If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?

Browsing Twitter over lunch today, I clicked on a link that lead to a link that lead … you know how it goes … to an article here about the role of intelligence in determining success: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-12-22/if-you-re-so-smart-why-aren-t-you-rich. The article suggests that intelligence really doesn't count for nearly as much as personality. "He [economist James Heckman, whose results are being explained here] found financial success was correlated with conscientiousness, a personality trait marked by diligence, perseverance and self-discipline."

Bullshit.

If he'd left it at "correlated with personality" I might have gone for it. But conscientiousness? Sorry. Any proposed theory has to take account of counterexamples. Therefore it's obvious that intelligence (as measured in school) doesn't cause riches, because there are people (like me) who looked smart enough in school but aren't rich. But by the same token, I've always gotten high marks for conscientiousness. So where are my millions? (Say, maybe the world owes me something …!)

Really in my case it's pretty simple. I have intelligence and conscientiousness, but I lack courage. Further, the deficiency of courage makes it hard for me to pick a direction and follow it. I am much more comfortable working on what I stumble into. And when I do hold my nose and dive into something, it can look less like courage than recklessness -- my marriage to Wife, when I knew it was going to be really difficult -- was one of these.

I advanced this theory to Marie a while ago too, and she agreed. That in both our cases, we have far more talent than courage and therefore we have wound up doing anonymous things instead of setting the world on fire. Commencement speakers who urge you to shoot for the stars can blow it out their ears.