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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm jeral McCormick. Can.

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Speaker 1: Today we're going to be treating you to the classic

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode from a couple of

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Speaker 1: years ago. Well, I guess, yeah, yeah, this is an

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Speaker 1: encore presentation, but it's a really good one and I

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Speaker 1: think I think it's one that that may have some

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Speaker 1: folks may have missed out on an Now it's the

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Speaker 1: perfect time to listen to it for the first time

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Speaker 1: or re acquaint yourself with it because it concerns uh.

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Speaker 1: It's one of these these episodes where a number of

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Speaker 1: different things converge. We've got human behavior, we've got technology,

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Speaker 1: kind of the evolution of technology, and uh, and just

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Speaker 1: sort of the way that we exploit each other as well,

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Speaker 1: perfect psychological predation. Yes, so gets trapped in and learn

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Speaker 1: how to play to extinction in this episode about slot machines.

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Speaker 1: Step right up, Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, test

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Speaker 1: your skills and test your wits against the incredible one

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Speaker 1: arm Band at the Fruit Machine, the Puggy, the Three

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Speaker 1: Eyed Savings Buster, yes, sir, ree, you sink your coins,

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Speaker 1: you pull the bar and dance with Lady Luck. Remember

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Speaker 1: that when you play a slot machine, no strategy is required.

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Speaker 1: The slot machine is controlled by a mathematical algorithm program

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Speaker 1: to deliver a set number of wins a set number

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Speaker 1: of glosses. It's just you against the godless predetermined mind

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Speaker 1: of the machine. So step right up and take your chances.

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Speaker 1: How about sir? Right there, why don't you step on

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Speaker 1: up and try your hand at the one arm bandit here?

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, I say this looks intriguing. It sure does, sir.

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Speaker 1: Just put your coin in there, pull the bar and

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Speaker 1: see what Lady Luck has in store for you. Really, really,

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Speaker 1: just one coin and I could be rich forever. That's

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Speaker 1: how it stocks. So you just put in one coin

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Speaker 1: and uh, we'll see how the algorithm treats you. Okay,

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Speaker 1: am I playing it right now. You're playing it right now,

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Speaker 1: that's right, So just pull, deliver pull it. Yep, there

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Speaker 1: you go. Oh well didn't work out for you this time.

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Speaker 1: Do you have some more coins? Well? I sure do.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to lose out on a chance to

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Speaker 1: get ritch. All right, Well, you might want to get

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Speaker 1: a bucket off them, so because this algorithm, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a fickle gus. Okay, well let me go to them. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. This is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was just a

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Speaker 1: little sketch we put together to uh to set the

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Speaker 1: stage for our discussion of slot machines and the science

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Speaker 1: of slot machines and in fact that the science of

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Speaker 1: gambling behavior. Yeah, Robert, have you ever played a slot machine?

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Speaker 1: I have never played an actual slot machine outside of

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Speaker 1: interactions in video games, not gambling video games, but like

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Speaker 1: legitimate like Grand Theft Auto or of course Super Mario

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Speaker 1: Brothers too. So you're not betting real cash money on

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Speaker 1: these slot machines. Absolutely just sort of virtual gambling, right, well,

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Speaker 1: especially like Supermined Brothers two comes to mind, because if

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Speaker 1: anyone my age may remember, in between each level you

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Speaker 1: played a little slot device and it was all about

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Speaker 1: winning extra lives. So if that's the only slot experience

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Speaker 1: you have, it gives you a very skewed idea of

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Speaker 1: what a slot machine is because you could not lose anything,

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Speaker 1: you could only win extra lives and it paid out

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Speaker 1: at a pretty high percentage. It was pretty easy to

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Speaker 1: figure out when to press the button so that you

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Speaker 1: would at least get one extra life. Oh but so

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Speaker 1: there's some skill involved in the Supermaner Brothers too slot machine,

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Speaker 1: and that's going to be different than most slot machines

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Speaker 1: in history. That's right as well discussed. They've evolved into

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Speaker 1: a very nefarious parasitic organism, mechanical organism, if you will.

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Speaker 1: I think slot machines are very interesting because in this

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Speaker 1: world of uh, you know, unmanned planetary rovers of robotic

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Speaker 1: surgery machines, of all these incredibly uh, science fiction seeming

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Speaker 1: machines that that occupy our techno space, the slot machine

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Speaker 1: exists as a really kind of perfect mechanism that stands

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Speaker 1: beyond all of that other technology in that it has

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Speaker 1: a job to do and it does it so well

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't believe it. Yeah, I mean it in the

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Speaker 1: industry has has pushed it in this direction to where

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Speaker 1: it just excels at one thing, and that is making

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Speaker 1: money off the gambler for the house and ultimately encouraging

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Speaker 1: you two in in gambling industry terms, play to extinction,

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Speaker 1: which which is the idea that you put some money in,

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Speaker 1: and you keep putting money in until you can no

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Speaker 1: longer put money in because you don't have anymore, which

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Speaker 1: is a tactic you You You don't even see all that

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Speaker 1: much in a parasitic organism because the parasite generally does

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Speaker 1: not want to extinguish the host. The host is it's

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Speaker 1: is its vessel. But as we're discussing earlier, there are

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Speaker 1: always more vessels for the slot machine. Yeah, you can

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Speaker 1: look at the casino as a kind of super parasite

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Speaker 1: because it doesn't have to attach itself to a host

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Speaker 1: and then become dependent on it. It can draw many

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Speaker 1: hosts to itself, and there's always more where they came from. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's and and they will bust them in. They will

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Speaker 1: attract those gamblers in with whatever it takes. And you know,

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Speaker 1: you instantly think of you know, busses coming in with them,

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Speaker 1: of travel deals, you know, even like free room and board.

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Speaker 1: I was looking at a two thousand and twelve study

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Speaker 1: from Temple University and they pointed out that an average

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Speaker 1: casino in Atlantic City could expect to make eight dollars

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Speaker 1: and forty five cents off of every dollar they spent

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Speaker 1: on their travel and parking promotions for gamblers. So again,

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Speaker 1: free bus rides, free parking UHI for every dollar they spend.

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Speaker 1: And so it's a much better deal though compared to

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Speaker 1: the two fifty one return on every dollar they spent

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Speaker 1: on room, food and beverage giveaways. But that's still pretty good,

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Speaker 1: still really good. So for every dollar they give away

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Speaker 1: and free hotel rooms, free buffet trips and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: they get back to fifty one on gambling losses. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so that's just one early stat to just sort

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Speaker 1: of drive home how how the system works, how the

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Speaker 1: gambling hyper organism works. Well, let's look at the history

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Speaker 1: of the slot machine. I got curious about where this

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Speaker 1: thing came from, and it turns out the term slot

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Speaker 1: machine could originally refer to any coin operated machine, like

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Speaker 1: a like a vending machine. So it's got a slot

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Speaker 1: where you stick the coin in, it falls in and

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Speaker 1: you get what you're looking for. Yeah, it was slot

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Speaker 1: machine is short for nickel in the slot machine, which

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Speaker 1: is probably the most Grampa Simpson thing I've ever heard

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Speaker 1: outside of the cartoon, because it could Yeah, it could

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Speaker 1: be anything. You'd be gum, cigarettes, etcetera. You would say,

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Speaker 1: oh you you know, you wanna know the packet gun,

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Speaker 1: go over to that nickel and the slot machine and

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Speaker 1: do what comes naturally, right, and then yell at a cloud.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, and in the twentieth century that that's sort

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Speaker 1: of when we saw the shift to slot machine referring

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Speaker 1: to a gambling type machine. Though I do think it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to still in a way characterized slot machines as

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Speaker 1: vending machines because you could look at them as a

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Speaker 1: vending machine for thrills you put the coin in, because

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Speaker 1: you're not going to be getting the money back. It's

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Speaker 1: almost no chance of winning money at a slot machine. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it has far too many bells and whistles and

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Speaker 1: flashing lights on it to really be an investment machine.

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Speaker 1: Like it's you know, to the to the slot machines. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In the slot machines defense, it is, it does seem

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Speaker 1: to position itself as an entertainment device. Yeah. So in

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Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties there were some bars and saloons in

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Speaker 1: the United States that had early versions of coin operated

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Speaker 1: gambling machines, though I think generally they were not much

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Speaker 1: like the slot machines we think of today, So they

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Speaker 1: might be something like a tiny mechanical horse race, and

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Speaker 1: that would give patrons something to bed on and eventually

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Speaker 1: shoot each other about. So like basically a little automaton

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Speaker 1: with raising horses that you would with that money and

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Speaker 1: maybe life and death over. Yeah, that's just one example.

