Engineers buying lotto tickets

I work with a group of very sharp software engineers. They are all well educated with years of college and a fair number with post-graduate degrees. They are well acquainted with math and can think about a math problems in ways that most people can't. My co-workers see the humor in things like an error code like "OxDECAFBAD". While there are a fair number among them who are on the shy or somewhat inarticulate side; all of them, if pressed could explain a fair amount about the topic of probability. Additionally they could explain in great detail how buying a lottery tickets is more like burning one dollar bills at your local quicky mart for fun than it is a sound investment.

Yet these same people still buy lottery tickets. My co-workers are not innumerate or mathematically inept.

OK, so I confess I buy the occasional ticket too.

So why do we buy the occasional ticket?

I don't think it's because of the slick marketing campaigns. I don't think they are interested in the fractional amount of money that reaches the state treasury.

I think it's all about being happy. Happy, you say, how could one be happy about throwing money away?

It's all about the moment. There is a moment everyone has when purchasing a lottery ticket. You allow yourself the luxury of imaging life without an financial barriers. Maybe you fantasize about lying on a beach being served cool drinks maybe you imagine quitting your job, maybe you imagine writing the novel you've always wanted to write.

Whatever or whomever you dream about, for one instant you can imagine attaining it.

It's a glimpse of the best possible thing or at least what you imagine it to be.

The next morning you check your paper, you lose again, and you go on with your day. Perhaps it's a day of "quiet desperation" or perhaps you are utterly fulfilled in your life, confidently riding astride of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Who knows which category you fall into? I for one vacillate from day to day. But for one instant your level of fulfillment didn't really matter, you weren't there, for an instance you touched the transcendent place where nothing mattered but the one thing, that was most important to you, and that one thing was finally within reach.

So is that moment worth a buck?

Some days being able to dream the impossible dream, and allowing yourself that one small luxury is worth a buck.

In fact this last phrase is probably the core of most deity bound religions. Dreaming about an entity that could set things right, it's worth a small bit of money and observance just in the case it could all be true.