Kari Enqvist, a professor of cosmology, said something very insightful in an interview about gambling in general:
"Insurances yield a peace of mind and lotteries yield dreams, the values of which cannot be measured in mere terms of probabilities or money."
In my view, lottery tickets are not meant to be rationally justifiable, nor should they be required to be. Yet, I don't fancy the idea of committing to such vain pursuits comfortable at all, but I can understand people who act upon their dreams, and will not berate those who do.
Also, in Finland the state lottery redistributes the profit to good use. By law the arts get 38.5%, sports 25%, science 17.5% and youth work 9%. 10% goes to whatever the Ministry of Education decides that year. Whenever I play lottery I think I'm partly giving money to charity and partly buying a dream.
> the values of which cannot be measured in mere terms of probabilities or money.
Sure they can. I'll pay $X for insurance but I won't pay $Y. Peace of mind is worth somewhere between $X and $Y to me. If I offer someone $Z to never play the lottery again, they'll either take it or not. If they take it, they valued those particular dreams less than $Z. (Unless $Z is high enough to fulfill some of those dreams, but I suspect many people would accept a $Z which is not so high.)
There's no simple trade-off where I'll always accept some number of units of money for some number of units of peace of mind; but the same is true of cars.
Meanwhile, the people who sell you the lottery ticket act completely rationally. Funny---it's still lottery tickets, but when the odds are in your favour the hope is no longer needed.
"Insurances yield a peace of mind and lotteries yield dreams, the values of which cannot be measured in mere terms of probabilities or money."
In my view, lottery tickets are not meant to be rationally justifiable, nor should they be required to be. Yet, I don't fancy the idea of committing to such vain pursuits comfortable at all, but I can understand people who act upon their dreams, and will not berate those who do.