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Speaker 1: But it would be some kind of electronic or not electronic,

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Speaker 1: but a mechanical machine that you could use to gamble with,

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Speaker 1: and then the patrons might place bets against one another

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Speaker 1: or sometimes they could like collect payments in the form

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Speaker 1: of things like drinks or tobacco from the saloon operator

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Speaker 1: where the machine was housed. Yeah. It I was reading

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Speaker 1: about this and it almost seems to harken to a

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Speaker 1: simpler time. It actually reminds me more of like trivia

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Speaker 1: nights he encounter at bars now, where with a proprietor

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Speaker 1: paid off winning customers with drinks or cigars or or

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Speaker 1: tokens for more refreshments, you know, which is you know

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Speaker 1: kind of like you go to these trivia nights and

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Speaker 1: if you win, oh, you get like, you know, twenty

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Speaker 1: dollars and drinks or something. You know. Yeah, it's to

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Speaker 1: get people in the door. Yeah, you know, and and

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Speaker 1: in these cases you weren't always necessarily playing against the machine.

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Speaker 1: In some cases, the machine might be thought of more

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Speaker 1: like a complicated pair of dice. Now, the kind of

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Speaker 1: slot machines we really think of, the reels running through

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Speaker 1: their cycles and then eventually landing to line up. And

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Speaker 1: I'll talk about the specifics there in a minute. Where

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Speaker 1: did that come from? There is apparently some dispute about

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Speaker 1: what exactly counts as the first slot machine or who

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Speaker 1: should be given the title of inventor. But the first

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Speaker 1: major producer of the slot machines of the kind we

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Speaker 1: think of today was a San Francisco mechanic originally an

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Speaker 1: immigrant from Bavaria named Charles Faye, and in the eighteen

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Speaker 1: nineties he invented a series of machines, the first one

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Speaker 1: called the four eleven forty four machine, then the card Bell,

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Speaker 1: and then the Liberty Bell because it's all about freedom.

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Speaker 1: And there are also accounts that Faye essentially ripped off

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Speaker 1: the idea from another inventor named Gustav Schultz, who created

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Speaker 1: a nickel slot machine called horse Shoes in the early

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties I think eighteen nine, And from what I

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Speaker 1: can tell, Schultz's machine only had one reel at a time,

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Speaker 1: so he really hadn't tapped into the three real magic yet.

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Speaker 1: I like how it seems like either way the roots

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Speaker 1: that the of the slot machine may descend back to

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Speaker 1: Bavarian cuckoo clocks and uh, you know, old German automatons. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's beautiful. And also I've read some interesting things about

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Speaker 1: the the idea of intellectual property in the origins of

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Speaker 1: slot machines, because these early producers and you know, manufacturers

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Speaker 1: of slot machines were ripping each other off all the time.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, what could you do about it? I

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Speaker 1: want to take you to court to you know, to

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Speaker 1: sue your patent infringement on my illegal machine. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we should we should probably really describe the slot

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Speaker 1: machine for anyone who's not that familiar with it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: outside of course of our you know, of our Carnival

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Speaker 1: barker us get at the opening of the episode. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we assume you've probably seen one, but just in case

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Speaker 1: you haven't, it looks usually like this, or at least

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Speaker 1: traditionally like this. You've got a big mechanical box in

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Speaker 1: front of you, and it has a coin slot and

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Speaker 1: a lever and a series of reels with images on them.

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Speaker 1: Usually three reels, but though that can vary in different

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Speaker 1: machines of today. Uh, And they're kind of like the

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Speaker 1: number wheels on a combination lock. You know, they can

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Speaker 1: scroll through, usually vertically scroll through, and when you pull

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Speaker 1: the lever, the reels begin to spin wildly before eventually

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Speaker 1: slowing down and stopping. And the reels are full of images,

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Speaker 1: also referred to as stops. And what you're looking for

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Speaker 1: is which images line up when the reel stops spinning,

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Speaker 1: and they line up across the line that's called the

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Speaker 1: pay line. Typically, of course, you want the three reels

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Speaker 1: on the images to match, though different machines have different

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Speaker 1: payout combination schemes. Sometimes there's one image that pays you

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Speaker 1: something no matter what, every time it shows up. And

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Speaker 1: the question is what are the odds of a match? So,

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Speaker 1: assuming the images or stops on all the reels are

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Speaker 1: weighted the same, it actually should be a pretty simple

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Speaker 1: multiplication of probability. So I came up with an example.

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Speaker 1: Let's say you're playing an Alien themed machine. It's a

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Speaker 1: three reel slot machine modeled after the cast of the

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Speaker 1: movie Alien, so it has eight stops per real, one

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Speaker 1: for each of the seven crew members of the Nostromo

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Speaker 1: and one for the alien. And the way you'd calculate

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Speaker 1: the probability of of hitting a jackpot of lining up

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Speaker 1: three images on this would be one eighth because there

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Speaker 1: are eight stops, times one eighth times one eighth, with

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Speaker 1: three times for the three reels, which leaves you a

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Speaker 1: probability of one out of five hundred and twelve. So

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Speaker 1: let's say you get that one chance out of five

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Speaker 1: dred and twelve, you get three Ripley's or something. If

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Speaker 1: you do, the machine pays out, usually by dumping the

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Speaker 1: coins inside, either all of them or some established subset

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Speaker 1: of them, into a place where you can collect them

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Speaker 1: and then promptly begin putting them back in the machine,

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Speaker 1: one at a time. I love this idea for a

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Speaker 1: slot machine because it also involves essentially a parasitic life

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Speaker 1: destroying organism, and I a wonderful uh anthemomorphizing sci fi analogy.

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Speaker 1: The implications of the parasitism did not escape me when

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Speaker 1: I dreamed this up. But yeah, so, the mechanical spinning

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Speaker 1: reels on early slot machines did not usually have the

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Speaker 1: cast of alien in them. They had images like playing

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Speaker 1: suit symbols, so you know, like playing cards, spade, club, heart, diamond,

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Speaker 1: the classic iconography of gambling. They also had horseshoes, stars

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Speaker 1: and bells. I was wondering where did all the fruit

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Speaker 1: come from? Yeah, because that I think that even one cherries?

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Speaker 1: What are they sometimes grapes or plums or something pineapples?

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Speaker 1: Why are these things in the slot machines we think

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Speaker 1: of today? Even I think in the UK slot machines

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Speaker 1: are often referred to as fruit machines. Fruit machines. Well,

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Speaker 1: I read an interesting story about the origin of this.

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Speaker 1: Apparently because of the moral stigma of gambling in in

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Speaker 1: the early days of the early nineteen hundreds, there were

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Speaker 1: frequent attempts to ban or eliminate slot machines, and there

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Speaker 1: were lots of sneak he attempts to circumvent this. So

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Speaker 1: companies would come up with a slot machine that wasn't

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Speaker 1: exactly like the other slot machines that came before, and

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Speaker 1: somewhat trying trying to find a loophole around the law,

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Speaker 1: or at least around the easy enforcement of the law.

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Speaker 1: And in nineteen o nine a company called the Industry

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Speaker 1: Novelty Company built slot machines but called them chewing gum

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Speaker 1: dispensers with the fruit symbols corresponding to flavors of gum

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Speaker 1: could win as your pay out, though some of these

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Speaker 1: fruit dispensing slot machines might also sometimes pay out in coins.

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Speaker 1: The year after that nineteen o nine machines, in nineteen ten,

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Speaker 1: the Mills Novelty Company added a picture of a chewing

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Speaker 1: gum pack to their machine reels, and apparently this image

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Speaker 1: morphed into the bar symbol that we all recognized today

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Speaker 1: on slot machines. If it's interesting, I was also reading

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Speaker 1: how the the the gum machine aspect of the slot

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Speaker 1: machines also, if all, allowed the machines to roll back

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Speaker 1: into a more legal form when laws changed. So the

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Speaker 1: San Francisco earth quade of nineteen o six destroyed most

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Speaker 1: local slot machine manufacturers, and California banned the use of

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Speaker 1: slot machines altogether in nineteen eleven um and so to

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Speaker 1: stay in business, the manufacturers revamped the slot machines as

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Speaker 1: gum vending machines. So it's it's in. They're amost kind

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Speaker 1: of like transformers, um shifting in and out of acceptable forms. Right,

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Speaker 1: So of course the original machines were all mechanical This

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Speaker 1: was before the days of electronics, and they'd have you know,

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Speaker 1: mechanical systems gears in place that would try to to

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Speaker 1: pay out the correct amounts to keep the probabilities in check.

