Comment by n72 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by n72 | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but the tone seemed a bit over the top. E.g. I could have been something like "Given that you worked in a morally questionable field, does this weigh on your mind, and if not, why not?"

Some very random thoughts and (sorry to yell but I know someone is going to tell me how one of these doesn't justify things but...) NONE OF THESE ARE MEANT TO JUSTIFY ANYTHING:

1. I am just a dev and had never been to a casino in my life prior to developing the game. I just took the job since I wanted to go the high risk/hard reward route. I am fully cognizant of the "I was just the accountant at Auschwitz" counter argument. I just developed the thing and had fun, frustration, and huge amounts of stress learning about things like high concurrency and such.

2. I am guilty of compartmentalizing and avoid thinking about the effects.

3. I was under the understanding that for a a while at least we were cutting people off when they spent over a certain amount. I assume at some point we stopped doing this, but avoided asking when.

4. Due to political reasons, I was sidelined and didn't have any decision making clout. I was just a dev once we grew to a certain point.

5. I'm fairly far to the left politically, but found some of the more libertarian arguments persuasive in terms of adults are adults and should be able to smoke weed, drink beer, and play slots if they want to.

6. I tell myself that with the money earned, I can now do good things for the world and any projects I do from now on will be non-profitish. I have yet to do anything of the sort.

7. It was all very gradual. If an existing casino company had tried to hire me, I would likely have not worked for them. We started off with multiplayer games like Blackjack and Roulette and the focus was on social really more than casino. It's the kind of lobster boiling problem: Since it was so gradual, it was tough to see if/when a line was crossed.

8. Casino has a particularly bad reputation. Is working for J.P. Morgan any better? What about Starbucks, which has basically built their empire on a caffeine addiction?

You don't have anything to feel guilty about. Every company is out there to make money. None of us, individually, are as cruel as a group of people making a consensus decision.

My first job was writing code for a company that took advantage of poor and desperate people. I didn't see that for a few years. But, it was a good veneer -- help people who wanted to go to school to improve their lot in life. I genuinely thought I was doing something good.

But these for-profit schools ended up abusing government regulations and guarantees around student loans, which has largely led to the student loan crisis. However, I thought that I was buying stuff in my community, it bought my family a house and a reliable car, and we were paying a lot of taxes.

Every company has some variation on this. Starbucks has been great for coffee growers around the world and has exposed many people to boutique/single-origin coffee, but like you said, it's built on addiction. But any restaurant is doing the same -- they're doing whatever they can to bring you in and have you pay money for food. I mean, you have to eat, right? And restaurants are all about flavor and presentation and unique ingredients -- they're triggering your dopamine, which they hope will entice the diner to spend more money. Car salesmen are the same way -- everybody kinda needs a car, but they try to take advantage of our lack of information, and try to cover it with dopamine-based ideas: smooth leather, new car smell, perfect paintjob, fast car, get a bunch of chicks, people will really know you've done well in life, etc.

Everything in live is built on dopamine though -- it's why we do anything. To reduce it to dopamine trigger = bad for humanity is not fair.

Hi,

I didn't really expect an answer, so thank you for giving one anyway. From what you write, I get the impression that could be described as a "slippery slope" kind of situation, which I can understand. I don't know how I'd behave myself given those circumstances, although I'd of course like to think I'd resist somehow - but perhaps I'm fooling myself. And you are right that there are a lot of industries of questionable/negative moral worth out there (I listed a few of my picking in my previous comment, but you could add certain parts of banking/finance industry, tobacco industry and many others..)

I guess what amazes me is the number of people willing to sacrifice their limited time on this planet to actively work on stuff that is (if one is being honest with oneself) providing net negative value to society as a whole, making this world a shittier place for everyone. (Saying this as a relatively non-religious person).

This is a great answer, thanks! Of course I knew I was going to push some buttons and don't pretend to be a saint myself, but I thought many here would be interested in hearing what you had to say because as digital hackers we have the ability to operate in a somewhat unregulated space and face many moral and ethical dilemmas. BTW, I don't feel I was over-exaggerating the risks of untreated addictions - I encourage you to research it if you still feel that way. It is almost certain if the app was as popular as you say, and people used real money, that at least one person killed themselves or ruined their lives/families/careers by now.

Re: #8. I don't see casinos and drugs (including alcohol) going away any time soon, and attempting to stop them is misdirected in my opinion. The problem is that for a small proportion of the public (typically people with mental health issues) they end up being used as self-medication, often unknowingly, and can make bad situations worse - leading to financial ruin, families torn apart, suicide or overdose in the case of drugs. (JP Morgan & Starbucks don't have these properties.)

For that reason, in the meatspace, casinos are highly regulated and need to identify and protect vulnerable people. So yes - while your app is a substitute for a physical activity, in the physical world that person would have gone through many more hoops that would have allowed people to help them or notice their problem. In digital space, there is no such visibility and there are no regulations, which is why it becomes interesting to see what people do and say about what they do.

I absolutely agree that there should be more regulation online. My hope is that legislation just needs to be given time to catch up.

>Casino has a particularly bad reputation. Is working for J.P. Morgan any better? What about Starbucks, which has basically built their empire on a caffeine addiction?

Well, casinos make their money by financially immiserating their customers, while J.P. Morgan is almost directly the opposite - they want to make all their clients wealthier. And (some extreme individual cases perhaps excepted), nobody ever ruined their life because of "caffeine addiction" (a somewhat dubious concept).

That said, I do subscribe to the "live and let live" position on the matter, and I don't think people should be criticized for working for a gambling business (or tobacco, alcohol, freemium mobile games, or other businesses in the same realm).

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