I think very analytically the majority of the time, even when I'm not programming. When I saw this lottery in the headlines and in friends' Facebook posts, the

I think very analytically the majority of the time, even when I'm not programming. When I saw this lottery in the headlines and in friends' Facebook posts, the first thing I did was break out a calculator and figure all the relevant statistics of interest to me, not because I thought it might be worth it, but just to see exactly, numerically, how ridiculous the mass-attention to this lottery was. I suspect a lot of the HN community think like this. Most people absolutely do not think this way. The thinking of the average person is more social, more concerned with ritual, more qualitative, and less quantitative. Their friends are talking about it, the number is big, people are going in on ticket pools together, they fantasize, and some of the affect of that fantasizing transfers to their goal-seeking behavior. Not fully appreciating that they can refer to solid math on this, they adapt their attitude and expectations to the cues of those around them.