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Comment by drpixie | Hacker News Reader

Different but similar. I once wrote a trivial lotto number selector app, at the request of some colleagues. It just emitted a few unique random numbers. Silly but why not.

They hated it.

I added moderate, random delays before emitting each number. They loved it, and used it every week for quite some time :)

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That's not a useless project! It's a silly piece of code, but it gave joy to people, so I would say much more useful than most stories in this thread.

Back in the nineties my dad had the notion that if you make the computer select numbers at random many times, and you run statistics on the results you gain some "legitimacy" to these selections. So he asked me to write a "lotto number selector program", but it needed to run for a few hours and select many numbers and then output the ones that were selected the most or some such. Maybe it was more sophisticated, but I can't really remember the details. I guess I could just add a delay instead of actually selecting the numbers, but I wouldn't lie to my dad :)

It was super silly, but like you said, why not, I was a teen/tween and I didn't mind playing around with silly software.

He actually used it and actually filled out the lotto numbers based on it. No, we never won the millions :)

Also - I just visited a casino in Spokane, WA for the first time ever. Isn't that what all the machines there are doing? A random number emitter thingy with random delays, animation, music and flashing lights?

Your dad's thinking wasn't wrong, but you should've used the same PRNG as the machine that generates the official lotto numbers. Of course you still probably won't win though :P

Of course you still probably won't win though

This is the sort of attitude that ensures you don't win!

Reminds me of all the rules you have to apply to a random music player to make it feel random.

What rules you have to add?

https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/how-to-shuffle-son...

This is the same psychology in play when the lotto balls pop from the hopper or loot boxes open or slot machine wheels turn. A few seconds of suspense and fanfare for the reward is more satisfying.

Had thoughts on this the other day, about going to the office after the weekend always feeling bad, and waiting for the weekend always being the main thought during work. Yet, the weekend? Not actually that great. Feels totally artificial. Like work is not fun by definition.

A lot of these "certain delay for 'correct' response" rat feeder types of mechanics. Even when you know "the hit" is pointless or a waste, still heavily compelling anyways.

Cigarettes have a similar experience if you smoke too long. Days of "I don't 'actually' enjoy this anymore", yet my body still demands something that makes me vaguely nauseated now. Except, per the original comment, it is still the "suspense for a reward" that no longer exists.

I wrote a similar little app for the office lotto syndicate, way, way back. The older colleagues didn't trust it, and preferred coming up with their own 'random' numbers.

I still don't really know what there isn't to trust about generating random numbers for the lottery.

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