple - there's a pretty far gap psychologically between mathematical expected value and vibes. Its pretty much the X-Com effect where missing on 95% feels worse than it is but winning on 30% feels amazing and knowing doesn't really change that. The Lotto is still a massive money maker even though everybody knows you're losing money on it.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:48
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not at all. You're massively overestimating how hard it is to teach enough probability to realize gambling is a scam. In terms of pure mathematical knowledge, something like craps is trivially, obviously a bad game unless you're the bank and all you need to know is how to work out the probability of two rolls of a die : something a child can learn in a couple of minutes. These aren't complicated proofs, you can get the idea by just chunking through the odds with normal calculations. I think you are giving people too much credit on how much they choose to retain from what they are taught in school. I might be wrong, but I don't think people go into gambling because they think it's a rational way to make money. From my experience, it's more like a mix of desperation and thrill-chasing. All gambling games and activities are designed to be highly addictive too. It'd be wonderful to give the public a better understanding of probability and call it a day, but in the end, to control the really destructive effects of gambling, I think you have to have measures to limit access, limit the marketing that children can see, or at least cap how much people can sink into this stuff every day. I don't see a way around that.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:50
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:While I thought this was a good thing at the time, it's pretty cleary the opposite now
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Feb 12, 2024 17:51
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If the same advertising rules that apply to Big Tobacco also appy to Gambling, that would be a start Also, if Big Tobacco ties to sue to overturn the advertising ban in tyool 2024, they'd probably win 
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Feb 12, 2024 17:52
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FlamingLiberal posted:Well like with a lot of things, Congress could have passed a new law to better regulate gambling but they didn’t. There's one congressman (Paul Tonko) who has been on a lonely crusade against sports gambling for the last few years, but there doesn't seem to be much support or consensus on how/if they should do anything at the federal level. The Guardian coincidentally wrote an article about Paul Tanko and sports gambling last month: quote:‘There’s no limit’: one congressman’s solitary crusade to rein in sports betting https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/02/paul-tonko-sports-betting-gambling-regulation Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 17:55
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Eric Cantonese posted:I think you are giving people too much credit on how much they choose to retain from what they are taught in school. WarpedLichen posted:I don't think it's quite this simple - there's a pretty far gap psychologically between mathematical expected value and vibes. Its pretty much the X-Com effect where missing on 95% feels worse than it is but winning on 30% feels amazing and knowing doesn't really change that. The Lotto is still a massive money maker even though everybody knows you're losing money on it. You're just saying that the math is unintuitive but with more words, again. No poo poo, people without sufficient mathematical education don't have enough knowledge of math : you're repackaging a tautology and pretending it's a point. This isn't an actual argument against the efficacy of education, you're just repeating that it hasn't happened yet.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:57
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "people don't understand probability" is not really a leading cause of gambling issues, in the same way that "people don't understand that heroin is bad for you" is probably not a leading cause of drug addiction.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:57
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not at all. You're massively overestimating how hard it is to teach enough probability to realize gambling is a scam. In terms of pure mathematical knowledge, something like craps is trivially, obviously a bad game unless you're the bank and all you need to know is how to work out the probability of two rolls of a die : something a child can learn in a couple of minutes. These aren't complicated proofs, you can get the idea by just chunking through the odds with normal calculations. Look, this is a nice dream, but in practice it doesn't hold up. At best what you're talking about is palliative, partial prevention, not actually addressing the substance of the problem at a societal level. There's been a lot of studies done of education's ability to prevent people from getting scammed, and it's only partially effective, not least because as the brain ages prior education becomes less effective; there is a reason the elderly are often targeted by scammers, and it's the same reason the elderly fill casinos. Plus this is ignoring the total destruction and hollowing out of our public education system today. Nobody is even trying to strengthen public education enough for it to function in the manner you're suggesting; rather the political energy is trying to force a collapse so the public system can be replaced by privatized (scammy) alternatives. Like, perspective: my state established a scholarship program, any high school valedictorian could automatically go to the state university, free ride There were counties in my state where it took decades for anyone to take advantage of that scholarship. There were plenty of valedictorians. Problem was none of them could break the 800 SAT threshold requirements admission to the state university. poo poo is *bad*. Pretending we can feasibly do probability education at scale is Pollyannish.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:58
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WarpedLichen posted:I don't think it's quite this simple - there's a pretty far gap psychologically between mathematical expected value and vibes. Its pretty much the X-Com effect where missing on 95% feels worse than it is but winning on 30% feels amazing and knowing doesn't really change that. The Lotto is still a massive money maker even though everybody knows you're losing money on it. And gambling as an industry is definitiobally exploitative of that. There's no good it provides, just exploitation.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:59
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Raiad posted:I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "people don't understand probability" is not really a leading cause of gambling issues, in the same way that "people don't understand that heroin is bad for you" is probably not a leading cause of drug addiction. Yeah this is my intuition. Everyone knows that, on average, gambling on sports loses you money. But they gamble anyway because: 1) they're having a good time with money they are prepared to lose, basically purchasing a thrill, or 2) they're addicted to it or 3) they have a delusion that they personally know so much about the upcoming game that they can beat the market. None of these depend on a poor math understanding or would improve with better math understanding.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:02
