Vegas!

I spent a recent weekend in Las Vegas. That town always feels surreal, almost like anything can and probably does go. What seems most interesting to me is that people genuinely believe in fate and anthropomorphizing the casinos. It's really strange to me that otherwise intelligent people suddenly feel that the casino and even each slot machine are willing them to win or lose with each pull of the slots or roll of the dice. To me gambling is an entertainment. Without a well rehearsed strategy in the right game, the house will win in the long run.



We walked up and down the strip lots of times, so I had an opportunity to think about why the group I was with used luck to decide what casino we would visit. The first thing that I thought of was mere wishful thinking. Maybe they were just hoping to win, but I think they wouldn't have felt the need to debate the previous "luckiness" of the casino in current decisions. Maybe the size of the buildings causes some sort of reversion of their mental state to childlike levels, where the world is filled with magic and controlled by the Fates. I think it's a legitimate scenario, but I also think it's a symptom of a less educated populous.

Rather than taking the time to think about the probabilities of a game, most people seem to want to believe that the casino gods smile or frown on their weekend based on what cocktails they drink in which corner of a given casino. People don't want to be depressed by reality. They want to retreat to a mystical world far outside their control. It is odd to me that people demand free will, yet pretend to live in a world controlled by exterior forces with mysterious motives.