To expand on this comparison a bit more, one important difference between the two is that once a person understands the concept of expected value, and knows that lottery tickets have expected value below purchase price, the warm-fuzzy effect largely goes away. But for some reason, at least for Eliezer, the warm-fuzzy effect of opening a door for an old lady doesn't go away, even though he knows that doing so creates negative expected utilons.

Perhaps the warm-fuzzy effect remains because Eliezer rationalizes it thus: if I can restore my willpower through the warm-fuzzy effect of opening doors for little old ladies, I can be more productive in producing utilons through my work, so it's really a good thing after all, and I deserve the warm-fuzzy effect. But perhaps a rationalist can use a similar line of thought to keep the warm-fuzzy effect of buying lottery tickets. Should one do so?

ETA: Apparently Eliezer already addressed the issue of lottery tickets, with the following conclusion:

Biases are lemons, not lemonade, and we shouldn't try to make lemonade out of them - just burn those lemons down.

Which seems completely inconsistent with the position he takes here...