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Xiahou Dun posted:Not at all. You're massively overestimating how hard it is to teach enough probability to realize gambling is a scam. In terms of pure mathematical knowledge, something like craps is trivially, obviously a bad game unless you're the bank and all you need to know is how to work out the probability of two rolls of a die : something a child can learn in a couple of minutes. These aren't complicated proofs, you can get the idea by just chunking through the odds with normal calculations. I don’t know the probability of any particular game and it doesn’t seem to matter; the easier lesson to teach is that the house always has an edge. I don’t think education is the issue here. Civilized Fishbot posted:Yeah this is my intuition. Everyone knows that, on average, gambling on sports loses you money. But they gamble anyway because: Right. It’s weird to get hung up on thinking that people need to work through an exercise of calculating the probability of multiple dice rolls. You’re going to meet your education goal and hit a roadblock at “ok but I still want to do it because it’s fun.” Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 18:03
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as someone who likes to play poker and put like $50 into a site at the start of the NFL season, yah some sort of strict regulation is needed. Advertising limits and money limits are for sure starters. I am in a weird spot with gambling, I like going to casinos but I'd never want one near my community after seeing like Atlantic City. But online at least feels like it won't physically destroy a community. it's me, I am the NIMBY.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:03
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Xiahou Dun posted:You're just saying that the math is unintuitive but with more words, again. No poo poo, people without sufficient mathematical education don't have enough knowledge of math : you're repackaging a tautology and pretending it's a point. I think if that is your criteria for sufficient mathematical education, I'm not sure how you'll ever achieve it. How do you make people understand something at a intuitive level and ignore their gut? There are some things that you can know academically but it still won't feel right in practice. It would be amazing if you pulled it off though, the rational market that economists love to model with could actually exist.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:05
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Yeah this is my intuition. Everyone knows that, on average, gambling on sports loses you money. But they gamble anyway because: Theoretically if you *really* beat high level probability education into their skulls, turned everyone into a mathlete, it might make some difference, mostly by reducing the likelihood people engage at all with gambling in the first place ("why would I let myself get scammed?") That level of education is unrealistic tho.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:05
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Don't even need to offer the math education, just go back to good old American "how business works." These companies don't survive unless they bring in more money than they spend. Since they get to set the bets and the odds, they're only going to offer bets where they've worked out that the house is going to win. Add in how the sportsbooks use loopholes to cancel bets, so even if they would lose, they still win (See here) Of course, general education in this pattern may call into question our model of private health insurance . . .
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Feb 12, 2024 18:05
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PharmerBoy posted:Don't even need to offer the math education, just go back to good old American "how business works." These companies don't survive unless they bring in more money than they spend. Since they get to set the bets and the odds, they're only going to offer bets where they've worked out that the house is going to win. Add in how the sportsbooks use loopholes to cancel bets, so even if they would lose, they still win (See here) I think people generally know that casinos exist to make money. The whole appeal of gambling is the fantasy of beating the odds or getting incredibly lucky while risking something. I don't know if there is any data out there that nails down exact specifics, but I would bet that the vast majority of people doing online sports betting aren't actually literal gambling addicts who are doing it compulsively. People understand that the casino makes money, but they think it is worth the cost for the risk or that they can beat the odds. Even if they have delusions about how skilled they are, I think they all fundamentally understand that the casino has to take in more money overall than it gives out to stay in business.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:09
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Look, this is a nice dream, but in practice it doesn't hold up. At best what you're talking about is palliative, partial prevention, not actually addressing the substance of the problem at a societal level. You just tried to move my goalposts which is at least novel. I was bemoaning the lack of education which is how this started, I don't think you can really lay that at the feet of my point now. It was, after all, the basis of my criticism. Further, now I apparently have to stop all scams rather than just ones that are preying on poor knowledge of basic math. Then you throw your hands up and say that nothing can be done without any evidence. Do you think that you have some kind of magic math-knower genes that uniquely allow you to understand that a 7 is the most common result on 2 six-sided dice or do you think that is an effect of education? Do you think probability is somehow particularly unintuitive and unlearnable versus things like algebra or geometry? You're being silly because it's hard : well no poo poo, education is hard. You don't need much knowledge to know gambling is a scam and to be incredibly leery of anyone offering you a bet. Children can do it pretty easily with instruction and demonstration. It would be nice if someone could actually engage with my point rather than just saying "math is hard". WarpedLichen posted:I think if that is your criteria for sufficient mathematical education, I'm not sure how you'll ever achieve it. How do you make people understand something at a intuitive level and ignore their gut? There are some things that you can know academically but it still won't feel right in practice. If you walk a group of 8 year olds through the math of how craps work, I don't think they're ever going to play craps because it's really obvious how stacked it is. If you put that in a larger curriculum, they can generalize. There is an irony in the bunch of people trusting their tummy-feels about how hard it is to overcome their tummy-feels about probability.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:11
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