My point was that lotto tickets are a bad decision that works out well for some people. Starting a startup is a good decision that works out poorly for some people.
It's just not helpful to draw the comparison; it's like hearing someone say they like a comedian, and then pointing out that John Wayne Gacy was a popular party performer. The fact that distribution A contains outliers from Distribution B doesn't mean that A and B are even roughly comparable.
1. The relevant question is not "startup versus nothing", it's "startup versus lifestyle business". How do you know that choosing a startup in that context is a good decision?
2. I wasn't claiming that startups and lottery tickets are at all the same sort of thing. I was making a point about saying "X, Y and Z founded startups and it worked really well for them": that just isn't good evidence that startups are good in general, or even for any particular (however rare) sort of person, unless you can say what's special about X, Y and Z other than that their startups happened to succeed.
It's just not helpful to draw the comparison; it's like hearing someone say they like a comedian, and then pointing out that John Wayne Gacy was a popular party performer. The fact that distribution A contains outliers from Distribution B doesn't mean that A and B are even roughly comparable.