The Lottery Is A Tax On People Who Do Not Understand Probablilty Theory

"Dr. Cohen argues that lottery tickets are not an investment but a disposable consumer purchase, which changes the equation radically. Like a throwaway lifestyle magazine, lottery tickets engage transforming fantasies: a wine cellar, a pool, a vision of tropical blues and white sand. The difference is that the ticket can deliver.
And as long as the fantasy is possible, even a negligible probability of winning becomes paradoxically reinforcing, Dr. Cohen said."

A typical cost-benefit analysis of playing a state-run lottery proves without a doubt that no one would play..
So many people love to say that actions like playing the lottery are irrational..

Both of these claims are wrong -- we just need to consider more parts of the equation to figure out why people do it (and the certainly do it). Read about one approach to understanding human behavior in the face of punishing odds in The New York Times here.

From Wishful Thinking To Positive Action

Did you ever wonder why you felt compelled to help when you see someone suffer? The Hindustan Times reports on studies of altruistic behavior from a physiological perspective. Read about that here.

Knock On Wood

"...magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.

The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the circuitry of the brain, and for good reason. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling."

The New York Times discusses the psychological study of "magical thinking." Read all about it here.

Picking One's Brain The Hard Way -- Scientific Developments and Electric Probes

"(There are two 'problems' in the study of consciousness), which the philosopher David Chalmers has dubbed the Easy Problem and the Hard Problem. Calling the first one easy is an in-joke: it is easy in the sense that curing cancer or sending someone to Mars is easy." … "The Easy Problem, then, is to distinguish conscious from unconscious mental computation, identify its correlates in the brain and explain why it evolved.
The Hard Problem, on the other hand, is why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in one's head--why there is first-person, subjective experience. Not only does a green thing look different from a red thing, remind us of other green things and inspire us to say, 'That's green' (the Easy Problem), but it also actually looks green: it produces an experience of sheer greenness that isn't reducible to anything else. As Louis Armstrong said in response to a request to define jazz, 'When you got to ask what it is, you never get to know.'"

Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard, discusses the latest scientific inquiries into consciousness in his article in Time Magazine.

Gimmie! Gimmie! Please?

"In exploring the morality of economic behavior, they aim to put a more positive spin on Western-style capitalism. They want to demonstrate, in a post-Enron world, that markets are driven not by greed but by positive behavior.

To test their theories, researchers from economics and other disciplines are conducting a variety of studies, including experiments that look at how monkeys work together to get their favorite foods and the effect of business school teachings on values in the boardroom."

Evelyn Iritani writes about a possibly new discipline they are calling the "science of moral behavior." Read all about it in the Los Angeles Times.