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That's not exactly new information, is it?
Neither is the idea that nobody can predict what those numbers will be. However, when a lottery machine selects the numbers this is in no sense a random action. It is 100% predictable. There is nothing stopping anybody calculating exactly which balls not only will, but MUST be drawn. Nothing stopping you. It will simply take a measuring and timing tolerance at the edge of possibility combined with a huge series of calculations.
You can measure the balls and know their properties. You can time the intervals between starting and stopping the contra-rotating tumble dryers. You can project the trajectories of every single ball and their interactions with each other. It can be done. But it would probably cost more than the size of the lottery jackpot to fund the project and nobody is going to be very happy with people standing around and timing the balls to that degree of accuracy, because one microsecond will totally disrupt all the calculations. The lottery ball machine is totally predictable and not in any way random, but exactly the same thing can be said about a woman. Both are determined and predictable systems, but they simulate randomness far more elegantly than true randomness would. True randomness is a willo-the-wisp entity, like infinity, the highest prime number and the function of half of the roundabouts in Warrington. Lottery machines are not random, but they are chaotic, and therefore, like the minds of women, very difficult to probe with the crude analytical tools we have at our disposal.
So, I can't tell you how to win the lottery. However, I can offer you some interesting advice that you might find helpful.
You have to be in it to win it
This is a very common slogan used by lotteries and football pools companies alike. What this slogan is saying is you can't dream of winning the lottery or the pools unless you part with your beer tokens. Of course they are right. If you never buy a ticket you can never win. But how many times do you dream of winning? Do you have to win every week to be happy? Of course not. You only have to win once. So you only have to buy one ticket, at some time in the future to be able to legitimately dream of winning a huge jackpot.
One ticket will do
Your chance of winning a share in a big jackpot prize is very low. In the UK national lottery (now named Lotto) your chances of having a share of a top jackpot, by getting 6 balls out of 6 representing the numbers 1 to 49 are 1 in 13,983,816.
Now most weeks people win, often several people share the jackpot. So it does happen. But if you staked £5 every week on those odds you would not have a realistic expectation of winning a share in a jackpot in a normal lifetime. But you knew that anyway, didn't you?
So you might as well get used to the idea that winning the lottery is unlikely. But it's also nice to have a dream, it is good for your mental health. So here is the secret: Buy a ticket. One day. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.
How to lose the lottery
The way to lose the lottery is to pick regular numbers and forget to buy a ticket. You will be gutted if those numbers come up. It happens, not very often of course, because the odds are still 1 in 13,983,816 for any one series of numbers whether you buy a ticket from a leprechaun with a black cat or don't because you stubbed your toe on a horseshoe while dodging out of the way of a ladder. Nothing can alter those odds. Ever. But people have been in that situation of having regular numbers and not buying a ticket. It is a nightmare, divorces and murders might follow. Just avoid that grief, you don't need it. Neither do you need to be a regular loser. Just buy a ticket one day on a whim, pick some numbers with no significance (any set of numbers is equally unlikely to win) and you can dream that dream. And you know you might win. People do, it could be you. But you don't need to play it fifty or a hundred times every year for the rest of your life.
If you played 50 times a year for fifty years that's only 2,500 chances, which is put into perspective by the fact that the chances of winning a prize of typically less than £100 for matching four balls is 1 in 1,033, so if you play every week for all your life it wouldn't be that remarkable to never match more than three balls. If you buy a ticket every week or three times every decade in practical terms you would be extremely lucky to win a big prize. It might happen. But you can GUARANTEE that by not buying a ticket you have the stake money to spend on something else, and as long as you sometimes buy a ticket, or even feel that you MIGHT buy a ticket, you have just as much right to dream of a lottery win as anybody. It could be you.
How to dream about lottery numbers
Do you want to learn the secret of dreaming winning lottery numbers? Why? Why are you so stupid as to expect your dreams to contain meaningful insights and predictions about the future? What kind of a universe do you think we live in, one in which stupid people with below average talents who didn't pay attention at school can make it all come right later in life by having a dream in which winning lottery numbers just pop into their heads because that would be handy? Dream on. There is no place that the next weeks winning lottery numbers are known or stored, therefore the knowledge of what they are cannot be accessed by any method, including the entrails of goats, tea leaves of gypsies or dreams of people who do a quick internet search and hope to find the secret of happiness.
