I have been listening to the ancients and have become suspect of ambition.

It is not like if you see ambition as something less than a moral good you will no longer get anything done. You will just turn off this useless modeling of future events in your head.

I suspect in our culture, ambition causes nothing but useless pain and is counter productive at the average as people model their future life up to these highly improbable lottery winning situations.

Climbing Mount Everest is really the best metaphor. Massive risk for basically no reward. The whole idea is objectively stupid but seen as some great accomplishment in our culture.