Today's post, New Improved Lottery was originally publeslished on April 13, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki):
If the opportunity to fantasize about winning was a rational justification for the lottery, we could design a "New Improved Lottery", where a single payment buys an epsilon chance of becoming a millionaire over the next five years. All your time could be spent thinking how you could become a millionaire at any moment.
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This is not in fact the situation of most lottery players. When you're lower-middle class (and not in need of expensive treatment or fighting x-risk), you want low variance, because you're slightly above some bad thresholds like homelessness. It makes sense to gamble if you're dirt poor, though.
Source is just talking to people who buy lottery tickets, so N is small. Do you have more data?
I never said it was.
More data - about what? Surely my comment simply stated the totally obvious - that sometimes it pays to gamble. You apparently agree with this point in your reply. So - why do you think this thesis requires "more data"? What aspect of it do you think requires additional support?