Re: the lottery
I understand the logic behind the OP's statement and was thinking it over myself.
Say there is a one in 10 million chance to win enough money to have you set for life.
If you had to live 10 million lives, would you rather live all 10 million as basically middle class or 9,999,999 as middle class, but losing $2-5 on the lottery once in your lifetime, and 1 lifetime in which you win millions?
The lottery can be +ev, because you don't decide ev based on pure monetary results but on the affect it has on your life.
Another way of thinking about that is to think about the effect of giving a homeless man $1000 and giving Bill Gates $1000. It's the same raw amount of money, but one has a much bigger effect than the other.
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