That is also part of the thing that bugs me, "plausiblity" seems to be working by very weird mechanisms here.

In addition to that, you'd think that "I have bought a lottery ticket, so I *could* win the lottery" and "I have money in my wallet and the ability to go to places where they sell lottery tickets, so I *could* buy one and subsequently win" are approximately equally plausible scenarios, with almost all the improbability concentrated in the "win" step. Yet apparently people feel the need to complete the "buying" step before they can talk about the plausibility giving them license to fantasise. So obviously there's something going on that isn't really about how objectively likely winning is.