[ff317]

That's kind of how I look at it, in practice. I get the mathematical reality that buying lotto tickets is a financial waste. However, if I never buy a single ticket, there is a definite 0% chance I'll ever win the big prize. Whereas if I play at all, at least there's a chance, however remote, of a quite life-changing positive event happening. So, therefore, it makes sense to put a very small amount of totally throw-away income into big-prize lotto tickets, just so you're in the game at all.

Based on this kind of thinking, my personal rules are: never spend more than 0.1% of take-home pay per time-period buying tickets, and only buy big-prize lotto tickets that have potentially-life-changing payouts.

[seagullriffic]

This is almost exactly how I think about it too - a good repeatable mental model is "infinite upside / near-zero downside".

These massively asymmetric choices occur elsewhere in life, e.g. "asking them out on a date"; "asking for a raise", and are good to look out for.

[cwillu]

Dunno, seems wild to compare positive-but-still-unlikely ev things with straight up negative ev things like gambling.

[avidiax]

There's a near-zero possibility that the next potato chip in the bag has been laced with cyanide. But if you never eat any potato chips, there's a definite 0% chance that you'll die of cyanide-laced potato chips.

This kind of thinking never holds up when it's a small chance of a horrible outcome.

[ryanjshaw]

How many potato chip killers have there been?

How many lottery winners?

[lupire]

More people have died from toxic food than won the jackpot.

[krisoft]

> However, if I never buy a single ticket, there is a definite 0% chance I'll ever win the big prize.

I'm not sure about that. There is some chance of someone random buying a ticket and gifting it to you and then that ticket winning. Not a big chance. But it is not 0.