\nBloomberg<\/p>\n
\tHere\u2019s how scientists made a slot machine for rats: They added three flashing lights and a pair of levers to a sugar pellet dispenser. With all three lights illuminated, the rats \u201cwon\u201d and could press one lever for a pellet. If zero, one, or two lights were lit, the rats hit a different lever to play again.<\/p>\n
\tThe rodent gamblers were good at differentiating a win from a loss\u2014with one exception. With two lights illuminated, a near miss, they often pressed the lever for the sugar cube. This is consistent with previous research on gambling. People keep playing because losing feels like winning.<\/p>\n
\tPaul Cocker, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, recently published a study based on his team\u2019s work in Biological Psychiatry. It\u2019s notable for two reasons: First, it involved building a slot machine for rats! Second, it could be a step\u2014albeit an early one\u2014 toward development of a drug to treat compulsive gambling.<\/p>\n
\tOnce the rats had been trained on the machine, Cocker gave them drugs that blocked dopamine D4 receptors, a part of the brain associated with pleasure. While untreated rats had thought that two lights signified a win, they now figured out they\u2019d lost. Cocker says he\u2019s not a \u201chuman person\u201d\u2014he only studies rats. But the next step would be for researchers to see if people who are given similar drugs would lose the urge to keep playing once they realized they were losing all the time.<\/p>\n
\tAny treatment is \u201csomewhere far off in the future,\u201d Cocker says, but when researchers are ready to fiddle with humans\u2019 neurological processes, they\u2019ll be dealing with worthy opponents in the gambling industry. Digital slot machines have been designed to carefully cultivate people\u2019s cognitive weaknesses to keep them from becoming frustrated and leaving.<\/p>\n
\tOne way to do this is to obscure the low chances of winning. While a video slot machine seems to mimic the analog version, the virtual fruits aren\u2019t spinning. They\u2019re simply decorations to occupy the player\u2019s mind as a random number generator determines whether the player won. And the visible symbols imply a much better chance of winning, according to Addictive By Design, a book on machine gambling by Natalie Dow Sch\u00fcll, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A reel on a virtual slot machine may seem to be cycling between 22 positions, but the machine powering it could have 64. This means you\u2019re seeing those cherries moving by way more than the odds that they will stop. Schull cites a study by Kevin Harrigan, an expert in algorithms, which says that if this type of machine were to pay off according to what people are seeing, players would win 297 percent of the time.<\/p>\n
\tBut machines aren\u2019t designed only to make it seem as if you might win the next time. Increasingly, even losers are winners. Many digital slot machines are based on a grid of symbols, where players can bet that a winning combination will come up on any number of vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines. Instead of placing a single bet for, say, $5, those machines spread that money over 50 bets, each for a dime. Chances are, some of those dimes are going to be winners, and the machine will give you positive reinforcement even if 49 of those bets didn\u2019t go your way. \u201cSo it\u2019s a net loss, but you get the audio-visual stimulation saying you won,\u201d says Sch\u00fcll. \u201cYour body always experiences it as a win.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tIt isn\u2019t surprising that rats, like humans, could be tricked into believing they\u2019d won games they\u2019d lost. Treating such a tendency with a drug, however, could be a fraught exercise. \u201cIt may be that all people, like all rats, have this tendency to interpret losses as wins in certain circumstances,\u201d says Sch\u00fcll. \u201cThen what do you do with that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Posted by:<\/strong> sevenout on March 6, 2014, 3:12 pm<\/p>\n \tWhat a mind f**k these machines do to the players. I’ll stick with VP.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Posted by:<\/strong> RFink13 on March 11, 2014, 1:11 am<\/p>\n Bloomberg Here\u2019s how scientists made a slot machine for rats: They added three flashing lights and a pair of levers to a sugar pellet dispenser. With all three lights illuminated, the rats \u201cwon\u201d and could press one lever for a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crapsclub.goldentouchserver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}