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Speaker 1: Later that became easier when you had electro mechanical machines especially.

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Speaker 1: I think adding electronics eliminated some of the possibility that

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Speaker 1: people could kind of mess with the machines and machine

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Speaker 1: right to add an element of skill that isn't supposed

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Speaker 1: to be there. Uh, there are stories I don't know

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Speaker 1: how accurate they are. Back in the old days, if

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Speaker 1: you knew how to pull the lever just right and

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Speaker 1: twist the machine just right, you could ensure a payout.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, but but apparently people

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Speaker 1: thought so. Though maybe people think that about the machines

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Speaker 1: today and they're quite wrong. Yeah, it's it's gonna say that.

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Speaker 1: You can easily imagine that in the sort of almost

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Speaker 1: magical thinking that goes into the theological nature of the gambler. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and of course now the machines tend to be fully electronic,

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Speaker 1: so they've got computerized logic random number generators and they're

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Speaker 1: perfect now, so they manage payouts always within the correct

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Speaker 1: probability ranges. More widely today, computerized slot machines are a

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Speaker 1: subtype of electronic gaming machines. And what role do they

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Speaker 1: play in the gambling of today? Now, when you think

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Speaker 1: of a casino, chances are I bet you think of

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Speaker 1: a slot machine. Yeah, because you think of that just

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Speaker 1: that big like that big room that is filled with them,

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Speaker 1: just a perfect the grid of slot machines. And they're

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Speaker 1: very human hosts. Yeah, it's almost like a like a

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Speaker 1: grocery storeile people just line up to Now have you

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Speaker 1: used one of these machines before? I actually have. I.

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Speaker 1: I have been to a casino once in Tunica, Mississippi, uh,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't play the machines very much. I mean

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Speaker 1: I played a very little bit on them, but I

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Speaker 1: observed a lot of people playing the machines. And it's

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Speaker 1: very interesting watching the phenomenon of how people behave, like

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Speaker 1: their posture and their facial expressions while they're using slot machines.

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Speaker 1: I I know we're going to talk about this in

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Speaker 1: a bit that people often report that they understand that

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Speaker 1: the odds are against them on these machines, and they

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Speaker 1: use the machines for enjoyment and entertainment, But when you

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Speaker 1: watch people play them, very often you don't see much

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Speaker 1: excitement or or reaction. People very often appear sort of hypnotize,

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Speaker 1: their locked in the zone. They're not blinking much, their

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Speaker 1: faces are kind of expression less, and they're just working

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Speaker 1: the machine. Yeah, it makes me wonder, like what my

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Speaker 1: face looks like when I'm playing a video game. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I thought about that too, But but but even then,

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Speaker 1: I know that I have at times found myself playing

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Speaker 1: a game where I asked myself, am I enjoying this?

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Speaker 1: Or has this just become a tedious thing that I

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Speaker 1: have to win at in order to call it a day?

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Speaker 1: You know, you forgot there was a life outside the game. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I feel like maybe that's the mindset that one

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Speaker 1: can fall into with a slot machine. Yeah. Now I've

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Speaker 1: never actually tried one out, not a real one outside

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Speaker 1: of the video games, but I have seen the rooms,

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Speaker 1: so I know a little bit about what you're talking

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Speaker 1: about here. Well, maybe this will prevent us from ever

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Speaker 1: getting a good casino sponsorship on this show in the future,

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Speaker 1: but I can attest that they're not really that rewarding.

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Speaker 1: And I mean, indeed, when you look at the payback percentage,

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Speaker 1: which again is tied. Yeah, i'mant emotionally, and of course,

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Speaker 1: of course materially, they're not that rewarding because, yeah, when

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Speaker 1: you look at the payback percentage, which again is determined

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Speaker 1: by an algorithm, Um, you see varying levels of payout.

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Speaker 1: Like some of those sources I was looking at, it

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Speaker 1: was between seventy and Yeah, one of the main studies

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in this episode site at

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Speaker 1: seventy to ninety percent. I've seen common percentages more like

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Speaker 1: eighty something percent. And in the US, I at least

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Speaker 1: get the sense that this often seems connected to state regulations.

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Speaker 1: I think some states say, your slot machines in the

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Speaker 1: state need to pay between this number and this note

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Speaker 1: they can only be so evil. Um. But it's important

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Speaker 1: to note that any payback percentage under implies that people

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Speaker 1: who play more at the slot machine lose more money. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So if you sat down and just continued putting infinite

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Speaker 1: amounts of money into this machine and never left it,

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Speaker 1: you would always statistically come out behind, would play to

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Speaker 1: a extinction, exactly right. So what role do slot machines

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Speaker 1: play in the In the larger picture? Of the gambling

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Speaker 1: economy today. I think it's interesting that, according to what

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Speaker 1: I've read, slot machines used to be a sort of

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Speaker 1: entertaining diversion to keep people in your saloon drinking your beverages,

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Speaker 1: and then after that, after they were employing casinos, they

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Speaker 1: seem to have served as a kind of low stakes

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Speaker 1: alternative to the traditional casino games, you know, the table

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Speaker 1: games like blackjack, craps, and poker. Slot machines don't require

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Speaker 1: any skill. You don't have to study probabilities, you don't

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Speaker 1: have to count cards, you don't have to learn how

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Speaker 1: to bluff, uh. And you also you don't have as

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Speaker 1: much intimidating personal interaction, like you don't have to square

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Speaker 1: off against that scary, ice cold professionalism of the blackjack dealer,

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Speaker 1: and you don't have to worry about the predatory menace

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Speaker 1: of the other poker players who are trying to get

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Speaker 1: your pot. It's a great um gateway. It's like I'm

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Speaker 1: walking in here on a newcome or I have no

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Speaker 1: idea what gambling consists of, but here's this machine where

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Speaker 1: even if I humiliate myself, it's just between me and

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Speaker 1: the machine. Yeah, and it's so easy. You just pull

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Speaker 1: a lever or you press a button and you watch

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Speaker 1: the colors settle into place, and it doesn't require a

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Speaker 1: large bet at least not all at once. It's it

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Speaker 1: feels safe and cheap to start out at least. But

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Speaker 1: of course, now slot machines are huge business. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: was reading that it's estimated that slot machines generate over

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Speaker 1: seventy of the average casinos income, so more than all

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Speaker 1: the table games roulette, blackjack, uh, you know, craps, poker. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they it's it's it's really like an evolution, this thing

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Speaker 1: that started off. It's just this near diversion becomes the

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Speaker 1: driving uh force in in casino economy. Yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: wonder what the explanation for that is, Like, is there

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Speaker 1: just something inherent to the slot machine model that is

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Speaker 1: very alluring, or is that that slot machines as machines

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Speaker 1: have been improved and improved until they're just the most

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Speaker 1: perfect place to gamble in a casino? Essentially, are are

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Speaker 1: slot machines of today more advanced than the black jack

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Speaker 1: tables of today? Yeah? I think they are. I mean

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Speaker 1: because it's it's so it's so dependent on the technology

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Speaker 1: in the in the delivery of the user experience. I

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Speaker 1: can't help but think of it in terms of of done,

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Speaker 1: since I'm reading rereading done right now. Update to the listeners.

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Speaker 1: I'm almost done with done. I've got like fifty pages left,

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Speaker 1: probably gonna finish it tonight. Oh excellent. Well, I can't

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Speaker 1: help but think of this in terms of the the

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Speaker 1: whole prohibition against thinking machines and the doing universe, the

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Speaker 1: Balarian Jahad, where you know, they wipe out um thinking machines,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's it seems as much my interpretation of

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Speaker 1: it, it it seems as much about like destroying a machine

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Speaker 1: like way of thinking and using machines to be human.

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Speaker 1: But but in that world, you can't have the computers anymore.

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Speaker 1: So instead you have mentats. You have humans that are

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Speaker 1: essentially human computers that can you know, can compute large

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Speaker 1: numbers and various factors inside their own head. The blackjack

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Speaker 1: dealer is a ment at, yeah, he or she is,

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Speaker 1: And also a mentet is the card counter who walks

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Speaker 1: into the casino and then is asked to leave the

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Speaker 1: casino when it's revealed that they are winning through pure

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Speaker 1: logic and through mental ability. So it's so that's that's

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Speaker 1: not allowed the human um uh perfection of thought is

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Speaker 1: not allowed with the casino. But the slot machine is

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Speaker 1: the mechanical, the electronic perfection of thought, and that is

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Speaker 1: of course allowed by house rules to do its standing. Well,

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Speaker 1: you can't count cards at a slot machine, that's true.

