One of the reasons a lot of things look like gambling is that a lot of things look like gambling. Hunting, gathering, and other baseline pre-civilization survival activities look like gambling. Dating looks like gambling. Reproduction even looks like gambling with each offspring, as a product of genetic recombination, being a dice roll. Investing, of course, looks like gambling.

It's why we get so addicted to gambling. We're built for it because a lot of legitimate real things look like gambling.