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Kaj_Sotala comments on Open Thread, May 5 - 11, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The United States green card lottery is one of the best lotteries in the world. The payoff is huge (green cards would probably sell for six figures if they were on the market), the cost of entry is minimal ($0 and 30 minutes) and the odds of winning are low, but not astronomically low. If you meet the eligibility criterion and are even a little interested in moving to America, you should enter the lottery this October.
Having entered the lottery may make it harder to receive nonimmigrant visas in the future, however.
Since this cost and the payoff of the original lottery are in like units, could someone compute whether it's still worth it to enter?
The cost is a completely qualitative claim, so, no, no one can do this computation.
Oh, whoops, misread as "immigrant visa" rather than "nonimmigrant visa". Disregard.
Well, it's true that they aren't quite the same units, but I was ignoring that. The cost is that the State Department pays attention and applies a penalty to the highly nontransparent visa process. These are qualitative claims. In principle they could be measured by outside observers. In fact, my best measurement is zero: they don't pay attention nor penalize nonimmigrant visas.