[lunaru]

I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance.

Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope. Even the advertisements for the lotteries address this. The thing you're buying is 30 seconds of daydreaming so you can comfortably tackle the rest of the day.

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

I’m at the point where I take it as a red flag when someone doesn’t understand this, and instead bangs on about “low odds” and “the idiots that think that they’ll win”. A combination of superficial booksmarts, a misplaced sense of elitism, and a very real lack of emotional intelligence, that I know that I don’t enjoy being around. There’s definitely a low end on this bell curve, but I think that your average Joe Blow off the street has about as good an undemanding of the chances of winning the lottery as you or I. Which is to say that we’re all definitely flawed in our ability to intuitively comprehend very large numbers, but not uniquely so. It’s just nice to feel like something good might possibly be coming your way. It’s about hope, exactly as you say. I’m barely even an occasional gambler, including the lottery. The one or two times where I’ve bought a ticket, it was worth the $10 or whatever I paid, which I truly do not miss an iota and never have. It’s a game. Anyone who doesn’t get that is deranged.

[bryanrasmussen]

There's a difference between buying hope, and decreasing the quality of what you do have significantly for false hope.

The hope of winning the lottery is essentially false hope, but false hope is better than nothing, that's true.

But look at LatencyKills post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474645 if someone is buying 100s of dollars worth of lottery tickets that's a real problem, I'm sure you understand that with your mention of the $10 you spent, but you should consider the people who sneer and get upset about people buying lottery tickets might not be people who care much about 10 dollars but rather people who grew up with caregivers that spent all the money coming into the house on false hope.

[thephyber]

> There's a difference between buying hope, and decreasing the quality of what you do have significantly

You are making the same category error that the parent is talking about. It’s not a rational risk/reward calculation.

It’s more like a compulsion / addiction to the soothing / hopeful feeling that people feel for a few minutes when they think about the problems in their life that would be alleviated by winning.

Remember that the lottery is effectively the same game that used to be called “running numbers” when mob families ran it in the 20th century. The government though encouraging gambling addiction at the time was not worth the social costs. Now those costs are apparently the fault of the addict / family and not the government/ lottery contractor.

[bryanrasmussen]

And I feel you're making the same category error that I was responding to, that is to say it may not be a rational/risk reward calculation, but people who indulge in a small bit of irrationality are having fun and people who indulge in large bits of irrationality significantly damaging their already damaged finances have a problem.

>Remember that the lottery is effectively the same game

I believe running the numbers was guaranteed never to pay out significantly because it was rigged, the lottery is just statistically against you.

[thephyber]

> the lottery is just statistically against you

The lottery is not legal in all 50 states. IIRC Alabama still considers the lottery to be morally problematic, which is the same reason it was not legal during the “running numbers” days.

[lazyasciiart]

Or they might just be sneering because they are emotionally incompetent book-smart jerks, like my brother. He has absolutely no personal experience of financial hardship and doesn't believe there is any explanation except stupidity for someone spending $10 on lottery tickets before they've fully funded their 401k for the year.

[bryanrasmussen]

I believe that category was already handled by the comment I was responding to, which effectively said anyone who sneered at the lottery was like your brother without taking into account the subset of people I pointed to.

I'm not sure what percentage of people that talk about the lottery being a tax on stupidity do so because they have been personally traumatized by its effect on their family, or seen its effects on others, but I do believe it is the ones like your brother who seem to get most of the press.

[lazyasciiart]

It was - it sounded like your comment was arguing with the one you responded to, by suggesting that they are misidentifying the attitude of the people they are talking about.

[bryanrasmussen]

yeah I wasn't saying they are necessarily misidentifying the attitude of the people they are talking about, only they had it as a blanket identification of anyone saying negative things about buying lottery tickets as being uncaring jerks, so I wanted to point out there are probably also people in that group making the statement who have a more nuanced view.

[chairmansteve]

On cue, you demonstrate exactly what the previous poster was talking about. Every single HN user understands how the lottery works. I wish I knew an alternative word to "mansplaining".

[LatencyKills]

My brother left school after ninth grade and struggles financially — he can’t afford basic health insurance, yet he’ll spend $100 on lottery tickets whenever possible.

I understand the utility he’s purchasing: a temporary sense of hope. What concerns me is the implicit misunderstanding of probability. The difference in expected value between purchasing one ticket and fifty is statistically negligible. This isn’t about elitism — it’s simply about recognizing orders of magnitude and the arithmetic reality of vanishingly small odds.

[jstanley]

The difference in expected value between purchasing one ticket and fifty is 50x! Buying 50 tickets is 50x as bad as buying 1 ticket.

[regenschutz]

My uncle was for the longest of time a gambling addict, and would buy lottery tickets. It was disheartening seeing him ruin his life over this "hope".

I certainly don't doubt that my uncle also felt a strong sense of "hope" when he bought his lottery tickets, but for what differed a lot. My uncle would buy lottery tickets in the hope of regaining the amount of money that he had lost to gambling, while you probably buy them in the hope of having a significantly higher quality of life if you win. One is financially a very bad decision, the other is not (as bad).

