[ScottAaronson]

See this previous answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17429093

Sure, inborn talent matters. Hard work matters. And what about the less-appreciated converses of those two qualities: namely, acquired talent and inborn propensity for hard work? :-)

We could also mention drive to seize opportunities, judgment in picking the right problems to work on, social skill to get potential collaborators excited about those problems, and of course luck. And probably 200 other things I forgot. They all matter.

Maybe the key is, instead of struggling against the profile of abilities that fate handed you, to find a subject or problem that's an optimal fit for that profile. Had Darwin been forced to spend his life as a mathematician, Godel as a biologist, or Einstein as an experimentalist, you would never have heard of any of them.