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Speaker 1: There's no way to beat the machine. And this is

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Speaker 1: something that's going to come up in the research we

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Speaker 1: cit in a bit. People who think they have a

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Speaker 1: way to beat the machine are wrong. Some people might

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Speaker 1: think this way, but they're wrong. You can't beat the machine.

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Speaker 1: It is a mindless, completely unchangeable algorithm. No way of

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Speaker 1: pressing the button, no ritual you can perform, or or

429
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:11,640
Speaker 1: a way you can jiggle the bottom of the machine.

430
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: Nothing's gonna change it, you know, real quick. I do

431
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,880
Speaker 1: want to mention that that when it comes to payback

432
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: on a machine, that the idea of the jackpot uh

433
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:30,400
Speaker 1: wasn't invented until nineteen sixteen UM, and that that's when

434
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:32,160
Speaker 1: we have this idea that the machine will spit out

435
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: all of its coins. If you get that that very

436
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 1: lucky combination, and of course multiplying on the idea of

437
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:40,520
Speaker 1: the jackpot, you've got these modern conceptions of something like

438
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 1: the super jackpot. Multiple machines are all contributing to this

439
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,879
Speaker 1: huge number that eventually somebody's gonna win. It's kind of

440
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 1: like playing the lottery. You know, it's a small investment

441
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: and it's maybe not even a medium sized payout. Maybe

442
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:58,480
Speaker 1: maybe you could get that gigantic payout that will set

443
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: you up for life. Yeah, and just plays into the

444
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:04,720
Speaker 1: nefarious nature of the machine, right that you have this

445
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 1: this almost legendary mythological payout that's possible by manipulating this

446
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 1: one device. Yeah, I mean, I wonder how high these uh,

447
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:17,119
Speaker 1: these super jackpots can get. Um, there was one in

448
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 1: two thousand three, according to my notes, that paid out

449
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 1: at nearly forty million dollars, so not bad. Yeah, and uh,

450
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:27,199
Speaker 1: of course then again you think of that payout and

451
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 1: that sounds huge, But remember that the machine never really loses,

452
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:35,719
Speaker 1: so just imagine how much money it guzzled for that

453
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 1: to be an acceptable payout, which also then, of course

454
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: adds to the mythology of what kind of payout the

455
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: average gambler might expect. Well, it's just another version of thinking, man,

456
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: how can this casino afford to give me a free

457
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 1: room and a free buffet. Yeah, because you're you're paying

458
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 1: a triple for it at least. Well, anyway, we've we've

459
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: reached a point in the history of gambling where slot

460
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: machine play is now considered one of the most addictive

461
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 1: forms of gambling. It is powerful, it's insidious, it knows

462
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: exactly how to work us. We're not playing the slot machines,

463
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: they're playing us. One great example is that we we

464
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: looked at one study that showed that we don't we're

465
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: not even aware that we're losing necessarily when we play

466
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: certain slot machines. Right, that's right. Yeah, there's a two

467
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 1: thousand eleven paper titled Losses Disguised as Winds in Modern

468
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: Multi line Video Slot Machines, And this was published in

469
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 1: the journal Addiction. And so the main none of this

470
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:37,960
Speaker 1: is that so your novice player, you walk in, you

471
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 1: check out one of these slot machines, and they're all

472
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 1: these bells and whistles and lights and cartoon characters and pharaohs,

473
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 1: you know what have you just flashing at you and uh,

474
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 1: and it's giving you, you know, a sense of emotional

475
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:53,480
Speaker 1: arousal when you win, but it's also giving you a

476
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 1: sensitive emotional arousal arousal even when you're losing money. Because

477
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 1: for instance, let's say you put and I probably have

478
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: the amounts here wrong. But let's say you put in

479
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 1: fifty cents into the machine, right, and then uh, and

480
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 1: then woe celebration. Lights are flashing, horns are are are

481
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: are blaring because you just won cents. Yeah you actually

482
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:19,159
Speaker 1: you lost money, but the machine is celebrating it and

483
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: giving you an emotional arousal based on your loss. Was

484
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:24,400
Speaker 1: disguising your loss as a win. And then you keep

485
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:26,919
Speaker 1: going because now you're just more invested. So you have

486
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: these machines that allow you to make five bets at

487
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:32,359
Speaker 1: the same time, and say you win on one of

488
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: them and it pays back double. You're you're still behind,

489
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 1: You're still losing, but you you won something. Yeah, You're

490
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:40,879
Speaker 1: you're doing pretty good, you know. Yeah, so you just

491
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:43,919
Speaker 1: put some more coins in. But another type of study

492
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:46,239
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about, and this cellectually referred to

493
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,120
Speaker 1: some older studies that I think are sort of foundational

494
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:53,359
Speaker 1: in the in the history of gambling studies, is about

495
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: the irrationality of gambling, what's going on in the mind

496
00:27:57,080 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: of the gambler. So here's the situation unless you are

497
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:05,880
Speaker 1: incredibly skilled at a perhaps certain type of game where

498
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:07,919
Speaker 1: your skills give you an edge over the odds. This

499
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 1: might be something like poker, where you're playing against other players,

500
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 1: not necessarily against the house where the odds are set

501
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: against you. Though even in this case this is going

502
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,400
Speaker 1: to be somewhat debatable. You probably think you're a better

503
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: poker player than you actually are. You're probably not really

504
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:24,199
Speaker 1: the mint at threat that you think you're not. You

505
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,360
Speaker 1: are not the through fear how out of poker. Walking

506
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 1: into a casino is almost never a good investment, unless

507
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: you're just planning to scam a free buffet and not

508
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: playing games. There's a reason casinos make money. As we've said,

509
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 1: the odds are always against you. The long term probabilities

510
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: always favor the house. But slot machines are a really,

511
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 1: really especially unlikely way to get a payoff. And furthermore,

512
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: this should not be news to anybody, because everybody knows

513
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 1: the odds are against them. Yeah, it's not a secret

514
00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: that that slot machines are a poor use of your

515
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: time and money. Yeah yeah. And so if your goal

516
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: is a gambler is to let's say, knowingly spend a

517
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 1: little money just to have an experience, you know, maybe

518
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: to feel the thrill of a risk and chase the

519
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: ghost of a win. That might make some sense. But

520
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: if your goal is to make money, and for many

521
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: slot machine players and gamblers in general, this does seem

522
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 1: to be the goal. You are acting irrationally. There's not

523
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: there's not a different perspective about it. The odds are

524
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: against you. It's a mathematical truth that you are being

525
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: irrational and you're going to lose. So what is the

526
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 1: thinking of a slot machine player look like? Who's in

527
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: this situation? Historically studies have looked into this, but it's

528
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: kind of a difficult problem because how do you judge

529
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 1: what's going on in a gambler's head while he or

530
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:50,000
Speaker 1: she is gambling. This is especially difficult because you can't

531
00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: necessarily expect people to reflectively self report their attitudes and

532
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: thought processes accurately. You know, if you ask people after

533
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: a gambling session, you know, did you expect to win?

534
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: They might be rationalizing losses by saying no, no, I know,

535
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 1: it's just for entertainment, or they might not even realize

536
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: what cognitive processes are governing their behavior while they're sitting

537
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: at the machine. Yeah. I mean it's almost kind of

538
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: like if you were to quiz somebody about their late

539
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: night browser history in the in the light of the

540
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 1: waking day, you know that, because they're going to be

541
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: a little removed from who they were when they were

542
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: browsing those particular sites. Uh. There's kind of a you know,

543
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: a like a depressurization, uh to some to various experiences

544
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 1: in life where you you kind of let yourself become

545
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 1: seduced by say the lights and the environment of the

546
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 1: casino and and being the gambler as opposed to the

547
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: individual who's just you know, quizzed about his or her

548
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: gambling on the street the next day. And that's not

549
00:30:48,520 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: even factoring in any feelings of shame or regret you

550
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 1: might have. Sure, And I mean, yeah, I think it's

551
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: worth thinking about. Is really being in another state of mind?

552
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: I mean, can you always remember exactly how you were

553
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: thinking when you were on drugs? There have been several

554
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: studies that used a method that tried to get it

555
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: the thinking the cognition of of people who were in

556
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:12,479
Speaker 1: the act of gambling by using a method we might

557
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: call the speaking allowed approach, and one often cited study

558
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: of this kind is from and it's called Irrational Thinking

559
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: among Slot Machine Players from the Journal of Gambling Studies

560
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: by Michael B. Walker of the University of Sydney. So

561
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: this is an older study, but I think the results

562
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: are still interesting and worth talking about because it's often

563
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: cited in the field. So the experiment was researchers recruited

564
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: twenty seven university students who regularly played one of three

565
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: types of electronic games. So you had people who played

566
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: slot machines, you had people who played video poker they

567
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: called video draw poker, and then they played another group

568
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: played what they called video amusement games, which from what

569
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 1: I could tell, I think just meant video games like

570
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: arcade games without a gambling component. That makes sense because yeah,

571
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,240
Speaker 1: we would keep thinking about like slot machines versus video games.

