[smallstepforman]

Human psychology studies are a tricky thing, where everyone only focuses on data which matches their preconceived notions. I'm sure that some university group has researched the cost of fashion addiction, music addiction, car addiction, holiday addiction etc. yet no-one is talking about the social cost of fashion/collections/other vices people may have. There was a large Casino court case in Australia a couple of months ago and the "experts" (if they can be called that) couldn't prove that gambling was an addictive activity, since a large portion of playerswho participated in 'gambling activities' could not be classified as addicted. Since the prosecution couldn't prove the slot machines were addictive, the case against the Casino was dropped (lots of expert testimony ended up being dismissed).

[halhen]

Well, Gambling Disorder is a recognized psychological diagnosis in DSM 5[0], so I guess the reader will have to weigh the credibility of the industry's claims vs all the other evidence around.

Also, from your comments I assume you rarely meet a representative sample of your customers. I did, and that experience ALSO matched my other claims. You do you of course, and I know where you're coming from: I too built gambling software for five years before I went to work with problem gambling. If integrity is important to you though, you should read up on the subject (Addictive by design is a good book), meet some of your customers, and take your own and your company's self-interest biases into account.

[0] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gambling-disord...

[intended]

How do you get into the gambling disorder (?)/ problem gambling side of things? That sounds more like a task for healthcare than tech - making it all the more interesting to understand.

[halhen]

I took a job in a data analytics firm, which had the national Swedish gambling operator as customer. The idea was to predict which players were at risk of developing gambling problems using ML. Backing this was also a team of psychologists. (I left about a year ago, so I'm writing in the past tense below.)

As it turns out, the task became to identify those who are at risk today from gambling data, which is relatively easy to do probabilistically with actionable precision. From here, the next step was to figure out if the person wanted help to change, which also is surprisingly easy to do by just asking.

This is by the way also to the industry's excuse that "we shouldn't tell adults what to do!". When asked, on a gambling site, a majority of those with gambling problems SAY that they would like to change, but aren't able to. Then it's no longer about telling people how to behave, but instead helping those who ask for help. But by not asking, the industry can get away with "we shouldn't tell..."

The really hard nut to crack was to give those who want but aren't able to. It's definitely not just about telling them -- most know, _and take responsibility for_, that they do destructive things. Normative feedback (this is how much others play) seemed to work on a mid-term. Calling people also did some positives; many were relieved that somebody saw them and that they finally could talk to somebody, very few got annoyed. But as a first approximation, fighting problem gambling is still an unsolved problem.

[794CD01]

Something being a recognized diagnosis is not meaningful on its own. The nature of medical documentation and its ties to payment in the US and interoperability everywhere means structured, defined codes are needed for everything that could conceivably occur. That is why there are also special codes for other problems like your subsequent encounter with being sucked into a jet engine, or wounds sustained in a jetski accident that occurred while you were on fire.

[Retric]

Look you may not want to admit it, but you make your money from praying on and promoting addiction. You are a drug dealer and directly ruin people's lives.

Denial has a strong psychological basis, but if you want to look back on your life without massive regrets leave the industry.

[mb_72]

I could not agree more; I long ago decided that while I might work on many a terrible corporate project I'd never work for two types of companies; defence or anything gambling-related.

[retsibsi]

Do you agree that 'problem' or 'compulsive' gambling (Wiki: "an urge to gamble continuously despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop") is (a) real, (b) responsible for a significant portion of your industry's profits, and (c) responsible for a great deal of human misery?

If you agree that it is real, what distinction are you drawing between compulsive gambling and gambling addiction, and why is that distinction important?

[hectorlorenzo]

First, do you agree that there are experts in some fields? If yes, why the quotes on these experts? If these specific experts deserved the quotes, then, were they the right people to be called to testify in a court case?

Second, you've chosen a tricky country to set as an example: Australia has an extremely strong pokies (slot machines in there) lobby. There has been several cases of corruption linked to them, so I'd take the rulings with a grain of salt.

[salvar]

Are you completely dismissing all human psychology studies as fraudulent?

[intended]

I don't think that's supported by what he wrote - he said its tricky, not invalid.

