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Hieronymous Alloy posted: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?") Again this depends on the idea that people don't already know that the house always wins, but everyone knows the house always wins. They either enjoy losing to the house, are addicted to gambling, or have a basically narcissistic delusion that they can beat the house. None of these are math comprehension issues. I work with a bunch of graduate-degree statisticians and about half a dozen of them had money riding on the game, two of them were betting all season long, we used to have a scratch-off pool in the office before the employee who ran it got a new job, etc.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:11
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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. Sorry. If I wasn't clear, Raiad probably expressed my point better than I did. 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. I don't think the ills of excessive gambling are a product of a bad understanding of the odds or lack of education. I think it comes from how gambling stimulates other parts of the human brain in ways that drive some very undesirable behavior. Maybe we're not actually that far apart, but I just happen to view gambling addiction as a psychological issue that is mostly detached from education. You are free to disagree. Maybe there's some food for thought for people in this thread in this APA article. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/07/how-gambling-affects-the-brain
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Feb 12, 2024 18:15
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Again this depends on the idea that people don't already know that the house always wins, but everyone knows the house always wins. They either enjoy losing to the house, are addicted to gambling, or have a basically narcissistic delusion that they can beat the house. None of these are math comprehension issues. The one time I went to a casino to see if I was into gambling I walked away with a free night of entertainment and a few extra bucks in my pocket. I knew full well the odds were against me, but I still came out ahead. I probably wouldn't have if I had kept going, but I didn't keep going. Luckily it turns out I don't have whatever set of neurons makes people addicted to the thrill; it wasn't *that* entertaining.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:16
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Xiahou Dun posted:words on another note, where's your av from?
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Feb 12, 2024 18:17
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I think people generally know that casinos exist to make money. Ultimately I agree with this, and what other posters have put up- I doubt the vast majority of gamblers are doing it because they think it's a money-positive activity for them. The point of that post was intended to be "why is this discussion about teaching everyone semi-advanced mathematics when you can teach them day one business functions," but ultimately neither are the solution.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:18
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I think it's a red herring and schools would be better off teaching students to recognize and handle addictive behaviors
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Feb 12, 2024 18:19
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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. The problem isn't that people are uneducated, the problem is that people aren't applying that education to gambling, or are choosing to do it in spite of the mathematical realities. The core problem behind gambling isn't that people don't realize they're probably going to end up with a net loss, it's that people enjoy the wins enough that they're willing to go through with it even if it means losing money. Hell, just look at how much money some people dump into gambling in mobile games that have literally no cash reward at all. They're guaranteed to lose every dollar they put into it, but they still dump cash in for the sake of getting some JPEGs they could easily look up online. Because what they're in it for isn't really the reward itself, but the dopamine hit of getting rewarded.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:22
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Xiahou Dun posted: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. I think that's because most people have a lot of personal experience to extrapolate on for this topic. I've bought lotto tickets even though I should know that I'm just gonna be out a few bucks.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:22
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Xiahou Dun posted: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. No, I'm not "moving goalposts": I'm objecting to the assertion that it is possible to provide enough education about probability to Americans to meaningfully reduce their vulnerability to gambling scams, at a societal/ statistical level. I'm not asking you to propose something that would "stop all gambling ever" or whatever; I think your proposal of more education is akin to trying to stop a drought with a water pistol. It's just inadequate to the point of irrelevance. There have been lots of studies on this (I'd post links but I'm on my phone); thr human brain is bad at probability and remains bad even when educated. A certain minimal amount of prophylaxis is possible but it doesn't work that well and doesn't hold over time. The actual solution would be legislation outlawing for-profit gambling businesses, period, or limiting the profit they could accrue to minimal.amounts.. They are definitionally scams and should just be prevented.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:24