572
00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: Would makes sense that that would be uh, that would

573
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 1: be the comparison. Yeah, And so the participants broke down

574
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 1: as nine slot machine players, eight video poker players, and

575
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 1: nine video amusement players, assuming that just means like arcade

576
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 1: game players. And all the players played each of the

577
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: three types of games for twenty or thirty minutes, starting

578
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: with their preferred game for thirty minutes. So slot machine

579
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: player played slot machines for thirty minutes UH and then

580
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:34,479
Speaker 1: went on to play the other types of games for

581
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: thirty or twenty minutes, and they were instructed to explain

582
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: their thoughts out loud to a microphone tape recorder while

583
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: they were playing. The exact instructions were and a quote,

584
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: we want to know how you're playing the game. We

585
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: want you to talk all the time, so we know

586
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: what you are thinking about while you were playing the game.

587
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: When you were ready, we will begin recording. So they

588
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,080
Speaker 1: recorded them talking while they were gambling or playing the

589
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 1: video game, and then afterwards they listen to these UH

590
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 1: to these recordings, and they categorized all the statements that

591
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: people made into five different types. One was descriptive, so

592
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 1: this is the player just describing what's happening. One is rational,

593
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: and this is a statement of strategy that is correct

594
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 1: or optimal with respect to winning in relation to the

595
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: structure of the game. That's how they described it. The

596
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 1: other one would be irrational, so this is a statement

597
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:31,479
Speaker 1: of strategy that is incorrect or is or it's an

598
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: attempt to influence the outcome of the game in a

599
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: way that won't actually work the way that they said

600
00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: is inappropriate. Um. The other is emotional, that's just expressing feelings.

601
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 1: And then they had a category for other like nonverbal

602
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:49,959
Speaker 1: vocalizations for I guess when you just say like so irrational.

603
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: An example that would be like if I were to say,

604
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: all right, it's gotta it's gonna pay out. It's gotta

605
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: pay out, like next next time, I've just lost so

606
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: much that's I've got to win the next one. Yeah,

607
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: that that'd be a great example. And their example of

608
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:06,960
Speaker 1: irrational thinking was anthropomorphizing or personalizing the machine, so saying

609
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 1: things like come on baby, or come to mama, or

610
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:14,359
Speaker 1: you owe me, or you pay me and I'll pay you.

611
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: Those were all quoted in the studies. You pay me,

612
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:20,359
Speaker 1: I'm going to reset the bargain. Yeah, exactly. You can't

613
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 1: bargain with the machine. Let me reprogram you with my mind. Um. So,

614
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 1: once the statements were categorized, the results indicated that the

615
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: highest rate of irrational statements were produced by slot players

616
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: playing slot machines, and the lowest were amusement gamers playing

617
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 1: their video games. So people were much more likely to

618
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: produce irrational statements if they were regular slot machine players

619
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: playing slot machines currently interesting, Like, I'm thinking back on

620
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 1: video game playing that I've done in the past, and

621
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: I can definitely remember times where it stops being fun

622
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 1: and it begins about it begins to be just about

623
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 1: like beating the level, and even you know, applying some

624
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: level of irrational and emotional thought to it, you know,

625
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 1: and and and anthropomorphizing the game in ways that go

626
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: beyond merely getting into character story. Yeah, though much more

627
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,760
Speaker 1: often the people playing regular video games were making rational

628
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:17,279
Speaker 1: statements about strategy. They're saying like, oh, I think I

629
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: need to jump on that thing, or you know, it's

630
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: something that's actually rational with respect to what's happening in

631
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: the game. And I'm just going to read a quote

632
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: about their results. So they said, out of all the

633
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 1: statements made by slot machine players when playing slot machines,

634
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: thirty eight percent were categorized as irrational. Furthermore, eighty percent

635
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,720
Speaker 1: of strategic statements made by slot machine players while playing

636
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: slot machines were categorized as irrational. Though, I think one interesting,

637
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: uh qualification of this is what rational statements about strategy

638
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 1: could you make while playing a slot machine? Because I

639
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:55,799
Speaker 1: mean you can, you can make a few I mean,

640
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 1: I guess you can just say, I guess I'll play

641
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: double bets this time, as long as you're not indicating

642
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: that you think you are controlling outcomes when you're not,

643
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: or something like that. But and so many of those

644
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 1: irrational statements are going to play directly into the mythology

645
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,359
Speaker 1: of the slot machine, right, you know where it's where.

646
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: The mythology of the slot machine is that if you

647
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 1: you double down and you keep playing, that it's going

648
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: to pay off. Yeah. And so another study published in

649
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: two thousand in the Journal of Psychology was called Predictors

650
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:26,880
Speaker 1: of Irrational Thinking and regular Slot machine Players, and it

651
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: followed up on these results testing more slot machine gamblers

652
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: with that same talk allowed method. Though I think it's

653
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: worth mentioning at this point that both of these studies

654
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:42,320
Speaker 1: called out the potential limitations of the talk allowed method,

655
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 1: like the requirement to talk aloud about a game since

656
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 1: it's an unnatural activity, could be skewing results or subjective

657
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: attitudes and the participants. You you always want to be

658
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: careful about these kind of things that you might be

659
00:36:55,680 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 1: getting incorrect feedback because of the test conditions. But at

660
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: least with that qualification in mind. Uh, This study was

661
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: generally consistent with the previous findings, and they showed that

662
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 1: strategic statements made about slot machine gaming were very often irrational.

663
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: Of all statements made were irrational, and seventy percent of

664
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 1: all game related or strategic verbalizations were irrational. And then

665
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 1: I thought this was really interesting. They offered different categories

666
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: of irrational statements and showed what percentage of irrational statements

667
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:32,520
Speaker 1: they made up. So one category they had was like

668
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 1: superstitious rituals, hypotheses or predictions, So this is would be

669
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: like I gotta dud my my my my rabbit's foot, right,

670
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:42,359
Speaker 1: had I need to lick the machine before I play

671
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:45,799
Speaker 1: at this? Right? These are all just false strategies of

672
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: thinking you can influence the outcomes of the machine or

673
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:54,440
Speaker 1: or predictions based on things that that had no validity saying,

674
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: so like the gambler's fallacy, I think would be part

675
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: of this, saying like oh, if I've just lost a

676
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 1: bunch of times in a row, I'm due. And this

677
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:05,920
Speaker 1: was fifty pc of all irrational statements, so this is

678
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Another one that I thought was

679
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 1: really interesting was the category called inappropriate rationalization of near misses.

680
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: The way they explained this was they said these statements

681
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: classified as irrational implied the player believed the machine was

682
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 1: cheating or stopping them from winning by not providing all

683
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: the winning symbols. And that's that's interesting because it kind

684
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 1: of gets to the heart of it. But it's like

685
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: the machine. Yes, the machine is cheating you, but it's

686
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: cheating you in a very systematic way, not in this

687
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: clumsy way that you're attributing right exactly, So they're calling

688
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:41,880
Speaker 1: out capricious cheating when actually it's very methodical cheating. The

689
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: other big category was personification of the machines of all

690
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:50,359
Speaker 1: irrational statements, and this is what it sounds like. It's

691
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 1: any statement where the players trying to make a bargain

692
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:56,760
Speaker 1: with the machine or attribute thoughts or emotions to it,

693
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: or sometimes like yelling insults at the machine. These were

694
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:04,160
Speaker 1: also classified as irrational. And then the other twelve percent

695
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: were statements that were belief in personal luck. Yes, though,

696
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: a thing I thought was interesting was they said they

697
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:14,919
Speaker 1: didn't find any references to personal skill, so at least

698
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:18,520
Speaker 1: the gamblers weren't saying things that suggested that they thought

699
00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 1: skill was involved in the playing of slot machines. Yeah,

700
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: tell them almost more like a religious act, Like the

701
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: slot machine becomes this uh this, uh, this this metaphor

702
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: for our interaction with the world and with our life. Yeah.

703
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:36,959
Speaker 1: I think that's definitely a good way of putting it there.

