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Front pages:2008April and May, 2008
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There are no ghosts in slot machines: The importance of critical thinking in preventing and treating gambling addictionby Hal Brown, LICSW, Clinical social worker and psychotherapist* 7/3/08 I don't know how many gamblers are superstitious, but I presume that like most people they may have a number of beliefs that don't stand up to rigorous scientific analysis and some of them may be an aspect of their gambling behavior. Many gamblers game of choice, though hardly a game since there's no skill involved, is the slot machine. Slots, like roulette, is a pure game of chance. If you win, you're simply lucky. Unlike other casino games where a certain degree of skill or knowledge of the game, blackjack for example, can increase your odds, winning is a random event. Is there harm if you want to suspend dispassionate critical analysis for the sake of entertainment and, say carry a good luck charm or concoct a system involving which slot machines you play or what numbers you bet in roulette? I suggest that there is a potential for harm if you truly believe that you can effect random outcomes in any way, shape or form. Potential does not mean certainty, and for the large majority who will never come close to having a problem with gambling it doesn't matter when they believe they can cajole Lady Luck to smile on them through some mechanism that defies reason. It is important in the prevention of pathological gambling to educate people about statistics and how the odds are always against the player in a casino's games of chance. This requires that one learn and accept the basic tenets of critical thinking and apply them to gambling. There are numerous definitions of critical thinks online. For example, this from the Foundation for Critical Thinking:
Prevention of gambling addiction is crucial because once one becomes a gambling addict treatment is difficult and time consuming, and sometimes come only after the patient's life, and that of their family, has been disrupted or harmed. Treatment itself usually is cognitive-behavior therapy often combined with a self-help group like Gamblers Anonymous. In therapy the gambler has to learn to apply his or her cognition to changing his behavior. Successful therapy involves challenging and giving up irrational self-destructive beliefs. In therapy the patient must learn to accept that in casinos, in the rare instances when the house doesn't come out ahead it is a result of pure blind luck for the patron. How does this have to do with ghosts and slot machines? Recently some residents in Middleboro have been having a good time following the interest in paranormal investigations of Town Hall where some have claimed there are ghosts which can be discerned in photographs, audio recordings, and measurement of temperatures. While this seems to be an innocent pastime, I think it demonstrates how easy it has been for some intelligent people to suspend not only disbelief, but their own ability to think critically. Not one Middleboro school teacher, let alone a science teacher, has protested in public that there are lessons to be learned from taking an analytic position when thinking about paranormal phenomena. Indeed, a series of classroom exercises could be designed around using critical thinking skills to evaluate the paranormal investigations of the Town Hall. An excellent article from The Skeptic's Dictionary, Using ghost stories to teach critical thinking is a good starting point because it challenges the very techniques (in the last five or six paragraphs) used by the Middleboro ghost hunters with reason and with cold, hard science. The same aspects of critical thinking used to debunk paranormal investigators can be applied to debunking myths about being able to influence the outcome of devices where results are randomly determined. In fact, there is an overlap of sorts between belief in the paranormal and belief that you can influence a slot machine or roulette wheel. If you believe in telekinesis, that is, being able to influence objects with your mind, you can apply that belief to these games, certainly the spinning roulette wheel and the marble, but also the innards of the random number generator in the slot computer. Of course, you'd have to suspend your ability to think critically since nobody has been able to prove telekinesis in the laboratory. If they did they'd probably win a Nobel Prize, as would anybody who could demonstrate conclusively that they proved the existence of ghosts whether in a slot machine or a haunted town hall. The author is in the private practice of psychotherapy. He is not a specialist in addiction. He was a fan of the Twilight Zone as a child, never missed an episode of The X Files, enjoys a good Stephen King yarn and can easily suspend his own skepticism to immerse himself in Harry Potter's world.
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It's real. It's serious. But because Middleboro almost certain to host a resort that is also a major casino, we should learn the basics about this psychiatric disorder.