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I can't find any specifics about the portion of spending for individual customers, but Fan Duels alone had 17 million Americans place a bet last year. I would assume that most of them are 1-2 bet people and there are a large chunk of whales that make up the top 10% or so. But, the scale is still pretty astounding. With just one company, there are ~17 million Americans throwing around money on sports bets and fantasy football bets. With about $100 billion in money spent on the industry as a whole. That is about 12x more than every major movie at the 2022 box office made combined.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:27
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Main Paineframe posted:The problem isn't that people are uneducated, the problem is that people aren't applying that education to gambling, or are choosing to do it in spite of the mathematical realities. Yeah, ultimately if you had to pick 1 type of education to guard against gambling and other addictive behaviors, it's emotional intelligence/impulse control kind of stuff. People aren't robots who will sit there and say 'beep boop I will never make a sub-optimal choice when presented with empirical data,' so even if they had perfect knowledge of probability distributions and expected value, they would still be susceptible to losing money on gambling.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:30
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Gambling establishments of all forms make money off of people who are under the delusion that they are better at gambling than they really are. Gamblers themselves are looking to purchase the fantasy of luck and easy prosperity. Math knowledge is not the problem. Even an expert at math is just going to be more enamored with the delusion. They actually know they're bad gamblers, but the thrill is what they want. Sports betting works especially well as a market because it's targeting people who already put personal emotional and financial stake in something that they actually have absolutely no control over: Sports fans. Xombie fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 18:32
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:But, the scale is still pretty astounding. With just one company, there are ~17 million Americans throwing around money on sports bets and fantasy football bets. With about $100 billion in money spent on the industry as a whole. That is about 12x more than every major movie at the 2022 box office made combined.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:33
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I can't find any specifics about the portion of spending for individual customers, but Fan Duels alone had 17 million Americans place a bet last year. I would assume that most of them are 1-2 bet people and there are a large chunk of whales that make up the top 10% or so. Kayshon Bouette, a Patriots receiver who came out of LSU, was recently indicted on illegal gambling charges from when he was in college and underage - he placed almost 9,000 bets involving half a million dollars in wins and losses in a one year period.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:37
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If you want to test if your vulnerable to gambling addiction tactics see how long you'll sit in front of vampire survivor or a video of it. Its literally made by an ex slot machine programmer/visual designer. Addictive products are designed to crowbar open your lizard brain and dump dopamine into it. Literally exploiting the hit monkeys get when you find the fruit tree that's in season or the bird nests, that made that tree or cliff or rock memorable enough to check day after day and come back to year after year. Its just now we don't have the moments in our lives that naturally trigger that as often, so we're exceptionally vulnerable to the intentionally concentrated hyper stimulation of commercialized addiction.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:43
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Shrecknet posted:I don't know what the Vig is exactly on sports betting but I imagine they're keeping just a fraction of that haul. the FT article i posted notes that sports books typically keep about five percent for "traditional" betting (over/unders, money line, stuff like that) but can make substantially more money with more opaque bets, which they promote, like in game wagers, parlays, and prop bets.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:50
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Shrecknet posted:$100,000,000,000 is a little disingenuous of a number, as not all bets fail and the house is designed to never lose by offering 0.9:1 odds on Heads and 1:0.9 odds on Tails. I don't know what the Vig is exactly on sports betting but I imagine they're keeping just a fraction of that haul. That was total revenue, so they aren't keeping all of it, but that is how much Americans spent. The totals (rounded to the nearest billion) were: Revenue: $92 billion Costs: $84 billion Profit: $8 billion The scale of Americans putting up nearly $100 billion on sports betting is what I was commenting on. Americans spent almost 12x more on sports betting than movies last year.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:53
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Americans, or people betting on American aports?