704
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 1: There are hidden forces at work, and so they were

705
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:44,360
Speaker 1: looking for correlated predictors of irrationality in this study. They're like, Okay,

706
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: are there are other conditions that if these hold, you're

707
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:49,920
Speaker 1: more likely to see irrational behavior sitting in front of

708
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,120
Speaker 1: the slot machine. And so one thing they looked for

709
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:56,719
Speaker 1: and did not find as a correlation between the percentage

710
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,879
Speaker 1: of winds and irrationality. So doesn't matter how much you win,

711
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: that doesn't change how irrational you are. They did find

712
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: a correlation between risk taking in irrationality. The players who

713
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: bet more at a time and took higher risks generated

714
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:15,399
Speaker 1: more irrational statements in general. Uh, though not necessarily when

715
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: analyzed specifically with regard to strategic statements, just the general statements.

716
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: But from both of these studies, there's an ongoing tension

717
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: between the fact that slot machine gamblers often seem to

718
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 1: display irrational behaviors while they're in the act. So you're

719
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 1: sitting there in front of the slot machine gambling and

720
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: you're being irrational. But then when you're not in the

721
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: act of playing, you report rational attitudes towards the activity.

722
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:44,319
Speaker 1: So after you get out of the casino and you're

723
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: giving a survey, you know you're you're answering questions about

724
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:51,080
Speaker 1: the act of gambling, you will say things that indicate

725
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: you realize it's pure chance. You're likely to lose, you're

726
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 1: not likely to win money, you have no way of

727
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: influencing the machine. I don't know. I think that's interesting,

728
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 1: like the disconnect between our cognition while we're playing and

729
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 1: our cognition when we're not playing. Yeah, I mean, it's

730
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 1: almost like you're in sourcel Right, It's like talking to

731
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: the sailor who gets dragged into the water by the

732
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: siren every day and on the shore he's like, yeah,

733
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: I know that she's part fish and that she's basically

734
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: just hypnotizing me and trying to drag me to a

735
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 1: watery death. Um, I know all that stuff. Why do

736
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:25,319
Speaker 1: you wind it when we have to drag you out

737
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,080
Speaker 1: of the water every day? Why? Why why does she

738
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 1: continue to control you? So? Yeah, there was an interesting

739
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: paper that I just looked at briefly from two thousand

740
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:36,439
Speaker 1: ten that referred to exactly this disconnect, to this going

741
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 1: back and forth between modes of cognition and referred to

742
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 1: it as double switching. But that's of course just looking

743
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 1: at the mind of the gamble, or another element that

744
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: very much comes into gambling is looking at not necessarily

745
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:54,760
Speaker 1: the mind, but the perceived mind of the machine. Yes,

746
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:57,800
Speaker 1: this is really interesting, And there's a two thousand fifteen

747
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: study just came out from the University of Alno but

748
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 1: Coca from researchers Paolo Riva, Simona Sacchi, and Marco Brambella.

749
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,760
Speaker 1: And there's actually a great quote in here that invokes

750
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 1: another mythological creature. They say it is possible that similar

751
00:42:15,040 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: to how in ancient mythology, challengers perceived the sphinx as

752
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: possessing a human like mind and intelligence, the gambling industry

753
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:26,399
Speaker 1: is selling customers a challenge against a mind rather than

754
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:29,279
Speaker 1: just a machine or a computer algorithm. So it's the

755
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:32,319
Speaker 1: best of both worlds. It's like you get to combine

756
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,280
Speaker 1: the safety and low stakes and and kind of comfort

757
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: zone aspects of the slot machine with the thrill of

758
00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: playing against another player in poker, right, Yeah, it's um.

759
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: And so we've we've mentioned personifying the machine already, So

760
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 1: this paper is not the first to discuss anthropomorphization and

761
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 1: uh slot machine gambling. No, like I said, in those

762
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: earlier papers, they found personifying the machine was very common. Yeah,

763
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 1: but this is the this is the first to really,

764
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 1: um look at how anthromorism plays into the excitement engagement

765
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 1: level and how it affects, uh, how much money you

766
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: end up losing in the venture. Yeah. I know I've seen,

767
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:18,879
Speaker 1: especially based on some of the stuff you dug up,

768
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: that past designs of slot machines have very much tried

769
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: to suggest humanity in just the look and feel of

770
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: the machine. Yeah, the like the paper mentioned, Oh yeah,

771
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: you'll you'll see these slot machines and they'll have pharaohs

772
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: and women and muscleman on them. And that's all well

773
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 1: and good. But I was not expected to find what

774
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: I found when I was looking at Getty images uh

775
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,879
Speaker 1: A nineteen fifty two. Uh, I believe image of a

776
00:43:43,960 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: blonde bombshell, which is essentially imagine a kind of a

777
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:51,279
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe looking pin up mannequin. And then it's just

778
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 1: a slot machine that they slide into her torso and

779
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: she's just standing it's horrified. Yeah, she's just standing in

780
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: a I believe it was a Death Valley, California bar

781
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 1: or gas station or something. Now, is this a a

782
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,840
Speaker 1: sexualized figure of a woman that just happens to have

783
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 1: a lever poking out of it? Or is the lever

784
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: like her arm or something? Oh no, it's just a lever.

785
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:16,759
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's it's like it's it's almost as

786
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: if you were to take like a corpse and just

787
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: like slab a gambling machine in the middle. You know.

788
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 1: It's just it's not an artful um convergence of the

789
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: female form and the gambling machine. It's very rough and

790
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:32,719
Speaker 1: heavy handed and uh and yet seems to call out

791
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 1: to you and say, hey, play this gambling machine, woman,

792
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: let us transparently manipulate your brain. Yeah. You know. Also,

793
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 1: I was I noticed in one of the sites we're

794
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: looking at that had a lot of like retro slot

795
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: machine collectibles. Uh. The guy there was sent it selling

796
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 1: a bandit head from a one arm bandit What a

797
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: bandit head? Yeah, you can buy it for a hundred

798
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks on eBay, but it's explicitly claiming to

799
00:44:57,520 --> 00:44:59,839
Speaker 1: rob you. Yeah, it's the one armed bandit. So let's

800
00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: just ahead and put this uh, you know, this head

801
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:04,439
Speaker 1: on top, like a paper mache head with a cowboy hat,

802
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: and then you can go duel with it. Yeah. But

803
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: the thing is that, the thing about anthropomorphization and anthropomorphism

804
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: in general is that it permeates everything we do. Right. Yeah,

805
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 1: and it's uh and it's paradoxical at times, like it's

806
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 1: the it's at once. It's the force that makes it

807
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: easier to kick a garbage can because you think it's

808
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: a person, you know, like you make that garbage can,

809
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:27,880
Speaker 1: you personify it as a somebody you're mad at, and

810
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: you kick it. But also if you draw a face

811
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 1: on a garbage can, it makes it a little harder

812
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 1: to kick the garbage can because it's you've you've given

813
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: it some sort of like innocent personhood. Oh, I mean,

814
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:41,319
Speaker 1: I bet you treat your computer like a person. Sometimes

815
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,160
Speaker 1: you don't really think it has a mind and emotions,

816
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 1: but sometimes it feels that way when it's slow, when

817
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: it's lagging, when it's causing you problems. This person is

818
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: messing up your day. They are so annoying. Yeah, I mean,

819
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:55,759
Speaker 1: and it's also of course a huge part, if not

820
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:59,760
Speaker 1: the key part of our religious thinking and our religious worldviews,

821
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: where we attribute consciousness to the universe. We anthropomorphize the universe, Yeah,

822
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 1: either in the form of a single deity or in

823
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:12,480
Speaker 1: an array of deities representing various personified aspects of reality. Well,

824
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 1: I think that's something that complicates this view of looking

825
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 1: at slot machines as as agents or as people. Again,

826
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: nobody really thinks the slot machine is a person, but

827
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,399
Speaker 1: they can start thinking in those ways. And then there's

828
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:29,320
Speaker 1: also a complicated interplay between the ghost of the person

829
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: you imagine is in the slot machine and this sort

830
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: of larger universal ghost, you know, lady Luck, the mind

831
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:39,960
Speaker 1: of the universe that's handing out wins and losses. And

832
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: to what extent is that the machine itself or is

833
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:46,359
Speaker 1: that this third external force that's watching over the both

834
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah. Indeed, So the researchers in this two

835
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen study, this is what they did. They have

836
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: first they did they did four experiments in total, but

837
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: the first three were with a small study, so like

838
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:00,040
Speaker 1: a very small sample size, really a quality quas I

839
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:04,240
Speaker 1: study participants were a group of fifteen regular slot machine

840
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 1: players in a group of fifteen non regular slot machine players.

