The Probability of Hope
Sometimes being irrational is the most rational choice
My friend Don grew up in the projects in Atlanta.
He was the oldest of 3 brothers and his parents worked hard to make ends meet. Since his father had a record and couldn’t get a driver’s license, he worked odd jobs and got paid in cash. His mother worked the night shift in the kitchen of a BBQ joint scrubbing grease from pots and pans.
This made Don the de facto “adult” of the family.
He took care of his twin brothers even though he was barely two years older than them. He’d walk them home from school, help them with homework, and teach them how to shoot the basketball on the broken hoop in his building. Most nights when they were all home alone, Don would read them bedtime stories as they fell asleep in his arms waiting for their Mom to bring home some leftover BBQ.
I know this because Don would tell me these stories in vivid detail. I would just listen and ask him questions. That would lead to more stories.
One story he shared taught me something about what happens to people when they run out of good options.
Don told me about how his Dad would come home most nights and talk to his Mom about the lottery tickets he had bought for the family. Sometimes it would be more than half of his earnings for the week. Don thought this was crazy because that could have paid for rent, books, clothes, or even food for the family. He figured if his Dad had just shoved all the $20 bills into a Lucky Charms box instead, his Mom could’ve stopped working at the BBQ joint.
His parents saw it differently.
Some of the happiest moments between his parents were when they discussed the lottery tickets and what winning could do for their lives. They would sit at the little rickety table by the window, just holding hands and praying for lady luck to bless them.
Economists call this “convex utility in losses.”
When you are already losing, you prefer a small chance of getting back to even over the certainty of loss. When faced with guaranteed poverty or a small chance at winning the lottery and breaking out of their circumstances, Don’s parents picked the lottery every time. This explains why lottery tickets sell better in poor neighborhoods. The math doesn’t matter when you’re already underwater.
Don helped me understand that when your realistic options narrow to zero, your brain recalibrates what counts as rational. A 4% chance of escaping becomes mathematically more attractive than a 100% chance of staying stuck when you’re treading water forever.
By the way, this has nothing to do with financial literacy. This is straight up human psychology when backed into a corner.
Now let me explain why I am sharing this with you:
You might see someone you love make a decision that looks insane from the outside. A bad investment. A desperate career pivot. A relationship that makes no sense. Before you judge it, ask yourself what their other options look like.
Sometimes what looks like recklessness is someone buying a lottery ticket because all the sensible paths are blocked.
BTW, Don took the moonshot without the lottery tickets. He ground it out as a straight A-student and varsity athlete and got a scholarship to Morehouse College. He got a job at a Verizon retail store, worked his way up to manager, then area manager, and now runs a massive region for Verizon. Don helped his brothers go to college, got his Mom out of that BBQ joint, and bought his Dad a car.
Don called me a few months ago to catch up. His parents still hold hands and pray every night, but they don’t talk about lottery tickets anymore.
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It's a really great story. Thanks for sharing.
I think the framing mostly works, but there’s a nuance worth mentioning.
The psychology and utility theory don’t depend on someone having literally zero options. They hinge on a belief about time and impact. Specifically, whether any options are expected to change the outcome fast enough to matter.
When progress is slow, uncertain, or punishing, the brain discounts those paths. Under those conditions, options that preserve hope or offer an unrealistic jump forward start to dominate, even if the odds are terrible. That belief is wrong, but it can also be adaptive in environments where improvement does not reliably translate into relief.
For example: you see it when founders accept dilution or bad capital because runway extensions no longer feel meaningful. You see it when operators stick with strategies that are clearly failing because the alternative paths look equally non-viable. You see it in relationships where leaving feels like trading one form of instability for another. You see it in career decisions where someone takes a moonshot because the steady path no longer feels like progress.
What matters isn’t whether a “better” option exists on paper. It’s which options the person has mentally removed from the set because they no longer believe they lead anywhere.
this is beautiful