For that first finding, Alexander the Great was the exact same.
It seems to be a common occurrence of powerful men who make their mark on human history, whether evil or good. All seem to be mother’s boys and have a toxic relationship with their father or sometimes their father is not even in the picture (Marcus Aurelius being an example of the latter).
It’s weirdly ironic since it’s academically accepted and known that the absence of a good father/father figure in the home is very detrimental to boys but it seems like for a minority of boys, it fuels them with a rage/ambition to achieve greater heights.
I'm skeptical of the slot machines article. I know the author is quoting another work, but it seems uncritical of the claims being made. I have, in the past, heard many people say "the casinos are mazes! They are designed this way! They are hacking your BRAIN!" and then...the casinos move away from the maze design.
I suspect a lot of motivated cognition here. If you conclude slot machines are bad, or you observe gambling addiction, you might assume every single thing is being done to get that result. You back-fill the reasoning needed to support your conclusion.
The reality may be far less nefarious: casinos want their customers to have fun and be comfortable and many of the things that heighten fun and comfort will be correlated with addiction. Given the replication crisis in psychology and that the original claims seem to confuse the direction of causality and given my own experience as a game designer, I feel this article greatly overstates its claims.
I'm not defending slot machines. I think they are pretty bad, but I don't think every action of a casino is designed to manipulate the customer. I think they are designed to entertain the customer and that for some people, entertainments become vices.
FWIW, I make video games and I live in Las Vegas, so I may have some motivated cognition of my own leading me to be more light handed here than I should be.
Both LBJ and Nixon grew up poor and had fathers who were failures at business and both sons felt from a young age they needed to make up for those failures.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama grew up without present fathers, Clinton due to his father dying shortly before he was born in a car accident and Obama because his father left the family to go back to Kenya to enter politics. Clinton wound up saying later he felt he had to live a life big enough to encompass both his own potential and his father’s life potential that was cut short. Obama said later in his Dreams From My Father book that he envisioned an idealized version of his father in his mind which guided his life path.
For that first finding, Alexander the Great was the exact same.
It seems to be a common occurrence of powerful men who make their mark on human history, whether evil or good. All seem to be mother’s boys and have a toxic relationship with their father or sometimes their father is not even in the picture (Marcus Aurelius being an example of the latter).
It’s weirdly ironic since it’s academically accepted and known that the absence of a good father/father figure in the home is very detrimental to boys but it seems like for a minority of boys, it fuels them with a rage/ambition to achieve greater heights.
I feel like this is underexplored territory
Agreed. Lack of a good father figure may decrease the average outcome but increase variance even more, especially at the extremes.
I'm skeptical of the slot machines article. I know the author is quoting another work, but it seems uncritical of the claims being made. I have, in the past, heard many people say "the casinos are mazes! They are designed this way! They are hacking your BRAIN!" and then...the casinos move away from the maze design.
I suspect a lot of motivated cognition here. If you conclude slot machines are bad, or you observe gambling addiction, you might assume every single thing is being done to get that result. You back-fill the reasoning needed to support your conclusion.
The reality may be far less nefarious: casinos want their customers to have fun and be comfortable and many of the things that heighten fun and comfort will be correlated with addiction. Given the replication crisis in psychology and that the original claims seem to confuse the direction of causality and given my own experience as a game designer, I feel this article greatly overstates its claims.
I'm not defending slot machines. I think they are pretty bad, but I don't think every action of a casino is designed to manipulate the customer. I think they are designed to entertain the customer and that for some people, entertainments become vices.
FWIW, I make video games and I live in Las Vegas, so I may have some motivated cognition of my own leading me to be more light handed here than I should be.
Both LBJ and Nixon grew up poor and had fathers who were failures at business and both sons felt from a young age they needed to make up for those failures.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama grew up without present fathers, Clinton due to his father dying shortly before he was born in a car accident and Obama because his father left the family to go back to Kenya to enter politics. Clinton wound up saying later he felt he had to live a life big enough to encompass both his own potential and his father’s life potential that was cut short. Obama said later in his Dreams From My Father book that he envisioned an idealized version of his father in his mind which guided his life path.