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Feb 12, 2024 18:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Americans, or people betting on American aports? Americans. Global sports betting revenue was $235 billion according to: https://www.statista.com/topics/1740/sports-betting/#topicOverview Edit: To be pedantic, it is technically people in America. You just need to be a US resident and not a citizen to bet. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 19:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:No, I'm not "moving goalposts": I'm objecting to the assertion that it is possible to provide enough education about probability to Americans to meaningfully reduce their vulnerability to gambling scams, at a societal/ statistical level. Then you're just making blind assertions back at me and there's no conversation to be had. This is just a wordier version of "nuh uh". PharmerBoy posted:Ultimately I agree with this, and what other posters have put up- I doubt the vast majority of gamblers are doing it because they think it's a money-positive activity for them. I'm pulling this out in particular because I think it belies the breakdown in communication : probability is not semi-advanced mathematics. It's not. At all. It's in fact very basic mathematics that is underemphasized in current education. It doesn't even need most of the operators. In terms of actual mathematical knowledge it requires far less than many of the things we currently teach and take as standard. You're both assuming it's more difficult than it actually is, while also assuming that educational goals have to be zero sum and this comes at an expense. Here is my whole argument : 1) basic probability, while unintuitive, is not particularly difficult to teach 2) we currently do not teach it much, if at all. It's going to be in just about any math textbook, but it's not emphasized or integrated into other parts of the curriculum. 3) I'm positing that increasing education in probability would decrease gambling (or at least the harm from people instead doing it at lower stakes), if nothing else than because people might understand why it's called the Gambler's Fallacy If you (general you, not Pharmerboy in particular) would like to argue against this, I welcome it. So far, no one actually has. I just keep getting variations of "math is unintuitive", "the US education system is bad" or "this will not entirely solve the problem by itself". None of those actually refute my claim and two of them are in fact my own argument back at me. Nissin Cup Nudist posted:on another note, where's your av from? It's Macarena Gomez from Stuart Gordon's Dagon. I got it for watching an insane amount of horror movies in a month as part of the October Challenge over in CineD. If you like horror movies, or feel like you might, I can't recommend it enough : you set a little goal for yourself to watch an amount of horror movies in the month of October (which can be small!) and post little mini-reviews as you get along. It's super fun and welcome to both the most hardcore of gorehounds or someone who has never seen a Friday the 13th.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:03
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lobster shirt posted:the ease and ubiquity of sports gambling is going to be a social disaster, if it isn't already I have a family member who has been going to Gamblers Anonymous for close to 6 odd years now and they have told me that over the last 3 odd years there have been more and more young men (between 21-30) coming to the meetings who have blown all their money on online sports gambling. The fact that all the sports are now pumping these gambling sites non stop is going to be a huge problem.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:05
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When gambling becomes broadly legal and available it always has huge consequences. "Pokeys" (slot machines) are everywhere in Australia and they have an epidemic of gambling addiction that springs from them. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/world/australia/australians-gambling-betting-machines.html It's not an accident that sports gambling aggressively targets 18-29s. Mass "degenerate" gambling is unavoidable when there are fifty ads an hour for it and every news site publishes betting recommendations.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:19
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Xiahou Dun posted:Then you're just making blind assertions back at me and there's no conversation to be had. This is just a wordier version of "nuh uh". You can research this yourself with a quick Google or I can post links later tonight. Math education simply does not prevent gambling behavior in the fashion you are proposing. People remain irrational even when educated. Like, the behavioral economics people have studied this stuff. There is data. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 19:21
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The one I keep getting it stock market gambling ads. Which, to me at last, seem insanely predatory and completely insane.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:23
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Xiahou Dun posted:Then you're just making blind assertions back at me and there's no conversation to be had. This is just a wordier version of "nuh uh". I'm not going to get super involved in continuing either, mostly because I'm not invested enough to track down the kinds of evidence you're requesting. I only want to note the anecdote (which I bring up because it amuses me, not because I think its representative of anything) that way back in high school my math class did go into probability. If we finished stuff early, our teacher would let us play cards. She would join, and proceed to talk through the probability of us having the cards to beat her (answer: not high enough), which was some excellent sneaky teaching in hindsight.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:25
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Here's some sports betting related psychic damage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEQTsoJo8Xo
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Feb 12, 2024 19:26
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Josef bugman posted:The one I keep getting it stock market gambling ads. Which, to me at last, seem insanely predatory and completely insane. Why would you make a bet on stock market behavior when you can just... buy stocks?
