Although I do agree with the arguments of the writer concerning the odds, it is an article clearly written from the viewpoint of someone who belongs to the (upper) middle class, probably academically trained and with a reasonable payed job or peers or family who are financially supportive.
The article lacks to identify the reasons (which ARE rational) of (mostly) lower class income people to play the lottery.
As an excercise in empathy for the writer I do put forward the following scenario's:
Suppose you are stuck in a dead end boring job or no job scenario, living from health care, etc. Although most educated people believe this is a situation they will not encounter in their lifetime, this situation has increasingly become real for an increasing amount of people. One might blame the world economy for this or one might blame the players who have finally been dropped out or have chosen to drop out of the rat race.
May it be to poor education at a younger age, traumatic experiences, simply having the wrong education for the current playfield, being sacked at an older age, having no available finances to support further education, a lack of intelligence or simply spiraling down the road of depression due to a lack of chances or being stuck in a debt one can never recover of in a lifetime... these are all scenario's in which the player on the Lotto actually rationally pays for the soothing dream of a better (financial) future. A future that will not happen if one would not win the lottery.
One might even say playing the Lotto is the same as religion. The one who plays is still a 'believer'. The player plays for hope. Despite the odds being stacked mile high against winning the Jackpot, one believes he or she might win it. It's the same as praying: by praying one hopes to find support in a supernatural being who might forsee in a better future of the believer.
Sure, the person might save some money not playing the Lotto, but these savings will not be able to seriously increase his or her chances for a better future. So, in fact seen from this view point the investment becomes rational: playing the Lotto becomes a very small investment for what might be a very large return on investment..
So what is rational? Playing a negative sum game like the lottery is as such from the above perspective not irrational. It's even very rational if one accepts that money simply will afford at least a higher amount of choices one can make about his future. One could splash out on luxury if one wins the jackpot, one could simply enjoy the financial freedom of being able to choose each day what to do with their life or divide the money with friends or relatives who have drawn (by randomness) the short end of the financial straw.
The article also gives also the impression the writer condemns the personal situation or motivation of people who play the Lotto (being dumb assed, not knowing about their odds, etc.). This is what I would call 'The American Dream' fallacy: if one only studies or works hard enough, one would gain enough financial income one would not feel the need to play the lottery. Reality is very different.
My main point is: simoly stating playing the lottery is not rational because the odds are stacked mile high against the player, is short sighted. It oversees the rational reasons to identify why so many people with a low income play. Their rational reasoning to play the lottery might be justified.
these are all scenario's in which the player on the Lotto actually rationally pays for the soothing dream of a better (financial) future. A future that will not happen if one would not win the lottery.
There are other ways for a low income person to strike it rich. More people may find it believable that they'll strike it rich in the lottery than, say, write the next big novel, but that doesn't mean that the lottery is their most realistic avenue to wealth.
The classic criticism of the lottery is that the people who play are the ones who can least afford to lose; that the lottery is a sink of money, draining wealth from those who most need it. Some lottery advocates, and even some commentors on Overcoming Bias, have tried to defend lottery-ticket buying as a rational purchase of fantasy—paying a dollar for a day’s worth of pleasant anticipation, imagining yourself as a millionaire.
But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you’re occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero—a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. The lottery balls will decide your future. The fantasy is of wealth that arrives without effort—without conscientiousness, learning, charisma, or even patience.1
Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. It encourages people to invest their dreams, their hopes for a better future, into an infinitesimal probability. If not for the lottery, maybe they would fantasize about going to technical school, or opening their own business, or getting a promotion at work—things they might be able to actually do, hopes that would make them want to become stronger. Their dreaming brains might, in the 20th visualization of the pleasant fantasy, notice a way to really do it. Isn’t that what dreams and brains are for? But how can such reality-limited fare compete with the artificially sweetened prospect of instant wealth—not after herding a dot-com startup through to IPO, but on Tuesday?
Seriously, why can’t we just say that buying lottery tickets is stupid? Human beings are stupid, from time to time—it shouldn’t be so surprising a hypothesis.
Unsurprisingly, the human brain doesn’t do 64-bit floating-point arithmetic, and it can’t devalue the emotional force of a pleasant anticipation by a factor of 0.00000001 without dropping the line of reasoning entirely. Unsurprisingly, many people don’t realize that a numerical calculation of expected utility ought to override or replace their imprecise financial instincts, and instead treat the calculation as merely one argument to be balanced against their pleasant anticipations—an emotionally weak argument, since it’s made up of mere squiggles on paper, instead of visions of fabulous wealth.
This seems sufficient to explain the popularity of lotteries. Why do so many arguers feel impelled to defend this classic form of self-destruction?2
The process of overcoming bias requires (1) first noticing the bias, (2) analyzing the bias in detail, (3) deciding that the bias is bad, (4) figuring out a workaround, and then (5) implementing it. It’s unfortunate how many people get through steps 1 and 2 and then bog down in step 3, which by rights should be the easiest of the five. Biases are lemons, not lemonade, and we shouldn’t try to make lemonade out of them—just burn those lemons down.
1See Po Bronson, “How Not to Talk to Your Kids,” New York, 2007, http://nymag.com/news/features/27840.
2See “Debiasing as Non-Self-Destruction.” http://lesswrong.com/lw/hf/debiasing_as_nonselfdestruction.