Lottery is needed, as it finances time travel.
Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
91–100 of 156 posts
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#92A teacher of mine used to say: Lottery is a tax for people who don’t understand statistics.
you probably mean "stochastics".
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#93I 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…
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 with your mention of the $10 you spent, but you should consider the people who sneer and get upset about people buying lottery tickets might not be people who care much about 10 dollars but rather people who grew up with caregivers that spent all the money coming into the house on false hope.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the Dutch postcode lottery, they draw a random postcode (roughly a street) and everyone that lives there and has a ticket wins. The wider area code (village level) win smaller prizes. People get FOMO - what if my neighbors become millionaires but I didn't have a ticket? And in this case, some code very close to theirs won. It makes it seem you missed out by a tiny margin.
Seems a clever marketing tactic to rope in more people. How do you confirm address? ‘I moved home to my parents last week’ etc.
You have to buy a ticket - presumably you have to commit to an address somehow at that point, so people can only buy for one postcode even if they're lying. Unless there's a skewed outcome that shouldn't really matter. (And if there is a skewed outcome...the people who'd bought the winning postcode and didn't have a house on that street would be under heavy scrutiny!)
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#96The fact that someone actually wins the lottery is what’s surprising.
For me, it makes me realize how incredibly large human populations are.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
My brother left school after ninth grade and struggles financially — he can’t afford basic health insurance, yet he’ll spend $100 on lottery tickets whenever possible. I understand the utility he’s purchasing: a temporary sense of hope. What concerns me is the implicit misunderstanding of probability. The difference in expected value between purchasing one ticket and fifty is statistically negligible. This isn’t abou…
The difference in expected value between purchasing one ticket and fifty is 50x! Buying 50 tickets is 50x as bad as buying 1 ticket.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Remember that the lottery is effectively the same game that used to be called “running numbers” when mob families ran it in the 20th century. The government though encouraging gambling addiction at the time was not worth the social costs. Now those costs are apparently the fault of the addict / family and not the government/ lottery contractor.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#99Cool website - but it made me just go play the lotto. Here's hoping I win a million at 2pm GMT
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#100I 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…
There is a place for everyone. We need the elitist, number crunching nerds to remind us that it's bad odds and the gambler to show us that you can find enjoyment in the simple things.