The urge to play the lottery is a very normal cognitive bias. I know it has a negative expected return, but I do feel drawn to play it when the prize gets very

The urge to play the lottery is a very normal cognitive bias. I know it has a negative expected return, but I do feel drawn to play it when the prize gets very large. The actual reason I didn't participate is that my aversion to waiting in line is even stronger than my urge to buy a ticket. Dan Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is good reading for anyone who thinks that only stupid people feel the urge to play the lottery. It's more subtle than that, and worth understanding because these biases affect all of us in many important decisions. Note that the lottery has about the same expected return as insurance (around 50% I think), and I've always bought insurance for risks I don't want to cover personally. Is overpaying to cover downside risks "smart" but overpaying for big upsides "stupid"? I don't have an opinion either way. If I consider the question, I can't tell if my own opinion would be more informed by my knowledge of psychology and statistics, or by my attitudes about prudence and waste.