We live in really crazy/fascinating times, accelerating human problems at "internet scale".
Truly astounding numbers. Without a doubt, online gambling is the most preventable public health crisis of our generation. None of this had any business getting legalized.
Short of outright banning (which I would favor), we can at least make mobile wagers capped at say $100 and the same account can't wager more that $500 within a 24 hour period.
That would allow people to have their fun but seriously limit the blast radius when they inevitably lose big repeatedly.
You got the meaning of "whale" wrong. The majority of the winnings / losings come from the "long tail" addicts.
> And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because [they are addicted]
I think my edit more accurately reflects what is going on.
You need to put more time into the proposal if you want to make it serious. How long would it take for people to learn they need "alt accounts" to gamble?
Suggestions:
1. Ban advertising of gambling.
2. Ban "remote" gambling including phone apps.
What would it take to make progress on this in the current regulatory environment? Post a link to someone who has thought about it.
Guys, it's predatory. Stop
Makes sense. While we’re at it let’s kick the war on drugs back into high gear, reinstate prohibition, and make other higher risk behavior illegal.
I bought a few lottery tickets when the prize reaches astronomical proportions but it was always a case of going along and doing it with family/friends just for fun.
I guess I could understand the appeal if the chances to actually win something were pretty good but it’s a well known fact that the house always wins in the end.
that was a strange sentence to read! the whole point with empathy is being able to do it despite not sharing the same feelings or point of view. it's putting yourself in their shoes, and attempting to understand the things they would feel.
maybe you meant you can't "relate to" or "identify with" or something
I wouldn't tempt fate to try to expose myself more, but it doesn't seem like I contain whatever is required to form these addictions.
Has it been studied if some people are just much more vulnerable than others, and are there predictive factors?
https://parkinsonsjournal.com/en/parkinsons-disease/gambling...
Going to a casino, which I've done a few times, is just wildly disinteresting.
But I know I'm prone to other sorts of addictions, so I guess gambling is somehow different.
[0]: maybe this one: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2026-01-28-dark-flow/
I feel like I am walking around las vegas half the time.
Virtually every corner store has turned into those english sports betting pubs or whatever they have all over England.
It's disgusting.
Are Canadian ERs different than ERs in the U.S.? Why would one go to an emergency room, seek emergency treatment, for a gambling disorder?
but my skimming of the study itself is that something else occurs (mental episode of some sort, such as anxiety attacks or suicide attempts, etc.) and gambling is noted as a primary or contributing factor in the billing code. it does not appear like someone wakes up, realizes they have an addiction to gambling, and then walks into the ER.
Losses can be redistributed and cover for the externalities of gambling. And we will be able to control the knob on how addictive we make them.
For profit companies have the target to maximize their profit, so of course they will ramp up any method that can bring in more revenue.
The only difference now is the Internet both makes it frictionless and therefore so much easier to do, and the Internet also then let's us see into the lives being ruined in the process. But the problem remains exactly the same: if you, as a person, have no ethics and see no issue in causing misery at scale, you can make a LOT of fucking money in our society. And not only will you likely not be charged, now they'll probably call you an innovator and put you on a magazine.
And then we wonder why everything is getting worse all the time.
And before anyone tries the gotcha with me, no I do not work at any firm like this. No gambling, no social media, no recommendation algorithms. The company I work at comes by it honestly: we sell solutions to problems people actually have. And no we're not worth 66 trillion dollars but, we can all sleep at night. And that's not so bad.
There's nothing else that delivers that level of harm directly to a device in your pocket.
Not that I am saying that this number is ok, gambling is a net negative on any society.
Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. I've watched gambling destroy more than one family member's lives.
To put this number in context: estimate 1/3 of income for rent, so this is 1/3 of their rent?! Translating that to my own rent is an amount that would immediately lead me to quit forever.
No good can come of me having a gambling app, I already fool around too much with stocks.
BugsJustFindMe•1h ago
Huh?
> "More than 70 per cent of gambling disorder emergency department visits involved another mental health condition or heavy substance use and almost one-third of the visits led to hospital admission."
Ok, so I assume they mean that these emergency visits were for things like drug overdoses and psychotic episodes in people led to by their gambling disorders, not for the gambling disorders themselves. What a strange way of writing this up. A gambling disorder is a chronic problem, not an acute one.
There's a difference between "emergency visit for X" where you treat X and "emergency visit (for Y) because of X" where you treat Y proximal to X, and people could learn to be more discerning in their use and interpretation of language.
MBCook•49m ago
Maybe they also mean suicidality after ending up in a ton of debt? Or just other self-harm because of it?
Personally, I really don’t like the expansion of legalized gambling. I’m not surprised it’s causing serious issues.
I would at least be more OK if it happened but advertising was heavily restricted/banned in context. The fact that every professional sport seems to be nothing but a thin wrapper around gambling ads now can’t possibly be good for us as a society.
pas•47m ago
ghostbrainalpha•48m ago
pas•43m ago
from the study
> An ED visit for a gambling disorder was defined on the basis of the clinical judgement of the treating team and was identified when ICD-10 codes F63.0 (pathological gambling) or Z726 (gambling or betting problems) were coded as the main or contributing reason for the visit.
> In 29.3% of these ED visits, a gambling disorder was listed as the primary cause of the visit,
BugsJustFindMe•41m ago
pas•36m ago
i guess if someone gets a meltdown (mental breakdown) after losing a lot of money
BugsJustFindMe•28m ago
Also, the ICD ontology specifically exists for billing purposes and isn't the same as patient diagnostic classification, though there is overlap and people do mistakenly use it as such sometimes. But there's a difference between "emergency visit for X" (treat X) and "emergency visit because of X" (treat Y proximal to X). (I also edited my original comment to include this last part, since it seems likely to create confusion)
autoexec•38m ago