MixedNuts comments on [SEQ RERUN] New Improved Lottery - Less Wrong Discussion
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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?
Oh, okay. I extrapolated from
that you thought a sizeable proportion of lottery players were in this situation. Apologies for Gricean failure.
So, do we agree that while there are odd situations where humans should play the lottery (and odd minds that value tiling the universe with lottery tickets), people who play the lottery are in fact being stupid? (Or maybe you're agnostic with respect to their stupidity? If you do, then this requires more data, given perceived incidence of short-on-train-fare situation.)