[salvar]

They also clarified tricky as meaning "where everyone only focuses on data which matches their preconceived notions". Reads like a general dismissal of an entire branch of science to me.

[DonHopkins]

"preconceived notions" is a euphemism for "profit motives".

[nickevershed]

What's your source for this? The only large court case involving a casino in Australia that I know of is the Crown and Aristocrat case, and the judgement hasn't actually been handed down yet.

[austincheney]

The problem in identifying addition prone candidates is a problem of ethics. The primary behavior that defines "the gambler state", and many other forms of addiction, is a neurological disorder related to responses of dopamine flooding. This is a physiological condition in the brain that can be observed, validated, and analyzed against trends.

---

The addiction

In the most simple of terms dopamine is a brain hormone related to pleasure responses. If you eat chocolate and it tastes great your brain might get a small reward of dopamine. This is normal behavior and it is intentional so that the brain learns that pleasurable responses follow good decisions that result in rewards.

The part of this behavior that triggers addiction is that the dopamine response is not consistent. Planned and known wins result in small rewards. A surprise win results an observably larger reward. Again, this is proper human behavior intended to influence learning and decisions in the brain.

Addiction sets in when there is a disconnect between the dopamine cycle (the pleasurable stimulus from a win) and the resultant learning. A healthy person learns that the surprise win results in greater pleasure and modifies their behavior to find or achieve other surprises, because the current win is no longer a surprise and will no longer trigger the big dopamine rush. An person suffering from addiction, however, repeats the same behaviors in order to reproduce the same surprise wins because their brains haven't learned from the surprise. In their case their behavior is like-wise modified as influenced by the dopamine response, but instead of influenced in a direction for making future decisions they are stuck in a state of instant replay.

While the learning dysfunction is bad it isn't the primary problem of addiction. When the cognitive decision making is informed by a short-circuited response to a non-cognitive physiological condition of the brain the person won't know there is anything wrong or impaired. After all, either way there is a dopamine cycle and modified behavior. It is impossible to determine the impairment yourself because that very level of awareness and reasoning are influenced by this dopamine-learning cycle that is impaired in the first place.

That impossibility is the problem of addiction.

---

The ethics

People with the dysfunctional behavior are identifiable. The problem is what do you do with them. You already know they are subject to a hopeless cycle of instant-replay and can use that knowledge to bleed them dry. Their decision making on a very foundational and emotional level is hopelessly damaged.

On one hand you can ask them to give you everything they own, and they will if you ask them correctly. This isn't just gambling or addiction, but qualifies a whole host of behaviors associated with marketing generally and isn't necessarily wrong... immediately.

Ethically speaking there is nothing wrong with persuading or manipulating people. People encounter such choices numerous times everyday. The ethical part creeps on two fronts:

1. If you know somebody's basic decision making capability is damaged and you intentionally abuse that damage to your self satisfaction

2. If you know bombarding a person, whether or not in a state of reasonable deciding capacity, with messaging to influence that person contrary to their objectives or in excess of a reasonable period of messaging

In many cases things that are commonly referred to as vises intentionally violate those two identified points of ethics. The legal available of a service or product does not qualify the ethics around such.

[DonHopkins]

>The problem is what do you do with them.

Apparently the casinos' response is to give them free food, drinks, flattery, personal attention, attractive host(esse)s, and comp them luxurious hotel suites with big windows overlooking crowded country music festivals.

[BearGoesChirp]

>If you know somebody's basic decision making capability is damaged and you intentionally abuse that damage to your self satisfaction

Wouldn't this include a lot of advertisement? Simply informing a person that an option exists wouldn't fall under it, but so many advertisements use psychological tricks that take advantage of common flaws in our decision making patterns.

>If you know bombarding a person, whether or not in a state of reasonable deciding capacity, with messaging to influence that person contrary to their objectives or in excess of a reasonable period of messaging

And this fits advertising even more.

[austincheney]

Agreed, but where do you draw the line? How do you determine when a person has had too much or who are too broken to police themselves? Just to be safe let's poison the well by casting the widest possible net and ensure we capture everybody equally.

Only then can we be sure who are the weakest links... the people most ripe for abuse. I suppose the social problem is that there is little motivation to identify people prone to addiction unless you have motivation to abuse that addiction.