Eliezer’s point is that if you think you should play the lottery then you are wrong about your own values, you don’t just have weird values.
I thought I already explained what was wrong with that here:
Re: Seriously, why can’t we just say that buying lottery tickets is stupid?
Buying a lottery ticket is not stupid—under some conditions.
Say you have two cents, and can’t afford your train fare home (which is one stop away). If you can gamble those two cents in a game of chance, you may be able to convert them into a whole train fare.
The conditions of being stuffed—unless you have a lot of money—may not be that uncommon: so many people may be inclined to gamble this way.
I just… I don’t… Why do people feel the need to do this on Eliezer’s posts so much? Why can he not make a single statement without somebody finding some obscure, improbable, irrelevent exception, and loudly trumpeting it? Going through the sequence reruns, it’s appalling how many people in the comments from the OB days just seem to be wilfully missing the point for the sake of generating a defensible disagreement.
Is it a desire to demonstrate how clever they are by being contrary, even if the disagreement is over some wholly irrelevent nitpick? Do they really think that the existence of imaginable but implausible exceptions is important? Is it just extreme, unrestrained pedantry?
All it does is pollute the discussion. If you don’t believe the exceptions to the “buying lottery tickets is stupid” rule are common enough to be significant, and you don’t believe that Eliezer thinks so either, and you don’t believe anybody reading the post is going to be adversely affected by Eliezer’s failure to explicitly mention these contrived exceptions to the rule, then why even bring it up?
ETA: And if you do believe any of those things, why?
Seriously, why can’t we just say that buying lottery tickets is stupid?
The answer is: because that would be a silly over-generalisation. Gambling is sometimes a rational course of action. It is good for people to be aware of that—in case they find themselves needing to gamble—a common circumstance—especially for males.
Roulette is often better than buying lottery tickets for large sums—due to taxation issues. However, in some countries, there’s a government-run lottery and many other forms of gambling are illegal.
Can you confidently assert (p > 0.8) that, since the advent of modern lotteries, at least a thousand people have arrived independently in circumstances under which buying lottery tickets was a non-stupid action?
Can you confidently assert (p > 0.8) that, since the advent of modern lotteries, at least a thousand people have arrived independently in circumstances under which buying lottery tickets was a non-stupid action?
That sounds reasonable to me—though it is not what I claimed. For instance, if someone in authority tells you to buy a lottery ticket for them.
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?
This is not in fact the situation of most lottery players.
I never said it was.
Do you have more data?
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?
The conditions of being stuffed—unless you have a lot of money—may not be that uncommon
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.)
I thought I already explained what was wrong with that here:
I just… I don’t… Why do people feel the need to do this on Eliezer’s posts so much? Why can he not make a single statement without somebody finding some obscure, improbable, irrelevent exception, and loudly trumpeting it? Going through the sequence reruns, it’s appalling how many people in the comments from the OB days just seem to be wilfully missing the point for the sake of generating a defensible disagreement.
Is it a desire to demonstrate how clever they are by being contrary, even if the disagreement is over some wholly irrelevent nitpick? Do they really think that the existence of imaginable but implausible exceptions is important? Is it just extreme, unrestrained pedantry?
All it does is pollute the discussion. If you don’t believe the exceptions to the “buying lottery tickets is stupid” rule are common enough to be significant, and you don’t believe that Eliezer thinks so either, and you don’t believe anybody reading the post is going to be adversely affected by Eliezer’s failure to explicitly mention these contrived exceptions to the rule, then why even bring it up?
ETA: And if you do believe any of those things, why?
I generally agree with your post, but this phrasing is too strong.
It’s a net bad, but there are good consequences.
The original post asks:
The answer is: because that would be a silly over-generalisation. Gambling is sometimes a rational course of action. It is good for people to be aware of that—in case they find themselves needing to gamble—a common circumstance—especially for males.
Roulette is often better than buying lottery tickets for large sums—due to taxation issues. However, in some countries, there’s a government-run lottery and many other forms of gambling are illegal.
Note that the economist Robin Hanson made exactly the same point as me here.
Can you confidently assert (p > 0.8) that, since the advent of modern lotteries, at least a thousand people have arrived independently in circumstances under which buying lottery tickets was a non-stupid action?
What kind of circumstances were they?
That sounds reasonable to me—though it is not what I claimed. For instance, if someone in authority tells you to buy a lottery ticket for them.
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.)