In particular, the notion that ticket buyers really are making an expected utility calculation says that decreasing the odds of a lottery win by a factor of 10 (while perhaps multiplying the number of tickets sold by 10 and keeping the price constant, so that the number of lottery winners reported in the media is constant), will decrease the price they are willing to pay for a given lottery ticket by a factor of 10. Are you willing to make that prediction? I'd expect ticket sales to remain pretty much the same.

That's an interesting point.

• If, as I said in my post, it is possible for all situations in which utility < 0 to be considered equivalent because one can commit suicide, then you would predict that ticket sales would remain nearly the same.

• I don't claim that they are all making a good utility calculation. But who does? I claim that more of their behavior is attributable to utility calculations than is commonly believed.