Personally, I would never buy lottery tickets. Not because the chance of you winning is small, but because you're supporting a predatory system that attacks those that are the most vulnerable to gambling: those who've already lost large amounts of money. I hate the gambling industry and the damage it causes to regular people.

Luckily my uncle has stopped gambling, but the effects of when he was a gambler are still, sadly, visible.

[andrepd]

In all that rant you forget that there's a difference between paying 3$ to buy "hope" and excitement until next week's draw, and compulsively buying scratch cards with abysmal odds several times a day. The latter is a real problem and many jurisdictions around the world allow these predatory games to be sold and advertised everywhere.

[tekne]

I think there's something to be said for separating disdain for the person and disdain for the institution; unfortunately the latter is used as an excuse for the former.

But actually... there really are, IMO, better ways to "buy hope", or for that matter positive feelings, many of which actually have positive EV (even if not financially), and it is in my opinion a systemic flaw that we use well-known exploits in human psychology to take money from, statistically, the people who have the least.

[hypeatei]

There is a place for everyone. We need the elitist, number crunching nerds to remind us that it's bad odds and the gambler to show us that you can find enjoyment in the simple things.

[rpdillon]

All gambling is buying hope. The lottery has the worst gambling odds I've ever heard of, so I don't understand why we're defending it.

[Loeffelmann]

It's mainly about showing how low the odds actually are. I think everyone understands they are low but it's ridiculous how low exactly.

[andrerpena]

I think: 1) Like you said, people are buying hope. 2) People cannot fathom this degree of improbability. So, the fact that it's at least possible overrides the near-impossibility of it. 3) There is some aspect of entertainment and social-interaction to it. It's a bit like watching sports. Who you're cheering for is irrelevant, and whoever wins doesn't change your life in any way, but still, we watch it.

[strken]

The social aspect is real. The only time I've seen anyone in my family buy a lottery ticket was when one of the jackpots got big enough to become headline news. Mum bought a ticket just to be able to talk about it (and had a chat to us about probability and gambling).

[anonzzzies]

I know people in the neighbourhood/street I was born, who still live there (well over 50 years in the same house) who bought the postcode lottery tickets since forever, 12x a year, never won anything; this year it fell in the adjacent area code... It must hurt.

[dostick]

What does it mean - adjacent area code? They can’t play anymore?

[Z0rp]

It means they nearly won but sadly didn't. So close yet soo far away.

[Scarblac]

In the Dutch postcode lottery, they draw a random postcode (roughly a street) and everyone that lives there and has a ticket wins. The wider area code (village level) win smaller prizes.

People get FOMO - what if my neighbors become millionaires but I didn't have a ticket?

And in this case, some code very close to theirs won. It makes it seem you missed out by a tiny margin.

[lostlogin]

Seems a clever marketing tactic to rope in more people.

How do you confirm address? ‘I moved home to my parents last week’ etc.

[lazyasciiart]

You have to buy a ticket - presumably you have to commit to an address somehow at that point, so people can only buy for one postcode even if they're lying. Unless there's a skewed outcome that shouldn't really matter. (And if there is a skewed outcome...the people who'd bought the winning postcode and didn't have a house on that street would be under heavy scrutiny!)

[anonzzzies]

Apparently, at least in NL, you can buy for different postcodes even though most do not.

[latexr]

> At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance.

Not really true. If you have more money you can buy more tickets which leads to higher—or even certain—odds.

https://www.iflscience.com/how-a-man-won-the-lottery-14-time...

[thaumasiotes]

> If you have more money you can buy more tickets which leads to higher—or even certain—odds.

I don't think there are any lotteries with that feature. You can guarantee that you win, but you still won't have certain odds because the payout isn't guaranteed.

[latexr]

> I don't think there are any lotteries with that feature.

It’s in the link I posted.

[thaumasiotes]

Did you try reading the only other sentence in my comment?

[latexr]

No need to get upset. I replied earnestly, I thought you might’ve skipped it.

The point I was making is that with more money you increase your chances to win. The fact that you may have to split the winnings isn’t relevant, you still won. I was explicitly responding to the “the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance” remark.

[thaumasiotes]

> I replied earnestly, I thought you might’ve skipped it.

So... you didn't read the second sentence of my two-sentence comment? Or do you have some theory where "you can guarantee that you win" means it isn't possible to guarantee that you win?

> The point I was making is that with more money you increase your chances to win. The fact that you may have to split the winnings isn’t relevant, you still won.

And here, you're still wrong. You can guarantee that you "win" the lottery instead of "losing" it. But if you're going to be buying seven million lottery tickets, it matters quite a lot whether you end up buying seven million tickets at a dollar each and making $1.05 per, or buying seven million tickets at a dollar each and making $0.52 per or $0.35 per. Collecting a jackpot by losing five million dollars is not a "win" in any sense that's not internal to a lottery department, including the sense of people who like daydreaming about winning the lottery.

