Yes they can be, and gambling is definitely a different psychological mechanism with different financial outcomes than hobbies or collecting.

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Ferret7446 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have heard that boating and aviation have similar financial financial outcomes to gambling. Keep in mind that the majority (way more than 50%) of people can engage with gambling safely, it is a minority that get into trouble

	▲	tavavex 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I have heard that boating and aviation have similar financial financial outcomes to gambling. But is that because you're betting at the repair shop to pull a mint condition replacement engine for your plane, or because people find a way in by paying a bearable upfront cost and then find themselves drowning in unexpected additional expenses associated with these hobbies far beyond the price of a boat or plane? To me it seems like the second one, so it's not a very useful comparison to gambling, it's just a lack of knowledge, foresight and financial literacy. The gambling industry keeps refining their strategies all the time, new technologies have been a godsend to them. So I wouldn't rely on statistics all too much, because their goal is to use all psychological tricks that can be exploited in our brains to make us make the wrong decision and head down that path. Their effectiveness increases, and so are the depths to which they can get people to sink in their addictions. If you can engage with it safely right now, that is no predictor of how you'll react to the state of gambling in 3, 5 or 10 years. It's like as if the alcohol industry was allowed to invent brand new drugs and sell them without any oversight, targeting maximum potency and addiction and constantly refining their formulations.

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pfisch 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

f2p games and tv shopping network addictions absolutely leave a significant number of people destitute.

There are many other hobbies/forms of entertainment that can easily consume significant resources and leave some % of their userbase in serious financial trouble/ruin their lives.

Also I'm not sure it is correct to define morality by trying to connect how expensive a hobby/form of entertainment to whether it is immoral.

	▲	intended 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not at all in comparison to gambling, and the F2P model is a scourge which gamers themselves pointed out was poisonous. Regulation has increasingly been catching up to it. We have an entire science built around gambling, and we know how to titrate the payoffs and reward schedules to get people increasingly addicted. Our movies/stories aren’t actively (yet) changing themselves to maximize their ability to keep you pressing coins into a slot, or when to string you along.