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Ooh, right, I didn't see that post, thanks!
Huh... the thought occurred to me recently.
Just like in the torture versus dust specks post earlier, people might prefer that one person benefits extremely instead of all of them benefiting a small amount. While they might not be the ones to win the lottery, someone else will, and by joining in, they're helping to keep the lottery alive a bit longer.
I admit that I'm relatively new to these concepts so I apologize in advance if my post is a bit scatterbrained or in the wrong post, but it's just a thought.
Just like how people would prefer for 3^^^^3 people to get dust specks in their eyes instead of one person being tortured for 50 years, perhaps they prefer that one person is a millionaire instead of all of them being $1 richer.
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It's good that you are trying to learn and that you posted. There are misconceptions, which I will proceed to pick apart in extreme detail :), but, if I do this well, you will learn something and come to a deeper understanding of the concepts.
While the lottery would accomplish that preference, it is not the best way to do so. By being a game of chance, lotteries may only be run by the government, so some of the money that would go to the one person goes to the government instead. While people might also prefer that the government has money, they could donate to the government (or to a charity) separately. Also, bundling the two things into one action fixes the ratio between the amount of money given to each. This is neutral if fixed at the desired ratio and of negative utility if fixed at a suboptimal ratio. It would only be considered good to most people if the people who want a lower rate of lottery tax are few enough that they cannot start their own lottery-like system, so they are forced to pay the higher taxes desired by the rest of the ticket buyers in order to play.
Also, the person that benefits is randomly selected. Would it not be preferable to chose someone with above-average need for the money? Even if the ticket buyers would not think so, surely they could think of some criteria that is better than random . In general, the lottery shows no signs of being optimized for this preference. Since you're new here, you may not have read http://lesswrong.com/lw/hu/the_third_alternative/ . I highly recommend it.
Since people would think that buying a lottery ticket that they knew would not be able to win would be ridiculous, we can tell that none of these considerations are what matters. People buy lottery tickets because of the benefit to themselves and, since this is irrational in all but the few cases where utility is concave up in money (and people's participation in the lottery does not depend on how well it conforms to a certain concave up utility function), it is unlikely that the concern for other possible winners, which is minimal on its own, makes it rational for them.
Ahh, right. Thanks for that point. I forgot you can't have hidden motivations if they're not conscious.
Also, I've read the third alternative article but I'm not really seeing what you were trying to say by posting it.
My original thought was that when you have a choice between torturing a person for fifty years or letting 3^^^^3 people experience a dust speck in the eye, I'd pick the 3^^^^3 people getting the dust speck.
However, from an outsider's standpoint, would you rather give 3^^^^3 people a penny or one person a billion dollars (you're not included in either party). I for one might decide to give the billion dollars because at least it has some value (I'm not really happy about giving 3^^^^3 people one penny each, even if 3^^^^3 pennies is worth a lot more than a billion dollars).