This is the answer which makes the most sense. First, one has to either accept the possibility of supernatural events to make any other story line possible. Rejecting that possibility then we must conclude this is all some sort of dream or hallucination which either one of the characters has created or someother person entirely. It would be most consistent with logic to assume that Hurley is the person with the dream/nightmare because he is the individual who has won the lottery. Unless there is some force in the universe that caused the ping pong balls to come up as the winning number, then the odds of Hurley winning a lottery are probably around 3.7 billion to 1 (that's just a guess but the actual math would be something like 42 x n-1 to the 6th, i.e., we know that the numbers in the game went from 1 to at least 42 (if you froze the tv on your vcr you'd probably be able to identify higher numbered balls but I'm just going by what is actually possible) so you'd then have to assume that the odds of any individual number coming up are 1 in 42. Multiply that by the odds of a second number coming up which would be 1 in 41 because you've removed the first ball drawn from the machine. That total number would then be multiplied by 40 and so on. Of course since the Wiki indicates that one of the show's producers have already discounted this theory we will just have to wait and see when all is said and done.

 out of  found this valuable. Do you find this valuable?