[Retric]

Odds of winning are rather meaningless for negative sum games, you’re going to lose anyway. While I find most forms of gambling rather boring, if you like the experience it’s little different than spending 50$ at an arcade.

My game of choice is the big state lottery and it’s simply for the fun mental space of the possibility of winning, actually checking your ticket is kind of depressing because the odds are so low. But look at it as paying for the experience of the possibility of a jackpot and realize when you buy one ticket or multiple so just buy one and it becomes a cheap thrill.

[xhkkffbf]

I have one friend who likes to gamble. I've tried the old math argument with him and he dismisses it out-of-hand. He says that, yes, he knows it's a negative sum game but sometimes he wins and that makes it worth it. Then he says, "You spend money on a symphony or an art museum or an expensive restaurant, right? Those are guaranteed to leave you a little bit poorer at the end of the night. Same thing as gambling, but with a bigger guarantee."

And I didn't have a response.

[seanhunter]

Hear me out: Whenever people try the "math argument" on a gambler they are basically wrong and are misunderstanding how recreational gamblers actually think, which is not irrational (for the most part) or at least not irrational in the way people think on the surface.

Take the lottery: The classic "math objection" is to explain to the person that the expectation[1] of buying tickets in a lottery is negative so over time they will (on average) lose money.

Most people who gamble know this. The thing is they are not trying to maximise expectation. They are trying to maximise "expected marginal utility"[2]. They know that the dollar they spend on the ticket affects their life far less than the payoff would in the unlikely event they get it. Because the marginal utility of -$1 is basically nothing (it wouldn't change their life much at all to lose a dollar) versus winning say $10mil would completely change the life of most people and therefore the marginal utility of +10mil is much more than 10mil times greater than the marginal utility lost by spending a dollar on the ticket.

It is fundamentally this difference that the gambling companies are arbitraging. And for people who become addicted to gambling it is like any other addiction. The companies are just exploiting people who have a disease and are ruining their lives for profit. There are studies which show that addicted gamblers don't actually get the dopamine hit from winning, they get it from anticipating the win (ie the spin). So actually winning or losing just keeps them wanting to come back for another hit.

[1] Ie the average payoff weighted by probability

[2] Ie the average difference in utility weighted by probability. This could be seen as how much of a difference the payoff would make to their life.

[GuB-42]

All people who go to casinos are not pathological gamblers.

They have some disposable income, and spend it at the casino for a bit of fun. Sometimes, they come out richer, and they are happy, sometimes, they lose, they come out a bit disappointed, but that's the cost of of entertainment.

[temp84858696945]

Some fraction of people that start out that way end up addicted and spending way more money on gambling then they should.

[matwood]

Gambling can be entertainment, and as long as it's viewed as consumption it's fine IMO. I enjoy playing craps whenever I'm in a casino, and have great memories with friends playing the ups and downs of the table.

[temp84858696945]

The response is probably that gambling is designed to be as addictive as possible, and while your friend might think they will not get addicted, is it really a good risk to take?

[urikaduri]

Well, you can win the big state lottery if you really khow what you're doing. But you might need to hide in a remote island if you win too much. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/how-to-win...

[frumplestlatz]

How is this not degenerate?

You know you’re going to lose.

You know the money is wasted.

You do it anyway — and knowingly just pretend those first two facts aren’t true.

Then you lose your money. Which you knew was going to happen.

[Retric]

Go to a movie and you are going to be put the ticket prices, it’s a money losing proposition clearly there’s no reason to do so. Obviously, people place value on some experiences so any argument which fails to consider that is flawed.

If you happen to be at a casino, make exactly one bet in your lifetime and there’s a significant chance you’ll end up ahead. On average you’ll be out money but we don’t live out every possibility and average them. It’s just one event and you could easily end up ahead, it’s only as you repeat it with minimal gains and negative returns that things quickly become a near certainty.

With Powerball the odds are low but not astronomical that you buy 1 or 1000 tickets and end up ahead. It’s the most likely outcome by a massive margin but due to non jackpot prizes a long way from zero.

However again the odds of breakeven just reduce the cost of play they aren’t the only thing people get for their money.

[MaxfordAndSons]

If they're actual flips, you don't know you're going to lose? You know your EV is 0. As others have noted, in the hierarchy of gambling a truly 0 EV game is fairly high up in the rankings if you're looking for less harm.

[bryan_w]

How would you define degenerate?

[bee_rider]

I don’t play the lottery but I’ve never really understood the math against it. It’s a negative expected value, sure, but it also produces a (small) probability of a high return. The math against it seems to hinge on the idea that people should maximize the expected value of their wealth.

But, an alternative goal is to maximize your probability of qualitative changes up, and minimize the probability of qualitative changes down, for your living conditions. If somebody is in a situation where they can spend a qualitatively inconsequential amount of money on lotteries, then playing the lottery is a rational way of maximizing this metric, right?

Of course, it does add the hard-to-quantify risk that they’ll become addicted to gambling and start spending a qualitatively meaningful amount of money gambling!

OTOH if we as a society all started putting a small percentage of our wealth toward the lottery we’re essentially misallocating whatever that percentage was. So it produces a somehow less efficient economy I guess. So maybe there’s a social bias against it.

[moregrist]

> if you like the experience it’s little different than spending 50$ at an arcade.

If you spend $50 at the arcade you usually develop a little more skill at the game. Depending on the game and player.

$50 at a slot machine develops no skill. At best you’ve broke even or made a little money. At worst, it just feeds an addiction. But there’s no skill here; the odds of any outcome are fixed regardless of what the player does.

[Projectiboga]

Two or more tickets in the same draw have a lower expected value. Yes it is a very small change to your payout while having an extra chance. In some way you're betting against your self with a second bet in the game relative to the jackpot .

[eloisant]

Unless you do insider trading, which can be pretty easy on prediction markets depending on your job...