You ever see a dog that’s got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it’s never going to make the connection.
Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.
Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?
I play the lottery a few times a year for the following reasons:
-Permission to dream about what I would buy if I won for a few days
-Justification for bitching about not winning the lottery
Lottery: tax for dreams.
Instead of buying a ticket I just search the sidewalk for the winning ticket (that someone else lost) while I’m otherwise doing my normal activities. My odds are winning are nearly the same as someone who buys a ticket, so I can dream just as much - but I can spend the money on something else.
First, someone has to have bought the winning ticket. Then, that same person needs to have lost the winning ticket. Next, that person has to have lost that ticket near where you are. And finally, you have to find that lost ticket.
So while both situations are very very far from certainty, and both are approaching zero, one of the two is much, much closer to zero than the other.