Thread

1. bunderbunder · 1790702205 · focus · HN ↗

   I would be genuinely surprised if they weren't.

   My data science graduate program had a class that analyzed major data science success stories. The very first one covered how Caesar's Entertainment built models and ran experiments to identify their "most valuable customers", figure out how to predict when they were getting ready to leave the casino, and intervene with incentives and perks designed to get them to stay and keep gambling. And also how all of their competitors rushed to implement their own programs in response.

   Look at it from the casino's perspective: their entire business model is centered on exploiting quirks of human psychology to separate people from their money. Expecting prosocial behavior from them is like expecting a squirrel to ignore your bird feeders.

   1. prepend · 1790712183 · focus · HN ↗

      Isn’t this similar to all ads for useless stuff.

      We’re being targeted to buy $100k cars we don’t need. Not much worse than being targeted to gamble an extra $10k.

      1. dumberquestions · 1790713388 · focus · HN ↗

         At least with a car you know exactly what you're getting, you might not value it but many people out there are absolutely getting their money's worth back from a 100k car, be it ego or aesthetics or whatever, a gambling addict is just getting exploited and abused, there's no positive to it.

         1. wordpad · 1790821794 · focus · HN ↗

            Is there any upside to vices in general?

            Outside of vice taxes being a socially acceptable way to tax the poor.

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