Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

lotteryeverysecond.lffl.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 156 posts

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#101

Post by hdgvhicv »

architectonic wrote: post #70
noman-land wrote: post #26

I think it would be interesting to have a version where the chosen numbers were the same every time. We all know the odds won't change but there are countless people who play the lottery this way. They have "their" numbers and they never deviate for fear that if they do, that's when "their" numbers would pop up and they'd miss out on the win.

Yes and another that uses a fixed ridiculous combination like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. This is my favorite way for bringing the odds nearer to mind.

When the U.K. lottery launched you picked 6 from 49.

The prizes were shared amongst everyone

If the prize pot was say £10m, 4 winners would get £2.5m each.

I suspect that the hunebr of people choosing 123456 would be far higher than choosing 6 random numbers. Thus in the event your numbers did come up, you would get far less winning than someone who had the same odds but chose say 13 22 32 35 40 42

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#102

Post by bryanrasmussen »

thephyber wrote: post #98
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between buying hope, and decreasing the quality of what you do have significantly for false hope. The hope of winning the lottery is essentially false hope, but false hope is better than nothing, that's true. But look at LatencyKills post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474645 if someone is buying 100s of dollars worth of lottery tickets that's a real problem, I'm sure you understand that…

> There's a difference between buying hope, and decreasing the quality of what you do have significantly You are making the same category error that the parent is talking about. It’s not a rational risk/reward calculation. It’s more like a compulsion / addiction to the soothing / hopeful feeling that people feel for a few minutes when they think about the problems in their life that would be alleviated by winning. Re…

And I feel you're making the same category error that I was responding to, that is to say it may not be a rational/risk reward calculation, but people who indulge in a small bit of irrationality are having fun and people who indulge in large bits of irrationality significantly damaging their already damaged finances have a problem.

>Remember that the lottery is effectively the same game

I believe running the numbers was guaranteed never to pay out significantly because it was rigged, the lottery is just statistically against you.

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#103

Post by bryanrasmussen »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #94
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between buying hope, and decreasing the quality of what you do have significantly for false hope. The hope of winning the lottery is essentially false hope, but false hope is better than nothing, that's true. But look at LatencyKills post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474645 if someone is buying 100s of dollars worth of lottery tickets that's a real problem, I'm sure you understand that…

Or they might just be sneering because they are emotionally incompetent book-smart jerks, like my brother. He has absolutely no personal experience of financial hardship and doesn't believe there is any explanation except stupidity for someone spending $10 on lottery tickets before they've fully funded their 401k for the year.

I believe that category was already handled by the comment I was responding to, which effectively said anyone who sneered at the lottery was like your brother without taking into account the subset of people I pointed to.

I'm not sure what percentage of people that talk about the lottery being a tax on stupidity do so because they have been personally traumatized by its effect on their family, or seen its effects on others, but I do believe it is the ones like your brother who seem to get most of the press.

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#104

Post by latexr »

lunaru wrote: post #2

I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance. Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope.…

> At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance.

Not really true. If you have more money you can buy more tickets which leads to higher—or even certain—odds.

https://www.iflscience.com/how-a-man-won-the-lottery-14-time...

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#105

Post by andrepd »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #78
lunaru wrote: post #2

I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance. Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope.…

I’m at the point where I take it as a red flag when someone doesn’t understand this, and instead bangs on about “low odds” and “the idiots that think that they’ll win”. A combination of superficial booksmarts, a misplaced sense of elitism, and a very real lack of emotional intelligence, that I know that I don’t enjoy being around. There’s definitely a low end on this bell curve, but I think that your average Joe Blow…

In all that rant you forget that there's a difference between paying 3$ to buy "hope" and excitement until next week's draw, and compulsively buying scratch cards with abysmal odds several times a day. The latter is a real problem and many jurisdictions around the world allow these predatory games to be sold and advertised everywhere.

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#108

Post by KellyCriterion »

omani wrote: post #92
pflenker wrote: post #59

A teacher of mine used to say: Lottery is a tax for people who don’t understand statistics.

you probably mean "stochastics".

I would translate to: "from a stochastic perspective one can win - from a statistic perspective, its very unlikely"

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#109

Post by latexr »

happymellon wrote: post #66
_mitterpach wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t the dreaming be done even without betting? This feels like an excuse to me to be completely honest. I’ve personally had thoughts about what I would do if I were millionaire, and given the amount of stories of people coming into a large sums of money and their life getting significantly worse, I’d prefer to actually not win it.

> Couldn’t the dreaming be done even without betting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... Presumably its easier to dream when there is an unpredictable outcome, rather than knowing you have to wake up tomorrow to spend the day driving around and pissing in bottles. An outside force that could change circumstances is a better feeling than knowing that really isn't any way of changing your c…

That law, as per its name, applies to headlines in publications, not literally every question. Otherwise the answer to everything would be “no”.

> Presumably its easier to dream when there is an unpredictable outcome

Anecdotally, I know almost no one who plays the lottery, but almost everyone at some point has shared an “if I won the lottery” dream. Playing isn’t a prerequisite. It’s not too different from dreaming of becoming a rockstar when you can’t even play an instrument. Most of us have some version of that, no money necessary.

Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

#110

Post by [deleted] »

lunaru wrote: post #2

I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance. Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope.…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN