Gambling addiction may stem from intrinsic surprise rewards overriding negative expected value.

Evidence

Gambling addiction may be an overtaking of extrinsic reward (the house always wins, after all) by intrinsic reward. Random events are always at least slightly surprising, even when their probabilities are well understood (as with a fair coin, for instance). — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 909

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to chapter 4’s dopamine and prediction-error material, and reframes addiction as a surfeit of curiosity rather than a lack of will. — connects to: A curiosity-driven agent can become addicted to novelty like media — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 905; Dopamine encodes errors in expectation, not reward or surprise itself — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 585; Rewarded actions get stamped in and repeated while punished ones fade — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 538 (+3 more)
• SEED: Strong explanatory candidate for the real-world presence of gambling addiction; article angle on addiction as curiosity pathology.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 909