You could shake your head with painful memories of large dollar amounts lost, and swear on a stack of Bibles that you're going to never again be foolish enough to engage in a shoot-out with the One-Armed Bandit, but who are you kidding? Maybe, content with just a little luck, you will be able to resist the call of the slot machine for a number of weeks, perhaps even a month or two. But you know damn well that you'll be back for a rematch eventually. You can't just let that Bandit win so conveniently, can you? No way.

It is just a machine, in the end, with a "brain" comprised of wires and microchips. You, on the flip side, are a living, breathing entity with the capacity for critical thinking and self-reflection. If humankind is to possess any hope at all in surviving the worldwide war against machines that surely will come some day, we would better at least be able to beat the slots.