I disagree. It's a self-contradictory point. I was being charitable to call it "negligible" considering the article also refers to the gain as "non-existent."

>"What gain do colourful feathers on birds really have except to draw attention"

When drawing attention gives you a disproportionate advantage to attracting a mate vs. attracting a predator, it's a very important (and non-neglible) gain.

>We should expect some reasonably broad degree of randomness around the value of risk taking.

I don't think this negates the point. Just because the there is a distribution in the value doesn't mean there isn't a statistically significant directionality of that distribution. I can say there's a distribution of individual player height in the NBA, but that doesn't mean we can't draw conclusions about height having generalized value at the population level regarding the chances of making it to professional basketball.