All you need is a dollar and a delusion
I'm constantly bewildered by people who play the lottery, and I love finding new statistics that prove the unlikelihood of winning it. For example, it is six times less likely that a player win the lottery than that the Earth will be pulled out of its orbit by the gravity of a passing star and sent hurtling into outer space.
But here is my very favorite: Your odds of winning the lottery do not even increase by your buying a ticket to play it. That is, you are just as likely to find the winning ticket on the street as you are to purchase it. The odds don't go down even if you don't bother to play!
All of this merely confirms my suspicion that the lottery is the government's tax on stupid people.
posted by Eric @ 11:48 AM
10 Comments:
No one has won the lottery by finding a ticket rather than buying, but the idea is that, statistically, no one wins the lottery at all. That a one-in-thirty-million chance of something is all but indistinguishable from having no chance at all. And so the act of walking into a corner store, handing someone a dollar, and walking out with a ticket, grants no greater likelihood of victory than walking down the street and finding a ticket that someone else dropped, and having that one win.
This is statistics on a sort of metaphysical level, I'll grant, but it's absolutely true that the means of obtaining the ticket is not a factor in the chances of winning.
Buying something that an ad has said will make you happy isn't very bright either, of course, but at least when you pay for the thing, you do own it. All you own when you buy a lottery ticket is the false hope that it will give you something else. I'm sure that people who win the lottery are happy they played, but they are statistically an insignificant group of people, almost a non-entity, compared to the number of people who play. What is beyond my comprehension is the way in which people forget how many things are far, far more likely to happen to you: struck by lightening, giving birth to octuplets, getting eaten to death by a chicken. I mean, one in thirty million just never, ever happens.
As for heaven, it's entirely different: belief in heaven is an act of faith, no more dependent on reason than belief in God. Buying a lottery ticket is a deliberate suspension of the very reason that should prevent you from doing so. One doesn't suspend reason in order to believe in the spiritual, as reason does not contradict the spiritual: the very idea of the spiritual is that it lies beyond reasoned comprehension.
But the lottery is purely a function of odds and statistics, the very domain of reason, and so to participate in it is to willfully bow out of reality. Arguably one has a statistically greater chance of arriving one day in a place called heaven than of winning a gazillion dollars from a piece of paper you buy at a convenience store.
Bonus question: Belief in heaven vs. belief that you'll win the lottery. Discuss.
I do not believe in heaven or deities. I also don't believe I'm going to win the lottery, in the sense of "winning so now I can retire." I have, however, won $75. I think of people having some small amount of "piss-it-away" money--to be spent on a magazine, or a soy caramel frappacino (blegh, can I just say), or candy from the machine, or whatever--and I don't think the lottery is any better or worse than those other uses. I don't do it religiously by any means, but I see no harm in throwing a couple of bucks to the guy behind the machine, especially since there is some possibility--quite teeny, it's true--that I'll win $60 million. But if I win, Eric, I promise not to give you any; I suspect it would upset you way too much. ;-)
carla
You are a funny bunch of people. Thanks for a good discussion for me to enjoy.
I have no input.
Wait--yes---I do have input. Humans need myths. The lottery is a modern myth.
I agree: the spiritual discussion is far separate. And I agree with Karen that the lottery is a sort of modern myth, at least insofar as it represents the American dream/myth that if we are good people and try hard, untold wealth will descend upon us, along with fame.
As our political landscape would indicate, Americans too have no problem standing firm against the onslaught of logic and reality.
I agree that the "work hard and you will be rewarded" myth is dangerous (and, in fact, accounts for the huge number of people who vote Republican, against their own self-interest). I don't really agree that that's to what I'm subscribing when I buy a lottery ticket--I'm subscribing to the WTF-ness of life. Just as hard work doesn't necessarily result in success, the unlikeliness of winning the lottery doesn't mean it's impossible to do so (as evidenced by the fact that those big pots get won by someone). If you believe EITHER that your hard work will be generously rewarded reliably and consistently, OR that playing the lottery religiously is a viable enrichment/retirement scheme, then you are seriously deluded.
carla
People win the lottery way more often than the earth is pulled away from its orbit by a, ahem, "passing star." So I take issue with kStyle's source of information on this matter, whatever that source may be.
Carla, please say more about voting Republican against one's own interests. Thanks in advance.
It's nice to post here after so long. kStyle's new site layout has made it much trickier for me, so here I am using the "Anonymous" option, and signing my name underneath. Hello again, all. And I assure you, kStyle, I've been reading faithfully, if not posting.
Uncle Charlie
Ooooh. Lottery. The Moron Tax.
Lah, you make me laugh.
Chaz, glad you've been reading. But note that a) I didn't write this post, and b) I believe Eric was exagerrating to make his point. Hyperbole.
to answer Uncle Charlie's question, well, others have answered this way better than I can here in the comments (see slactivist's blog and Frank's book on what's wrong with Kansas, I think, though I haven't read the latter). Basically, to oversimplify, Republicans argue to working/lower-middle-class whites that the government is taking all of their tax money and giving it to lazy poor black people and promoting gay marriage and banning prayer and the bible. This pushes the racism button, it ignores the many social goods that can only be purchased with tax dollars (e.g., good schools, from which poorer people could benefit disproportionately, given their lack of other options), and it ignores the fact that the tax cuts benefit the large businesses that are likely to squeeze the working class workers and benefit rich people. Basically, the republicans convince people to vote against their economic and social interests (their "class" interests, if you will), insofar as the voters are unlikely to ever belong to the class of people who benefit most from republican policies. I saw a scary interview yesteray--I forget where--from the NW, where people basically swallowed the canard that having a godly man--by definition, GWB, despite, for example, his noted lack of compassion and his lack of actual church attendence--was more important than anything else. If I find it, I'll post the link here, because it was quite frightening to me on several deep levels--and not because the interviewees were deists and i'm not. Anyway, this is a very very basic version of this argument--I can add more if necessary.
carla
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