Slot machine science... I've read bits and pieces of this before, but this article tells the whole story quite nicely.
The whole phenomenon of slot machines is one of those things (there are many :) that make me wonder whether I'm a member of the same species as most other people (shut up, mom). I have never had even the tiniest desire to put money into a machine in return for the dubious pleasure of watching it work, and the small chance that I might win more than I spend. Almost any other way of spending time or money seems more attractive to me. I know quite a few people who do things that seem utterly crazy to me, such as drive for 10 hours to get to a casino, where they then spend two days shoveling money into a machine, and then come home with (usually substantially) less money than they departed with. Some of them even delude themselves into believing that they're net winners of the long haul, when clearly they are not.
I just don't get the attraction. I must be broken...
It’s like the Tobacco industry. They are trying to increase their profits in part by making their product as addictive as possible… within the law… barely. Which begs the question, if the state asserts authority over the industry, writes a mountain of regulations and takes money to fund regulating it, shouldn’t they also shoulder responsibility for the results? Can they actually effectively regulate an industry when they have a conflict of interest as they also directly benefit from the tax revenue?
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