I’m going to win the lottery! I’ll be rich!

Oh no, did I just curse myself?

Have you ever said that to yourself? I mean, do you think saying you’re going to win the lottery makes you unlucky? Some people believe that if you say you will win the lottery, you will not win it. So they think it’s best to wait for you to win it, but never mention it out loud. Is there any rationality in this? Or is it just an irrational superstition?

Well, the definition of hex is a superstition that a person, thing, or influence is supposed to bring bad luck. The key word here is “superstition”. By definition, a superstition is irrational.

Since a curse is an irrational belief, it is silly to think that saying out loud that you will win the lottery will cause you not to win it.

You do not believe me? Well, let’s look at something in popular culture that has to do with hexes. It is believed that if a professional athlete appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine, he will put a curse on him, causing him to underperform his performance, and never again reach the level of performance that placed him on the cover of the magazine in the first place. The media perpetuates this myth by giving examples of athletes who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and then ruined it. Here are some examples they use:

• New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was on the cover in September 2008. Then, in the first game of the season, he tore his ACL and ACL in his left knee.

• In April 2010, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada of the New York Yankees appeared on the cover together. Within a week, Rivera, Petitte and Posada suffered injuries and Jeter went on to have the worst season of his career.

There are many more examples than this, which would lead some people to believe that hexes actually exist. However, this sports curse is simply something created by the media. There are even more examples of athletes who made the cover of Sports Illustrated, but it never affected their performance at all. These things are not reported by the media.

So what does this have to do with the alleged lottery curse? It just shows that a curse is something totally made up and therefore an irrational superstition. It doesn’t matter if you say out loud that you will win the lottery. That alone will not cause you not to win. The most likely explanation would be that you won’t win it because the odds are not in your favor. By design, only a few people actually win the lottery. It has to do with luck and nothing else.