[BananaaRepublik]

So what is the takeaway from this? It isn't even the expectation of winning money that keeps people in casinos, just the dopamine hit from a slot machine itself? They would've played with or without reward the whole time?

[amalcon]

I think it's more that the reward doesn't need to be valuable to the legal system in order to be valuable to the player. It's relatively easy to convince a minority of people to care about a reward that the legal system doesn't consider valuable. This feels very much like gambling for the player, while simultaneously skirting gambling laws and improving the house edge to 100%.

Most people say they don't care about that number at the top right on HN, but somehow there is still an awful lot of complaining about voting patterns. HN is almost entirely unlike a casino, but karma does demonstrate the phenomenon (of getting people to care about a legally meaningless reward).