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I highly agree, in all honesty, majority of people don't care about EVs may it + or -, what they have in their eyes is the price. If the price is huge no matter what is the chance, they will bet on it. After all, the bet wouldn't make them any poorer but the win will be a life changer for them (given in your example)
That's true to a large degree - apparently the majority of adults in the UK play some sort of lottery games despite very low odds of winning. Most people may not be familiar with the concept of EV, but they'd still care if EV was high enough, i.e. a lot of people would not be interested in taking a $1 bet when they could win $1 million, but the odds of winning were 1:10 million, but probably everyone (maybe except religious Muslims) would take it if the odds were 1:10 (not that it'll ever happen). So the higher the EV, the more they care.