841
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:10,439
Speaker 1: And then what they did is they primed the individuals

842
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 1: before they interacted with these machines. So all the anthropomorphization

843
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: is taking place here, it's not. It doesn't involve any

844
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: physical anthropomorphization. There are no heads, there are no mannequins.

845
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: It's all about priming them with just with a description. Yeah,

846
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: they're just given text. But the text actually proved pretty

847
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: interesting and how it affected the way they thought about

848
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:34,560
Speaker 1: the game and the relationship with the machine. I think

849
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 1: we should actually read out the text because I think

850
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: the differences are interesting. Okay, this is the anthropomorphizing priming

851
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 1: text from Steady One. Remember that when you play with

852
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: a slot machine, you don't need to implement any particular strategy. Indeed,

853
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:50,960
Speaker 1: the slot machine can decide whether you will win or

854
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 1: lose a series of bets anytime she wants. Sometimes she

855
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:57,280
Speaker 1: may choose to make fun of you, leaving you empty

856
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:00,080
Speaker 1: handed for several bets. Other times she might want to

857
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 1: reward you with a win. In any case, the slot

858
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: machine will always choose what will happen. You just have

859
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:10,040
Speaker 1: to start playing and see what happens. So some people

860
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: got that one other people got remember that when you

861
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:15,399
Speaker 1: play a slot machine, you don't need to implement any

862
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 1: particular strategy. Instead, the slot machine is controlled by a

863
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: mathematical algorithm that is programmed to deliver a certain overall

864
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: number of wins and losses. Based on this algorithm, you

865
00:48:24,960 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: can win or lose a series of bets in any case.

866
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:29,800
Speaker 1: The outcome of each turn of the reels is always

867
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 1: run by a computer algorithm. You just have to start

868
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: playing and see what happens. So both are saying essentially

869
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:37,759
Speaker 1: the same thing, like there's a there's a force here,

870
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: there's already in play, and you cannot win against it.

871
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:43,719
Speaker 1: But in one case it's she, and then the other

872
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: case it's it. Yet they found that an anthropomorphized description

873
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 1: of the slot machine increased gambling behavior and reduced winnings,

874
00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 1: and winnings, of course decreased because the gamblers were gambling

875
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: more on the anthropomorphized machine. Another moral about gambling, the

876
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 1: longer you play, the more you'll lose, and that that's

877
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 1: all it takes. Just get the individual playing more and

878
00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:06,120
Speaker 1: they will lose more, playing to extinction. So the first

879
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 1: study they did was more about just the time you

880
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 1: invested in it. It wasn't. Yeah. The second study, that

881
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 1: one involved real money or points, and study three tested

882
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 1: the emotional experience of the game okay um. Study three

883
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 1: provided initial evidence of a link between anthropomorphism of slot

884
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: machines with the participants emotional experience and their actual gambling behavior,

885
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: but specifically found that swat machine anthropomorphism increases the experience

886
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:37,520
Speaker 1: of positive emotions, which leads people to gamble more. Now

887
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: the fourth study, this is where they took what they

888
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: learned from the first three and they applied it to

889
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: a much larger gree this time two individuals, and they

890
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:49,759
Speaker 1: use candies instead of money or points or anything. So

891
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:52,879
Speaker 1: this is a key. Though unlike study three, study four

892
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:57,040
Speaker 1: did not provide support for their hypothesis that priming participants

893
00:49:57,040 --> 00:50:01,440
Speaker 1: with an anthropomorphic slot machine in t inmsically results in

894
00:50:01,480 --> 00:50:06,320
Speaker 1: a stronger emotional reaction except for low arousal negative emotions

895
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: such as fatigue so tired yeah so, And the researchers

896
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 1: aren't exactly sure why this why they weren't able to

897
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: repeat the same effect and steady four that about the emotions,

898
00:50:16,800 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 1: right about the emotion? Uh, They think that it might

899
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: be because of different measures they were using um between

900
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:27,200
Speaker 1: three and four, so more studies required there. But the anthropomorphization,

901
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:31,720
Speaker 1: the personification of the slot machine definitely did affect playing,

902
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:34,920
Speaker 1: like the length of playtime and the losses as a

903
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:38,080
Speaker 1: result of the length of playtime. Yes, yeah, and that's

904
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: one of the key take homes here, uh you know,

905
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: along with just some of the key points that came

906
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:45,360
Speaker 1: out of the paper that the people exposed to a

907
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:48,800
Speaker 1: humanized slot machine lost more points compared to people exposed

908
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 1: to non humanized slot machines. That anthropomorphization resulted in greater

909
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: loss of slot machine payouts. The people primed with the

910
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,759
Speaker 1: humanized slot machine lost more slot machine payouts because they

911
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:03,920
Speaker 1: went playing longer. And the theory is that it's all

912
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: about emotional arousal, which increases focus and engagement, forcing gamblers

913
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,280
Speaker 1: to gamble more. That was the interpretation that they applied

914
00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:14,919
Speaker 1: to their emotional results, though there was, like you said,

915
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 1: there was some discrepancy in the emotional results. Yeah. And

916
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:20,600
Speaker 1: then the final like take home from this study is

917
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 1: that the other side of the coin is that just

918
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: as you can potentially prime somebody with the anthropomorphizing uh

919
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:31,239
Speaker 1: text and make them gamble more that this might be

920
00:51:31,239 --> 00:51:34,359
Speaker 1: a way to to, uh, to treat gambling behavior. Oh yeah, yeah,

921
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to discourage people from spending their

922
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: life savings on a slot machine, it perhaps could help

923
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:43,920
Speaker 1: or at least mitigate the effects, just to constantly remind

924
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 1: people that it's a machine working by an algorithm. Yeah. Like,

925
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,600
Speaker 1: of course the casinos don't want to do that. They

926
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 1: want you to play to extinction. But I don't know.

927
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: I think the idea is maybe that a law could

928
00:51:55,520 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: require casinos too, I don't know, emphasize the imp personality

929
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 1: of slot machines. Yeah, Like imagine I think of the

930
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:07,319
Speaker 1: legislation that takes place around cigarettes and tobacco, right you often,

931
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:09,600
Speaker 1: you know, it's about like, let's make make it less sexy,

932
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: make it less appealing, put a big scary warning on it,

933
00:52:13,280 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: I mean, realistic warning on it about the the ill effects.

934
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 1: What if that was applied to a slot machine where

935
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:23,400
Speaker 1: you cannot anthropomorphize it. It has to be less flashy,

936
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 1: and there has to be a big, big plate on

937
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: the front of it that tells you this is all

938
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 1: about the algorithm and you're not gonna win. Surgeon General's

939
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 1: warning there is no fickle God or God us inside

940
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 1: this machine. One of the other interesting things about the

941
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:41,760
Speaker 1: study though, was that it only looked at a verbal priming.

942
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 1: Like we said, so people were either given as a

943
00:52:45,080 --> 00:52:47,840
Speaker 1: verbal description saying it's just an algorithm, or a verbal

944
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:51,240
Speaker 1: description saying she wants to reward you. Sometimes she takes

945
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,239
Speaker 1: your money the other times. It would be interesting to

946
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: see the results of visual priming along these lines, like

947
00:52:57,080 --> 00:53:00,160
Speaker 1: a machine that just looks like a flat blank machinean

948
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:03,800
Speaker 1: or a machine that's like our like our Marilyn Monroe machine.

949
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 1: It's very much dressed up to look like a human

950
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:10,239
Speaker 1: and given given expressive visual emotions. Yeah, where I was

951
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:13,400
Speaker 1: looking at some some YouTube clips, which is various slots

952
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:15,840
Speaker 1: and a lot of them. How like when I was

953
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:18,839
Speaker 1: looking at like, it wasn't just fruit and symbols rolling by,

954
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 1: but also like a barbarian woman with a panther, you know,

955
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: like what Yeah, like she's uh like like the top

956
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: half of her like ends up sinking up with the

957
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: bottom half, so it's essentially like a bikini woman is

958
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 1: one of the the icons on the slots. Okay, another

959
00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: interesting finding I thought was that they pointed out in

960
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:42,359
Speaker 1: their discussion section that while they were able to get

961
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 1: in all cases anthropomorphic thinking elevated by priming people with

962
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: this with this pro anthropomorphization text, Anthropomorphization was present in

963
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: both groups. So even the people who were given the

964
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,800
Speaker 1: text that says it's just an algorithm, is just a machine,

965
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:04,000
Speaker 1: still showed some anthropomorphic thinking. They still attributed some beliefs

966
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: and feelings and thoughts to the machine, less than the

967
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:10,880
Speaker 1: other group, but there were still some there, And that

968
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:14,720
Speaker 1: suggests that there's an inherent tendency to personalize the machine,

969
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: even when you're discouraged from doing so. Yeah, all the

970
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 1: machines are doing when they throw on ahead or or

971
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 1: any colorful imagery is they're just they're they're just encouraging

972
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:29,760
Speaker 1: the pre existing tendency, you know. The idea about these

973
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: different ways of viewing the machine makes me think of

974
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 1: something I've read about in the philosopher Daniel Dennett's writings before,

975
00:54:36,719 --> 00:54:39,799
Speaker 1: where he talks about the idea of the the three

976
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:43,840
Speaker 1: major stances that we take in reference to external objects,

977
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: which are the physical stance, the design stance, and the

978
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:52,120
Speaker 1: intentional stance. And it's a way of understanding and predicting

979
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: what uh what third party objects are going to do.

