&gt; People wasting time on things that have an extremely low probability is still a waste of time at the expense of everyone else currently living on the planet.<p>If your views were policy, we would have no modern medicine or agriculture, people would have an average lifetime of 30 years, and ignorance would be the norm In other words, we would live in the world that actually existed when your views were policy.<p>&gt; ... that when he wins big we&#x27;ll have all the bread in the world. He never won, then he died.<p>He didn&#x27;t win because he didn&#x27;t understand probability, like most lottery players today. He would have been better off spending his limited resources on feeding and educating his children.<p>I&#x27;m sure he loved his children and was a valuable person, but the story might have had a nicer outcome if he had had an education -- an education with roots in science.