Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Lotteries: A Waste of Hope - Less Wrong
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If the goal is actually to get epsilon hope, then let there be a lottery with one expected payout every five years, awarded at a Poisson-random time. You buy in once, and lo, at any minute you could receive a phone call saying you're a millionaire! It would still be a malinvestment of dreams but at least the epsilon hope would be financially cheaper. But this just gets us back into the lottery being a scam, not a service.