980
00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:59,439
Speaker 1: And so if you say, see rocks rolling down a hill,

981
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 1: tend to think of this and what he would call

982
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:05,320
Speaker 1: the physical stance, it's just it's just acting by physics,

983
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: and you can pretty much predict that they're going to

984
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 1: keep rolling downhill. When you look at an uh, maybe

985
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,359
Speaker 1: an organism or or an object or something, you can

986
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 1: think about it in terms of the design stance, So

987
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 1: like an alarm clock is designed to act a certain way,

988
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 1: or an organism is designed by evolution to to achieve

989
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:29,880
Speaker 1: a certain purpose, and you can think about it in

990
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: those terms because they have goals in mind, and it

991
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 1: sort of simplifies the factors we need to take into

992
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 1: consideration when predicting behavior. And then the third stance is

993
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:41,600
Speaker 1: the intentional stance. That's how we think about agents. So

994
00:55:41,680 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: it would be like a person or a thinking or

995
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:47,960
Speaker 1: a thinking animal. It it has things it wants to do.

996
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:51,760
Speaker 1: And I think the idea is that you can apply

997
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: all three stances to something like a slot machine, like

998
00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:57,800
Speaker 1: it is governed by underlying physics, and if you wanted

999
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: to get really detailed, you could look at the six

1000
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: of all the electronics inside and how they determine what

1001
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:05,759
Speaker 1: the machine does. You could look at it in the

1002
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:08,840
Speaker 1: design stance, whereas it was made by a person who

1003
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:11,040
Speaker 1: eat your money, to eat your money, and it does

1004
00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:13,400
Speaker 1: that very well. Or you could look at it from

1005
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: the intentional stance, and you could say it is an

1006
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:19,120
Speaker 1: agent that wants to sometimes reward you with with with

1007
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:22,640
Speaker 1: happy happy money times, and other times it will punish

1008
00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:24,880
Speaker 1: you for your hubers. What I love about this is

1009
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:29,239
Speaker 1: that both the physical and the intention model are wrong here,

1010
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:32,560
Speaker 1: Like only the design view is the one that actually

1011
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:36,319
Speaker 1: gives you a realistic idea of what this machine is

1012
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:38,200
Speaker 1: going to do to you. Well, I think you could

1013
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 1: say that the physical stance is not necessarily wrong, it's

1014
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 1: just unnecessary, Like there's no reason you would need to

1015
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:47,719
Speaker 1: look at the physics of what every electron inside the

1016
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:50,759
Speaker 1: machine is doing to understand it. Yeah, but but I

1017
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:53,400
Speaker 1: think it that the physical doesn't give you a clear

1018
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 1: mind of what it's going to do to you, what

1019
00:56:56,120 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 1: it is designed like the design is it doesn't give

1020
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:02,760
Speaker 1: you the tele the tele pology of the slot machine. Yeah,

1021
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:06,279
Speaker 1: so that's that's interesting. But yeah, So the idea here

1022
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:08,799
Speaker 1: is that we we can be primed to regard a

1023
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:12,360
Speaker 1: slot machine within the intentional stance. But ideally, if you

1024
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: want to have people not spending so much money on

1025
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:17,520
Speaker 1: slot machines, you want to remind them to think about

1026
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 1: it through the design stance. The design stance is is

1027
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 1: such a mood killer for slot machines. You know, whenever

1028
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 1: you're made to think about what the slot machine is

1029
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:31,920
Speaker 1: designed to do, it it kills the magic. Yeah. Yeah,

1030
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 1: you you see through the facade to the nefarious purpose. Yeah.

1031
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:41,480
Speaker 1: Another thing the anthropomorphization makes me think about is the

1032
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:46,040
Speaker 1: future of electronic gambling, especially when combined with future generations

1033
00:57:46,080 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence. Yeah, what happens when the slot machine

1034
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:54,000
Speaker 1: is not just in engaging in passive anthem amorphization, but

1035
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:57,919
Speaker 1: also but like active personification to where it's actually it's

1036
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:00,640
Speaker 1: talking back to it's engaging with you. It's it's essentially

1037
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: a chatter box trying to to get you to gamble

1038
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: more through conversation. Yeah, I mean, imagine the perfect AI

1039
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:12,640
Speaker 1: chatter bought, Uh, you know, a slot machine off or

1040
00:58:12,680 --> 00:58:16,320
Speaker 1: whatever it's it's it's the Lady Luck slot machine and

1041
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: she chats oh so charming lee while she takes your

1042
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:21,760
Speaker 1: coins one at a time. Or these days, I don't

1043
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: know if it's often even coins, and I think you

1044
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 1: get like you know, in the casinos of today, you

1045
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:28,920
Speaker 1: might get like a card as a certain amount of

1046
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:31,439
Speaker 1: credits on it, and it's slowly deducts, just a little

1047
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 1: bits at a time, a little bits at a time.

1048
00:58:35,320 --> 00:58:38,360
Speaker 1: All right. So there you have it. Great episode. I

1049
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: think one that that holds up. All the material here

1050
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 1: is pretty evergreen. But there has been a lot of

1051
00:58:44,080 --> 00:58:47,360
Speaker 1: research around this topic. And in fact, we were just

1052
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 1: looking around before we did the the the the the

1053
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:54,120
Speaker 1: rereleased material here on the episode, and we saw that

1054
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:58,800
Speaker 1: there's been some fascinating studies about rats rat slot machine tests. Yeah,

1055
00:58:58,840 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 1: that's a thing. So if you were interested, if you're

1056
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 1: if you were hungry for more uh slot machine content,

1057
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 1: we may come back and do a little something on

1058
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: rats and slot machine science. Let us know if that

1059
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:15,080
Speaker 1: sounds like a good idea or a great idea. I wonder, now,

1060
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 1: if you've got a rat problem in your house, if

1061
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: it would be more humane then go into the rat

1062
00:59:20,200 --> 00:59:23,479
Speaker 1: trap and all the standard grizzly outcomes, if you could

1063
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 1: just get the rats to play to extinction, Yeah, it

1064
00:59:26,440 --> 00:59:27,920
Speaker 1: would be good. You know what I was having to

1065
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:30,000
Speaker 1: do for a while, what we had mice coming to

1066
00:59:30,080 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: the house. I was using humane live traps, and at

1067
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:35,560
Speaker 1: first I was being super nice with him. I would

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00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:37,520
Speaker 1: take them to a field. I would drive each mouse

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00:59:37,560 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 1: out to a field and release it. Um. But it

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00:59:40,560 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 1: got to be a bit too much work, especially if

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00:59:43,080 --> 00:59:44,919
Speaker 1: it's like ten thirty at night. You know, who wants

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00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 1: to drive to a field or a mouse? So I

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00:59:46,880 --> 00:59:49,080
Speaker 1: would just drive them down to the local marta station,

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00:59:49,160 --> 00:59:51,920
Speaker 1: the local public transportation system and uh and let them

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00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:54,840
Speaker 1: loose there. You're you're a hero, right, could give them

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00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 1: a fine chance, you know, uh, And I give them

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00:59:57,000 --> 00:59:58,840
Speaker 1: a little fair so that they could, you know, pay

1078
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:00,640
Speaker 1: their way. That'll take an you were in the city,

1079
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:04,520
Speaker 1: slice of pizza. Yeah, there you go. Alright, So hey,

1080
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:06,560
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to more episodes of Stuff

1081
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, If you want to explore more

1082
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Speaker 1: episodes from the back catalog, and there's a tremendous amountable

1083
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 1: of good stuff in there that you should check out,

1084
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:15,640
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1085
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:18,920
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes, tons of videos.

1086
01:00:18,960 --> 01:00:20,800
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1087
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:26,120
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1088
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1090
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1091
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1092
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1095
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1096
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Speaker 1: Big Men ey T five five about first part far

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Speaker 1: f