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Comment by thetrumanshow | Hacker News Reader

Most people don't win the lottery. Statistically speaking, you almost always lose. So why play, right?

Sometimes, its okay to ignore the statistics and hope for the best. Sometimes, its okay to stop hoping and start believing, even if the odds are grim.

Selection bias does teach us one useful thing. That you don't win if you give up.

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Ignoring the odds only helps if you are flying the Millenium Falcon through a statistically overly-dense asteroid field, and that's arguably only because you have the sister of a Jedi (and daughter of a Sith) on board.

In every other case, you are better off using your resources on something with a more reliable return on resource investment.

If that were true, there would never be any entrepreneurs. Employment is safer than a startup, for example.

Now weighing your comment against really long odds like the lottery, its definitely more correct.

The point I wanted to make is that its fine to hope in things that are seemingly unattainable, and to be somewhat ignorant of the realities. Imagine, for example, how bad college basketball would become if players started realizing just how long the odds are in the path to wealth through the NBA.

It turns out, a lot of our economy runs on hope.

A lot of college ball-players knowing that they aren't going to make it to the pro's, transition into coaching, parlay their athletic prestige into a corporate position etc.

Just because you are gambling with your life doesn't mean you can't gamble better. Problem is when people get delusional about what they can achieve vs. the reality. Most people are born and remain losers. My motto in life is to preserve my capital, so I can lose for as long as possible.

The kids who start playing at a young age don't generally start out dreaming of selling out for slightly better odds at some point later in life. They have their eyes set on their heros and they go as hard as they can. Its only later that they become realistic in their expectations.

I am trying to weakly correlate this concept to startups. You have to start out dreamy-eyed enough to start. You can deal with reality later.

When Scott Mace and I started CalendarHub and applied to YCombinator in the same year as Justin Khans Kiko, we weren't shooting for lifestyle business. We were shooting for Get-Bought-By-Google or bust. Reality set in later. That was my start, at least I started :).

The lottery is controlled purely by the odds, the outcome is stochastic.

Playing my own devil's advocate: C3P0 states the odds for successfully navigating an asteroid belt, but Han doesn't want the odds, mainly because C3P0 hasn't stated the odds for Han Solo succesfully navigating an asteroid belt. Han works best when he doesn't know how often other people fail.

The Force is not a Field of Luck +1. She wasn't piloting.

It is, however, a Field of Plot Device. She wasn't piloting but she was essential to the story, so the probability-function collapsed in a way that preserved her ability to contribute to further events.

I did say arguably. And Jedi do make other people operate "better", at least from some of the scant reading I did.

The lottery is one where everyone pretty much has equal odds of success. Individuals, especially in startups, tend not to have equal odds at all. It's a game of skill, not luck.

> It's a game of skill, not luck.

I'm gonna guess that you didn't found a company at the Nasdaq peak in April of 2000.

It's a game of more skill than the lottery, sure. But it's still largely a game of luck.

I don't exactly disagree, but I would say there are enough things outside of your control that luck does play a part. However, to your point I believe that (with great skill, appropriately applied) you can bend the odds in your favor.

What I really wanted to do in that comment was espouse what the article is selling... positivity/hope.

in my high school, in 1989 in India, my maths teacher was into single digit lotteries, which give a 10% win chance for lowest prize money.

with his maths, statistics, patterns, trends, he increased his odds to 30-70%, I have seen him when he is 100% sure, he would be travelling 100 miles to different places just to buy all the lotteries

> with his maths, statistics, patterns, trends, he increased his odds to 30-70%, I have seen him when he is 100% sure, he would be travelling 100 miles to different places just to buy all the lotteries

Those payouts must've been pretty decent to justify so much time and effort. (Or perhaps he was, unfortunately, not also into economics.)

at todays conversion rate one lottery was about 4 cents, and price money was about 20 cents. these lotteries were preprinted with the numbers and available only at lottery vendors across the town, one vendor would have about 20-100 of the same number, so if he believed he would win, he will buy one number each for the predicted number and one for one random number and then buy those 2 in volume of hundreds across the town. it was pretty addictive

So let's see... You say he had a 70% chance of winning, so if the prize money was 20 cents, each ticket had an expected value of 0.720=14 cents but a cost of 4 cents so a net of 10 cents. I'm not sure what you mean by '20-100 of the same number' - he could only buy 20-100 from each vendor? Let's say he can buy 100 at a vendor (if they're the same number and so the entire batch will win or lose, then that renders the expected net value a little worse a fit but whatever) , that's 10 cents 100 or 10 dollars.

In the US, minimum wage tends to come out around $7, so if he can hit one vendor per hour then I suppose he'd be showing a reasonable profit. But you also need to take into account wear and tear on vehicles, risk of accidents, planning your life around the lottery... I suspect with those included, it'd still be net-positive but not really that great a use of time and effort. Personally, I'd be doing it more for a fun write-up than to make money.

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