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Feb 12, 2024 19:27
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Betting on stocks has a long history what with shorts and options and other stuff I don't understand.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:30
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Push El Burrito posted:Betting on stocks has a long history what with shorts and options and other stuff I don't understand. Options, shorts, and puts aren't really "gambling" in the legal sense. They are basically just contracts saying you will buy/sell something by a certain date. You are still purchasing or selling equities (or the right to sell/buy equities) and not literally betting on the outcome without ever taking possession of something. It is gambling in the colloquial sense, but it isn't something that has legally changed in the last few years. Going 50/50 on opening a restaurant with a friend is a gamble in the sense that it is risky and you are wagering your investment that might not make a profit, but it isn't actually "gambling" in the legal sense. I'm not sure what ads he is referencing about gambling on the stock market that doesn't involve actually buying equities or contracts, but that would either not be legal in the U.S. or would require buying an actual contract/equity, which is legally just investing/purchasing stock in the U.S. There haven't been any legal changes to gambling laws in the U.S. that would suddenly create that type of betting market. The most recent legal change was explicitly restricted to sports. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 19:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You can research this yourself with a quick Google or I can post links later tonight. Math education simply does not prevent gambling behavior in the fashion you are proposing. People remain irrational even when educated. I'm not talking about nebulous math education, and am in fact proposing a specific concrete, novel change to math curricula. If you have relevant studies, I welcome them but I want to emphasize the word "relevant" there. I'm not asking for students to become perfect rational actors and I'm getting increasingly annoyed at having to explain that. Please address my actual points instead of making up a strawman, it's tiresome. PharmerBoy posted:I'm not going to get super involved in continuing either, mostly because I'm not invested enough to track down the kinds of evidence you're requesting. I only want to note the anecdote (which I bring up because it amuses me, not because I think its representative of anything) that way back in high school my math class did go into probability. If we finished stuff early, our teacher would let us play cards. She would join, and proceed to talk through the probability of us having the cards to beat her (answer: not high enough), which was some excellent sneaky teaching in hindsight. This is actually not that far from what I'm suggesting, but dice games have much easier calculations. Not because cards are harder, there's just more of them so it's more tedious. The skills of being able to calculate odds are quite trivial : there's the unintuitive step of needing to stop and calculate rather than going off of instinct, and then there's the tedium of actually calculating it. The former can be taught easily and in an engaging manner by analyzing games (a thing that kids are actually happy to do!), and the latter is essentially free so long as you're attaching this to a functioning math class. (Note : the fact that most students don't have a functioning math class is a larger problem hence why I'm talking about reforming it.)