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Hi Martin, While I enjoyed most of your wisdom about playng the lottery, I disagree with you about dreaming winning lottery numbers. I believe in affirmation and have affirmed while dropping to sleep and dreamed a winning number once (not a jackpot). I have also read a story of someone whose loved one had recently passed on, came back in a dream to give the father the winning numbers to the California lottery. This story was featured on television. Lottery Dreamer in Maryland |
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Message Featured on television? Oh it must be true then. If you won a lottery you would be deluged in begging letters, jealousy and envy. People would be thinking you have no right to win when they need the money far more, and pray harder for it too. Saying you dreamt the numbers could imply that you deserved to win, and they could win too, so get off my back, OK? Lots of people dream lottery numbers if they NEED to win the lottery. Probably several hundred thousand people each week do it. It is inevitable that sometimes one of those people will win. How much airtime could you fill in the following way:
A great way to play the lottery without risk is to go to a website that allows you to see the results of previous draws. Any one set of numbers is as unlikely to win as any other set. So looking at last week's numbers against this week's numbers is just the same odds as buying a new ticket for next week's draw, except you cannot lose! I have just spent ten minutes looking at about 200 consecutive draws and if I had bought the tickets I would have staked about £200 and won £20. Which is very much the sort of thing that happens if you dream the losing numbers too. e.g. UK National Lottery results for Saturday 31st July and Wednesday 28th July 1999, three numbers match. I'll buy a ticket one day. It could be me. Martin Willett http://mwillett.org/ PS. If, as it's now Sunday morning you might have won your dream lottery since sending your email how about sending me a new car with “I told you so” painted on it? I promise I won't repaint it. |
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You seem very hostile for no reason. Sorry to have bothered you. |
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When people spout bullshit and tell it to each other am I just supposed to just let them get on with it without challenging it? If that is what people do what becomes the accepted way things are is the story that is most likely to be retold rather than the theory that best stands up to the challenge of observed reality. If nothing is ever challenged then the truth will be buried and crowded out by the good story, the nice sounding lie, the pleasant whimsy and the elegant myth. I am hostile to bullshit whenever I come across it. I make no apology for that. I take a pride in it. Unless you can come up with some sensible explanations for how partially inaccurate predictions can be channelled backwards in time to willing recipients to enter their minds while they are asleep then I will dismiss such tales as bullshit. Lotteries don't work like that. Time doesn't work like that. Dreams don't work like that. But apart from all the facts, the theories and the details there is nothing at all wrong with your idea. I don't know who you are so I cannot be hostile to you, personally, only to the ideas you have presented to me. I wish you well and I hope your lifestyle comes together. Martin Willett |
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You are an asshole ... goodbye! |
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Do I take it you haven't won yet? Martin Willett |
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(From the Guestbook) February 26, 2004 - 01:11 AM Janet from United States I just read your article where you state that a person cannot dream the Lottery Numbers. You are definitly wrong there for I have dreamt the pick 3 numbers in the exact order twice so far and have a method of doing this. My winnings from these 2 dreams total $31,880.00. I personally belief anyone could do it with the methods I use. Have a Great Evening! |
Do you care to explain how you can get incomplete predictions of a chaotic process that has yet to happen? Also can you explain how being asleep makes this any easier than concentrating hard when you are awake.
Finally I'd be interested to know what you predict would happen if everybody followed your advice. If we can all dream and get three numbers then surely we just need to get four or five people dreaming together to dream all the right numbers and buy a few tickets to cover the predicted numbers in a syndicate. Great stuff. If this did work then nobody would play the lottery because several hundred thousand skilled dreamers would split the jackpot, the winnings would be pitifully small and nobody who doesn't think they can dream the numbers would want to play.
By the way, have you got any evidence
1) that you have won a lottery
2) that you predicted the numbers in a dream
and 3, can you dream me the results of EuroMillions lottery to be drawn on Friday 26th March, I'll buy the ticket and you can have half my winnings. Promise. What have you got to lose?
http://www.lottery.co.uk/euro-millions.htm
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/