You are making the same category error that the parent is talking about. It’s not a rational risk/reward calculation.

It’s more like a compulsion / addiction to the soothing / hopeful feeling that people feel for a few minutes when they think about the problems in their life that would be alleviated by winning.

Remember that the lottery is effectively the same game that used to be called “running numbers” when mob families ran it in the 20th century. The government though encouraging gambling addiction at the time was not worth the social costs. Now those costs are apparently the fault of the addict / family and not the government/ lottery contractor.