Bread vs Lottery: Bread was the irrational choice

[@FishboyAbzu]

Just eat the bread, you're not gonna win anything with the ticket anyway.

[@hania_ahhh]

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” - Lao Tzu

[@ruzaroos]

A more formal way to think about this is in terms of the marginal utility of bread vs the marginal utility of the lotto ticket. We don't know if there is a homeless shelter that regularly provides bread to these people or not. If there is, then clearly the marginal utility of an additional piece of bread is less than marginal utility of a lotto ticket. This can be framed through expectation as well. If they have access to free bread, the expected value of the bread is $0. While there is a true expected value of a given lotto ticket that the lotto manufacturer knows, this is unknown to the homeless person; but any estimate of this value is strictly greater than $0. Homeless and starving are not the same, which is the point you are mostly making.

[@NotQuiteQ]

Yes speculative utility is always a big driver for risk-taking. I think the perception of these homeless individuals could come into play too -- maybe they don't see themselves as vulnerable even if they have no access to homeless shelter/assistance? maybe they see their circumstance as temporary?