(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

Playing the lottery gives you the ability to pleasantly fantasize about what you would do with the winnings, whereas not playing the lottery removes all plausibility from these fantasies.

I keep hearing this argument and finding it extremely puzzling. Presumably people can entertain the hypothetical of having won the lottery regardless of having purchased a ticket, so is this in some fundamental way a different thing than fantasising about it, or is it that attempting the fantasy without the plausibility of the ticket doesn't make it pleasant, or what?

(how much money does a vivid imagination need to save you on lottery tickets before it becomes adaptive daydreaming?)

Comments

[wingedcatgirl]

I mean given the odds, buying a ticket doesn't necessarily make the fantasy plausible.

[brin_bellway]

It feels intuitive to me. Maybe not Objectively Reasonable, but intuitive.

It's more fun if it might actually happen because then there's an aspect of *hope*. The difference between "might win" and "might buy a ticket and *then* win" is that the latter involves a decision on your part, while the former is purely external to you: you'll *never* get the world you want if you don't arrange for that world to be possible.

(this assumes free will, but then intuitions generally do)

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In practice, I'm too risk-averse to enjoy gambling where there is a possibility of loss (stuff where you always gain but the *amount* is random can be fun). I can force myself to do it anyway if I'm confident enough that the expected value is positive, but lotteries don't even have that going for them. I can see why someone with the same hope but less fear to counterbalance it would enjoy gambling; hell, empirically, past selves from back when I wasn't anxious were known to occasionally buy scratchcards.