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Feb 12, 2024 19:43
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Push El Burrito posted:Betting on stocks has a long history what with shorts and options and other stuff I don't understand. Yes. There's a reason why the culture of WallStreetBets is the way it is. Most of the people recognize that they're way beyond the idea of "investing" and that it's all gambling and chasing massive adrenaline rushes. In fact, it's perverse, but most of them are also very aware of how ill-advised a lot of the bets they are making are, but they still do it. And they love posting evidence of enormous losses. They call it "loss porn." Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 19:43
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Barrel Cactaur posted:If you want to test if your vulnerable to gambling addiction tactics see how long you'll sit in front of vampire survivor or a video of it. Its literally made by an ex slot machine programmer/visual designer. I just looked at a trailer for this game and lol. It's a thin veneer of crap graphics over what is essentially a lab monkey moving a joystick that's hardwired into their dopaminergic neurons. I could feel myself developing Parkinson's just looking at it
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Feb 12, 2024 19:52
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm not talking about nebulous math education, and am in fact proposing a specific concrete, novel change to math curricula. If you have relevant studies, I welcome them but I want to emphasize the word "relevant" there. You keep overstating my case dramatically; nobody except you is talking about "perfect rational actors" Past that, ok, i was hoping to do this tonight so i could give you better sourcing, but since the discussion is now, literally a three second google found this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7241280_Does_learning_about_mathematics_of_gambling_change_gambling_behavior quote:The present research examined the influence of improved knowledge of odds and mathematical expectation on the gambling behavior of university students. A group of 198 students in an introductory statistics class received instruction on probability theory using examples from gambling. A comparison group of 134 students received generic instruction on probability, and another group of 138 students in classes on unrelated topics received no mathematical instruction. Students receiving the intervention demonstrated superior ability to calculate gambling odds as well as resistance to gambling fallacies 6 months after the intervention. Unexpectedly, this improvement in knowledge and skill was not associated with any decreases in actual gambling behavior. The implication of this research is that enhanced mathematical knowledge on its own may be insufficient to change gambling behavior. Your proposal is not novel: it has been studied and disproven. (This isn't the only study on point; the topic is also covered somewhere in Ariely's books but he's the subject of a replication scandal right now so I'd need to sit down and actually do a fair bit of work to provide reliable sources past google)Google. Do you have any specific, relevant data showing gambling education would help reduce gambling incidence?
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Feb 12, 2024 19:56
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Feels like the current online game meta with RNG-based boxes you can buy with real money is just priming kids with Gambling Grooves all ready to go in their brains when they are old enough to switch to the grown up apps. That poo poo should be banned, IMO. It’s bad enough we’ve opened the floodgates for adults but we’re training kids on the model as soon as they can pick up a controller.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You keep overstating my case dramatically; nobody except you is talking about "perfect rational actors" That isn't my proposal. This is a self-selected group of university level students in a statistics class vs. a control group of other university students. By virtue of already being in university they're long, long since beyond the relevant level. I'm talking about increasing math education for middle schoolers. This shows that there's not an increase beyond a certain ceiling, not that that it can't lift the floor. I'm specifically talking about the floor.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:06
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selec posted:Feels like the current online game meta with RNG-based boxes you can buy with real money is just priming kids with Gambling Grooves all ready to go in their brains when they are old enough to switch to the grown up apps. That poo poo should be banned, IMO. It’s bad enough we’ve opened the floodgates for adults but we’re training kids on the model as soon as they can pick up a controller.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:07
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Xiahou Dun posted:That isn't my proposal. This is a self-selected group of university level students in a statistics class vs. a control group of other university students. By virtue of already being in university they're long, long since beyond the relevant level. I'm talking about increasing math education for middle schoolers. Is there proof that a significant portion of problem-gamblers are people who are not aware that, in general, gamblers lose their money? I think pretty much everyone knows heroin is bad for your health, gambling is bad for your budget, using your phone all day is bad for your productivity. People do these things *anyway*, not because they don't understand that what they're doing is going to impact them negatively. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 20:12
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm not talking about nebulous math education, and am in fact proposing a specific concrete, novel change to math curricula. If you have relevant studies, I welcome them but I want to emphasize the word "relevant" there. I'm a little confused, why are you proposing specific concrete, novel changes to math curricula if you *don't* have any relevant studies proving they would actually help? Like, not to say that everything needs to be absolutely proven to the n'th degree, but it feels like this is the kind of thing that a priori seems like it could help, and then after checking it out it just doesn't align with the initial assumptions.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:13
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Haven't really been able to see Chuck-e-cheeses as anything other than baby's first casino trainer school
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Feb 12, 2024 20:13
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FlamingLiberal posted:Loot boxes and those sorts of things are banned in the EU from what I understand There's talk about it, but Belgium (which has incredibly wide legal definitions for gambling) is the only country that officially has a ban on the books. They don't enforce it, though.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:14
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