Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The likelihood of the two events isn't at all similar. 1e-9 and 1e-100 should both round to 0. and since people spend all sorts of time imagining things with likelihood _0_ (or downright counterfactual!), 1e-100 should be plenty to get you rolling. > How often do you find discarded tickets for future drawings on the street?? you're already fantasizing a wildly improbable chains of events (buy ticket, win max amount…
It sounds like you fundamentally just don't understand the psychology of people who buy lottery tickets. That's fine, then don't buy them yourself, but it makes no sense to argue against other people's actual experienced feelings and thoughts. You can't use logic to "win" this.
and yet here you are, producing justifications about how your fantasy has to have particular levels of believability, instead of just saying "i like doing it".