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  3. Lotteries are a regressive tax on those who can’ t do math, runs the famous old saying. "Nonsense!" retort critics. "For a dolla

Lotteries are a regressive tax on those who can’ t do math, runs the famous old saying. "Nonsense!" retort critics. "For a dolla

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问题     Lotteries are a regressive tax on those who can’ t do math, runs the famous old saying. "Nonsense!" retort critics. "For a dollar, one can purchase the fantasy of being wealthy beyond dreams of avarice. It is cheap at the price. "
    Over at Overcoming Bias, Eliezer Yudkowsky says "But isn’t that a waste of hope?" But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you’re occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. The lottery balls will decide your future. The fantasy is of wealth that arrives without effort without conscientiousness, learning, charisma, or even patience.
    Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. It encourages people to invest their dreams, their hopes for a better future, into an infinitesimal probability. If not for the lottery, maybe they would fantasize about going to technical school, or opening their own business, or getting a promotion at work—things they might be able to actually do, hopes that would make them want to become stronger. Their dreaming brains might, in the 20th visualization of the pleasant fantasy, notice a way to really do it. Isn’t that what dreams and brains are for? But how can such reality-limited fare compete with the artificially sweetened prospect of instant wealth not after herding a dot com startup through to IPO, but on Tuesday?
    Seriously, why can’t we just say that buying lottery tickets is stupid? Human beings are stupid, from time to time - it shouldn’t be so surprising a hypothesis.
    Unsurprisingly, the human brain doesn’t do 64-bit floating point arithmetic, and it can’t devalue the emotional force of a pleasant anticipation by a factor of 0. 00000001 without dropping the line of reasoning entirely. Unsurprisingly, many people don’t realize that a numerical calculation of expected utility ought to override or replace their imprecise financial instincts, and instead treat the calculation as merely one argument to be balanced against their pleasant anticipations an emotionally weak argument, since it’s made up of mere squiggles on paper, instead of visions of fabulous wealth.
    This seems sufficient to explain the popularity of lotteries. Why do so many arguers feel impelled to defend this classic form of self-destruction?
    This seems rather extreme. The human brain is wired to feel many irrational desires, like love, and the yearning to produce a squalling mess of an infant that will hoover up all your available cash, plus 10%, for the foreseeable future. We don’t try to edit those out. Given that the human being is irrationally unable to discount a potential pleasure down by the exact expected probability, shouldn’t we exploit this trait in order to cheaply produce large utility gains?
According to the text, many people argue for lotteries because______.
选项 A、they are born with imprecise financial instincts
B、becoming wealthy instantly is more than probable
C、the human brain doesn’t do complicated arithmetic
D、they would rather think emotionally than logically
答案D
解析 根据本文最后两句“We don’t try to edit those out．Given that the human being is irrationallyunable to discount a potential pleasure down by the exact expected probability，shouldn’t we exploitthis trait in order to cheaply produce large utility gains?”，D应为答案。
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