> I was explicitly responding to the “the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance” remark.

Note that everyone also has the same chance of buying out the lottery at a profit - it's not necessary to buy those tickets out of pocket, because you can do it with investor backing. The story in your link is the story of someone who bought out a lottery with investor backing. He's not alone; other people also buy out lotteries using money they didn't provide. This is one of the easiest investor pitches you can give.

[dangus]

Another aspect is that in many states, a large portion of the lottery goes directly into public good programs like education: https://www.powerball.net/distribution-of-revenue

All the players know that the odds are horrible, but in the end someone does win.

[Retric]

Money is fungible, every penny going from the lottery to X is a penny not taken from the general fund.

Thus specific funds for X is only meaningful as a minimum funding amount.

[dangus]

This is technically true, but the end result is that if you abolish the lottery (unpopular) you have to raise taxes (even more unpopular) to replace lost revenue.

Sin taxes work so well at plugging funding gaps specifically because they are optional.

[Retric]

That and they are taxing the poor and under educated who are least likely to complain.

Making things explicit such as stamping a “45% Tax” on lottery tickets really changes people’s perception. The Trump administration almost flipped out when Amazon considered explicitly adding tariffs to people’s checkout.

[koolba]

> The Trump administration almost flipped out when Amazon considered explicitly adding tariffs to people’s checkout.

I wish they called their bluff and did it as it’d force Amazon to show the country of manufacture.

[selcuka]

> it’d force Amazon to show the country of manufacture

I don't think many people would care.

[Waterluvian]

And they would also have to believe that their education system in its current form would have been even worse without the lottery.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

30 seconds? I can daydream in bed for an hour for nothing.

[3RTB297]

I've always assumed this was correct in a way.

Humans do a poor job estimating extreme odds. 0% chance or 100% of a high risk/reward event. How many people in rural areas are prepping for a Carrington Event-sized solar flare or nuclear war, but a car accident or cancer diagnosis and resulting medical bills would sooner and statistically more likely to ruin their lives? Many. They see the small chance of survival as being high reward, with low risk.

Likewise, the lure of a 100% chance of life-changing material wealth that takes the low risk of $2 fits the same mold.

[stavros]

Sure, I'll grant you that. But then explain this: Why is it that, whenever I tell people who are about to play the lottery, to pick the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they say "that's crazy, the numbers will never come out in a row like that"?

Until someone says "you know what, what the hell, that's as good a pick as any", I'm going to go with "they don't know how small the odds are".

[staindk]

If 1 through 6 are drawn you'd probably have to share your winnings with many more people than most other combinations.

[stavros]

Given how much people are avoiding 1 through 6, I think you'd probably be better off picking that.

[retsibsi]

This is interesting but IMO it's very likely to be chosen more often than average.

If you choose a random number, then for each other player your chance of picking the same numbers as them is the same as your chance of winning: in the case of Powerball, 1 in 292,201,338 = 0.0000000034. If you instead non-randomly choose 123456, then for each player that actively avoids 123456 your chance of picking the same numbers as them only decreases by 0.0000000034 (from 0.0000000034 to 0). But for each player that actively chooses 123456, your chance of picking the same numbers as them increases by 0.9999999966 (from 0.0000000034 to 1).

We could model this more precisely by looking at the other players' choices as semi-random with some combinations weighted higher and some lower, but you see my point: even if lots of people are repelled by 'obvious' sequences like 123456, this can be outweighed by a very small number being attracted to them.

[stavros]

I do see your point, but I doubt this probability analysis was done by the people who say "what? The numbers will never be drawn in a sequence like that". It's not that they want to avoid common numbers.

[retsibsi]

Agreed! I don't think it undermines your original point, and IMO the linked site could do some good by giving people a better intuitive sense of just how low the odds are.

[Breza]

I spend about $10/year on scratchers since I like the causes they support. But most of the volume that I see being bought at the corner store down the street comes from folks who really don't appear to understand the odds.

[wildzzz]

I rarely play Powerball Mega millions but when I do, it's fun thinking about how you'd spend (and protect) your winnings. "First I'll pay off that old debt, then I'll buy a new car, then I'll buy that cute house I've been driving past everyday. Then I'll call my boss and tell him to suck a fat one".

[chairmansteve]

Very well said.

The lottery used to be a guage of my level of hopelessness. If I was feeling hopeless I would buy a ticket.

Luckily I haven't bought a ticket for years.

I used to buy one every week.

[p1dda]

The odds are really small but so are the cost of playing

[ozim]

Problem is there are people who buy tickets for each and every draw for years.

That amounts for not so trivial amount of money - would be much better for them if they put it in savings account or basically anything else.

[yieldcrv]

My thoughts are that I’m not poor enough for buying lottery tickets to be a tax on me

People chase the jackpots but there are multiple $1,000,000 winners every drawing, 2-3 times a week

At the end of the day, gotta be in the game to win it