[humanarity]

People I think all these "cheater traps" are unimportant, because there's actually no "significant advantage" to using a robot. It isn't going to make you more likely to beat human players, only allow you to stay on there longer at lower cost to you.

This is because two things: 1) the userbase size, and 2) the userbase behaviour.

Because the userbase is so large, there's always going to be some people on there, meaning even with a robot you always have some competition.

So the only thing a robot will allow you to do is potentially have better reaction times than a human, however, this is also invalid when you consider that it's likely people are not trying "hit" a particular countdown number they're "aiming for" but rather simply pressing the button when their "threshold" for waiting any longer is exceeded.

Wit enough people this is probably well modelled by a random process, with clicks coming essentially randomly over time with some weighting to increase the closer you get to zero. So even a "reflex reaction" is not going to outbeat a horde of random clickers. The robot is really only competing with itself, how fast can it check and how fast can it click after determining the person it's working for's risk/reward utility threshold has been crossed?

So having a robot to play for you is not going to allow you to cheat, only to spend your time dong something more constructive for humanity than clicking a button :)

Maybe I'm missing something here, and I still don't see a way to cheat that actually has significant chance of beating others ! :)

[Kiro]

> So having a robot to play for you is not going to allow you to cheat, only to spend your time dong something more constructive for humanity than clicking a button

In other words cheating since "normal" players need to spend their time doing that while you can have it on 24/7. I don't understand how you can say it doesn't make you more likely to beat human players. You increase your chances of getting the orange flair by magnitudes.

[humanarity]

Consider this, if there's 10 human players you're competing against and they take turns occupying 2.4 hour spots, will those players essentially cover the entire space 24/7?

As far as you are concerned the rest of reddit may be either 10million human players, or 1 million robots, can you tell me who you are playing against? I'd say to you, it's the same.

Now, in a two player tournament, yes, using a robot gives you an advantage because the opponent probably has less stamina than your robot.

But in a competition involving thousands of people, there's really no advantage over any one person because the greatest force on any individual player is the sum of all other players against them, not one player with a robot. Do you think that sounds reasonable?

So the way I see it using a robot is really only a way to make things more comfortable for yourself, just like driving coast to coast is probably more comfortable and likely less time consuming than walking. It's not unfair to walkers, you're not stopping them from walking coast to coast. The only thing that might stop walkers is their stamina.

So while it's true that the reddit case does exhibit scarcity and competition for that (there's only so many click spots per reset), whether people are playing with robots or flesh doesn't make any difference to you, because wherever you are, at whatever time, there's always someone else there with you. It's somewhat ludicrous to think that you will have an advantage if it's all people because say at 2:14 am August 29th, 2015, all 2927 other people are all dozing off just at the same moment that the counter gets to 19 seconds and you push it. I mean, does that sound likely?

Not really, right, because there's always going to be people just alert as you. And robots don't really give you any more grief than people.

It's an interesting argument, and there's probably more to it. I'm sure I'm missing something, and thanks for giving me something to bounce off.

Hey, maybe you can try out a Chrome Ext robot yourself :)

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rthebutton-robot/m...

Please let me know if there's any bugs.

[habitue]

Right, but also you can't try again, and only old accounts can do it. So once your bot fires the button, you're done, the bot isn't ruining it for anyone any more

[humanarity]

That's a really great point, too! :)

[humanarity]

Another way to think of it is this : there's no orange flair so far, because the pressers haven't let it get below 21. Getting orange is dependent on what the collective does, a robot isn't going to help you beat that, only let you be there when it finally goes down without having to neglect your life in the meantime.

[georgehotelling]

That assumes that the goal of the button is to get as low of a flair as possible. It may not be the creator's intent.