[2011-Dec-04]

Blame Quintushalls for this.

Moderators: NeatNit, Kimra

User avatar
smiley_cow
polite but murderous
Posts: 6508
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:15 pm
Location: The vast and desolate prairies

Re: 2011 Dec 4

Post by smiley_cow »

Ah, OK, that makes more sense. In skimming the thread the argument seemed to come out of nowhere.
DonRetrasado wrote:Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Bitcoin.

Mr. Coffee

Re: 2011 Dec 4

Post by Mr. Coffee »

msg wrote:While the expected value may be negative it doesn't mean that purchasing a lottery ticket is not rational.

As an extreme example suppose you need $1,000,000 to pay off the mob otherwise they come and kill you. If you don't buy the ticket you're going to die where as if you do buy the ticket you might not. More generally it's naive to suggest that the value of money to an individual is a linear function.
Why not cut out the middleman and have someone threaten to kill you if you don't purchase a ticket?

There is a threshold, probably before you hit the million, where you can leverage the money to evade the mob. Whatever money you could spend on lottery tickets would give a much better return spent trying to either hide or move out of reach. Granted a few dollars wouldn't do much, but anything is more useful weighed against the absurdly low chance of winning the lottery. Point is, the scenario needs to be absolute for the purchase to be practical and reality is never such.

Post Reply