Gambling

    I really didn't want to write this post.  Not because gambling and casinos are a difficult topic or hard to explain, but part of me really likes playing slot machines and thinks I'll probably get banned for my opinion.

   This is the easiest thing to lay out and the toughest to accept:  slot machines in their current form are designed and manufactured to manipulate every person who uses them.  And I don't mean manipulate like being used in a beneficial way for both parties way (being sarcastic, but some people try to explain manipulation that way)  I mean the intentional, methodical, researched, and planned kind of manipulation you find in sociopathic behaviour.

   Slot machines exploit the part of us least able to defend against them.  But that's the way addictive things are.

   No illusions here.  But slot machines should be without lights except for illumination, without sounds except for mechanical or electrical components, be mathematically random (which is as close to true fairness as we can create for gambling) so that for any given day a casino is just as likely to lose money as make it.

That's my opinion.