>We've missed out on so much original science and progress because these smart idiots threw away their talents on building machines to game the casino, when they could have made game-changing contributions to fundamental original research.

The vast majority of people who succeed in finance are very ambitious; if finance wasn't an option they'd just have found some other way to make money, not suffer as a peon doing fundamental research for mediocre pay in a lab somewhere. Just be glad they didn't go into politics where their ambition could have done even more damage.