5 ms·

Anyone sophisticated enough to understand this method would be very unlikely to play the lotto anyway.

kybernetikos 11y ago
I play lotteries when under some simple assumptions I believe the EV to be in my favour - usually when there have been many rollovers. Taking a MWI view, I consider it to be a way of transferring money to other universe versions of myself, and when you have a good EV, that represents a cheap inter-universe transfer rate.
monochromatic 11y ago
I dunno. The marginal utility of having a dollar (edit: apparently these tickets cost two dollars, but that doesn't change my answer) in my pocket is zero. Not near zero, but identically zero. My life differs not even a little bit based on whether I have that dollar or not. The expected value of a lottery ticket is small but nonzero.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Obviously a moot point - you can do what you want with your money, but I think your reasoning is flawed. According to some replies in this thread, there are 292 million combinations. If the Powerball is played once a week, then your expected wait time for picking the winning number is 5.6 million years. Now let's take a line of you and your heirs for the next 5.6 million years. To say that being short 2 dollars on something will not make a life changing difference in that time frame is naive. Anyone who has lived in poverty will be able to relate to this. In fact, I will challenge you even further. For many people on this planet $2 US would be the difference between eating today and not. Having $2 can help them decide to buy medicine for their ill child rather than food. Or a mosquito net that will save their life rather than food. You only think the marginal utility of having $2 is zero because you are so rich that you choose to discard your money without considering if there is something better you could do with it. Sure, it may not make a big difference to you, but the value is nonzero.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    Yes for someone in Africa that $2 pays for a day's meal or more. monochromatic's $2 is not ending up in Africa perhaps. Their $2 is going towards seeing Star Wars in the movie theater. They'll add it to another $17. (I am using a metaphore here, don't know gp personally this is just tongue-in-cheek). Or maybe monochromatic also likes playing the lottery. It gives him an immense rush buying the ticket and selecting numbers and then watching how they are picked. It is even better than Star Wars. So it makes sense to spend it on lottery just like they might spent it on movies. They get entertaintment value out of it. Lottery is based on giving people false hope and that bit of adrenaline rush. That short lived fantasy where they imagine what they'd do with the winnings. That costs $2. It is cheaper than a McDonalds' meal. People will pay a lot for hope, fantasy and dreams. Some can't control themselves and will spend the money on that instead of food for their children. But many won't either. A bit like booz. Some will become alcoholics and end up on street some will keep driking a beer with dinner for many years and be fine.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Your odds of winning are as close to zero as the marginal utility of that dollar is. If you enjoy playing, then great. Nothing says smart, sophisticated people can't enjoy gambling. But the justifications people use to rationalize buying tickets are pretty wacky. It's not a sensible choice. Doesn't matter if the expected value is positive, doesn't matter if you have a strategy for not sharing the jackpot. But if enjoy playing, that's all you need.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    That's my justification for occasionally playing the lottery. My utility of those $2 is that I get to daydream about fending off all the cousins that would come out of the woodwork were I to win; that's pretty good entertainment on the train ride home - arguably, at least equal to 1/10th of seeing an average movie, which would cost me $20.
protomyth 11y ago
I don't know about that. Office pools are kind of fun[1], and I'm not a big gambler since college where I played a bit of poker[2] and powerball scratches the itch. I don't think anyone with the money would actually buy millions of tickets. 1) although if you end up being the designated ticket buyer and buy 120 tickets without one number showing up on any of the quick pick picked tickets, you are going to take a lot of crap for a while. 2) I was good enough that it paid for pizza for a while though I never got into online or tournaments at the local casino.

I play lotteries when under some simple assumptions I believe the EV to be in my favour - usually when there have been many rollovers. Taking a MWI view, I consider it to be a way of transferring money to other universe versions of myself, and when you have a good EV, that represents a cheap inter-universe transfer rate.

monochromatic 11y ago

I dunno. The marginal utility of having a dollar (edit: apparently these tickets cost two dollars, but that doesn't change my answer) in my pocket is zero. Not near zero, but identically zero. My life differs not even a little bit based on whether I have that dollar or not. The expected value of a lottery ticket is small but nonzero.

mikekchar 11y ago
Obviously a moot point - you can do what you want with your money, but I think your reasoning is flawed. According to some replies in this thread, there are 292 million combinations. If the Powerball is played once a week, then your expected wait time for picking the winning number is 5.6 million years. Now let's take a line of you and your heirs for the next 5.6 million years. To say that being short 2 dollars on something will not make a life changing difference in that time frame is naive. Anyone who has lived in poverty will be able to relate to this. In fact, I will challenge you even further. For many people on this planet $2 US would be the difference between eating today and not. Having $2 can help them decide to buy medicine for their ill child rather than food. Or a mosquito net that will save their life rather than food. You only think the marginal utility of having $2 is zero because you are so rich that you choose to discard your money without considering if there is something better you could do with it. Sure, it may not make a big difference to you, but the value is nonzero.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Yes for someone in Africa that $2 pays for a day's meal or more. monochromatic's $2 is not ending up in Africa perhaps. Their $2 is going towards seeing Star Wars in the movie theater. They'll add it to another $17. (I am using a metaphore here, don't know gp personally this is just tongue-in-cheek). Or maybe monochromatic also likes playing the lottery. It gives him an immense rush buying the ticket and selecting numbers and then watching how they are picked. It is even better than Star Wars. So it makes sense to spend it on lottery just like they might spent it on movies. They get entertaintment value out of it. Lottery is based on giving people false hope and that bit of adrenaline rush. That short lived fantasy where they imagine what they'd do with the winnings. That costs $2. It is cheaper than a McDonalds' meal. People will pay a lot for hope, fantasy and dreams. Some can't control themselves and will spend the money on that instead of food for their children. But many won't either. A bit like booz. Some will become alcoholics and end up on street some will keep driking a beer with dinner for many years and be fine.
mikeash 11y ago
Your odds of winning are as close to zero as the marginal utility of that dollar is. If you enjoy playing, then great. Nothing says smart, sophisticated people can't enjoy gambling. But the justifications people use to rationalize buying tickets are pretty wacky. It's not a sensible choice. Doesn't matter if the expected value is positive, doesn't matter if you have a strategy for not sharing the jackpot. But if enjoy playing, that's all you need.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  That's my justification for occasionally playing the lottery. My utility of those $2 is that I get to daydream about fending off all the cousins that would come out of the woodwork were I to win; that's pretty good entertainment on the train ride home - arguably, at least equal to 1/10th of seeing an average movie, which would cost me $20.

protomyth 11y ago

I don't know about that. Office pools are kind of fun[1], and I'm not a big gambler since college where I played a bit of poker[2] and powerball scratches the itch. I don't think anyone with the money would actually buy millions of tickets. 1) although if you end up being the designated ticket buyer and buy 120 tickets without one number showing up on any of the quick pick picked tickets, you are going to take a lot of crap for a while. 2) I was good enough that it paid for pizza for a while though I never got into online or tournaments at the local casino.