Lan D. Ho!
"At least I know now how not to impress you." //
I Came to Game
October 07, 2011
The price of hope:Is it stupid for a poor person to buy lottery tickets? Maybe not. You don't just buy a chance at a big prize. You buy a thrill, a hope, or a fantasy. One consequence of buying a lottery ticket is having an agreeable fantasy. The poorer you are, the more you may need such fantasies just to carry on. You could say that such fantasies are "worth more" to the poor person than to someone with a comfortable job and good prospects. So maybe it is not so stupid to buy a lottery ticket with little chance of winning.
Suppose you are very poor and, unlike most university students, have no prospects of a comfortable life. You value having some hope in your life at $2.50. Then a $1 lottery ticket is a bargain. The expected value of of buying a ticket (on this assumption) is +$1.95.
Thus, contrary to what many more prosperous people say, it is not obviously irrational for poor people to spend some of their not-so-spare cash in a kind of voluntary taxation. But it is a miserable world, where that is the only way that many people can put a little hope into their lives. (Ian Hacking, An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic, 90)
