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Comment by rowawey | Hacker News Reader

A wealth researcher, the late Thomas J. Stanley, found that the biggest single correlating behavior to wealth was not purchasing of lottery tickets. This makes sense because of external locus-of-control (lack of agency), self-control, lack of goal-setting/planning, and magical/wishful thinking.

Furthermore, other researchers found delayed gratification social experiments with children involving more rewards later discovered those children who waited for more rewards later were wealthier later in life. [0](Economic background was found to be just as influential in later studies.)

Gambling (risking money with an expectation less than zero), in all forms, is a losing behavior. It doesn't matter if its lottery tickets, slot machines, three card monte, or financial instruments (without data).

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

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IIRC, further research has strongly suggested that economic background was not only "just as influential" in later wealth, but that it predicted which children would take the marshmallow.

Which makes sense: If you have grown up knowing that you're not likely to get a promised reward later (because it's never within reach, financially, or because the kinds of things that make it cost so much money to be poor keep coming up), yeah, you're going to take a treat when it's available.

Exactly, it speaks to the same point about overeating my parents brought up when I was young. A lot of families, without questioning it, continue the practice of pressuring children to eat every last scrap on their plate instead of stopping when they're full, which was implemented when their parents or grandparents were dirt poor and the next meal was not a given. That has got to have some strong impacts and the reward and planning centres of the brain in profound ways.

I admit I'm annoyed by adults who don't finish their plate in self serve situations (like some office cafeterias). If they didn't want that much food, why did they take it? I guess it's not that much food waste, but it seems like a tragedy of the commons waiting to happen when the food is marginally free.

Sounds incredibly simplistic. You have to assume everyone starts from the same spot and has equal opportunities, which is definitely not true. External locus-of-control may very well be an accurate assessment. There are probably people who are also "dumb", but even those are likely a product of their environment.

So really the solution isn't "don't buy lottery tickets", it's "solve systemic issues that lead to poor goal planning and wishful thinking, rather than goal planning and realistic thinking with achievable goals that result in better quality of life". That is a lot harder than just calling lotto players stupid.

Not buying lottery tickets seems like a good place to start though.

Seems like you completely missed the point.

To clarify, whilst we are changing the systemic issues which cause poor decision making we can also stop buying lottery tickets. I think starting with the things we can change first is a good place to start.

If your solution is to ban lotto tickets, that would likely be effective at achieving your goal. It likely would not solve the underlying issues around poor decision making though.

If your solution is to just tell people they need to stop buying lotto tickets, then it's likely to be extremely ineffective.

It depends if you think people are making their own choices in the first place, and then that they are capable of making different ones. The "systemic" view of the world says people aren't making choices, the system is coercing them to make choices. Therefore individuals aren't responsible and should not be coached to make different choices. Both views taken fundamentally seem short sighted. You need both.

>Therefore individuals aren't responsible and should not be coached to make different choices.

No that's not the point either. Most people do make their own choices, but the ways in which they come to those choices are influenced by their past experiences. Past experience can have a drastic effect on the choices you make in the future. Abuse/neglect/malnourishment during childhood and/or traumatic brain injury can have profound effects on someone's decision-making abilities later in life.

People should be held accountable for their poor choices, but with the understanding that not all lives have had equal opportunity, and there needs to be actual coaching available, not a bunch of finger wagging. Simply telling someone what's wrong with their life is that they "buy too many lotto tickets" is likely ignorant of the actual underlying problems that person may be facing or had to deal with in the past.

It's possible to correct for socio-economic conditions. In fact, it's somewhat silly to run an experiment like this without correcting for that.

I don't think they claim there's causation, but instead just correlation. Correlation between ideas about finances and monetary outcomes.

...and that is pretty worthless in the grand scheme of things, especially when it's trotted out as "poor people make dumb choices, glad I am not a dumb poor person making dumb choices". Some of the worst gambling offenders are rich people, who have gambled away multiple lifetimes worth of money, they just happened to have the net worth to take the hit.

You don't see the flaw in this line of thinking that if you solved what you suggest you just raise the bar and are left with exactly the same problem?

If we solved systemic issues that improved quality of life, we'd be left with what? People having better quality of life? That's not the same problem.

Tangentially related book recommendation, not about gambling, but about development economics: "Poor Economics" -- by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Economics

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