“Evolution has favored a species that buys lottery tickets.”
It’s (statistically) bad for the individual but good for the species. Although even buying lottery tickets -or the other natural equivalents is probably deoptimized behavior. I imagine there’s some bayesian optimized approach for a species and the spectrum of risk taking its members would engage in. In contrast I suspect our species performs functionally rather than optimally.
From a purely probabilistic point of view, laying aside personal skill at anything in particular, the odds of a randomly selected lottery player winning the jackpot are probably better than those of a randomly selected garage or dorm-room tinkerer being the next Jobs or Bezos.
So yeah, you probably can’t breed out lottery-playing without also seriously damaging the entrepreneurial spirit.
“Evolution has favored a species that buys lottery tickets.”
It’s (statistically) bad for the individual but good for the species. Although even buying lottery tickets -or the other natural equivalents is probably deoptimized behavior. I imagine there’s some bayesian optimized approach for a species and the spectrum of risk taking its members would engage in. In contrast I suspect our species performs functionally rather than optimally.
From a purely probabilistic point of view, laying aside personal skill at anything in particular, the odds of a randomly selected lottery player winning the jackpot are probably better than those of a randomly selected garage or dorm-room tinkerer being the next Jobs or Bezos.
So yeah, you probably can’t breed out lottery-playing without also seriously damaging the entrepreneurial spirit.