Humans are good at resisting things outside their comfort zones. Strong incentives select for people who don't have to leave their comfort zones to pursue them.

Most of the nerds I knew when I was young were nerds because they valued their interests more than the "boring mundane stuff" around wealth, status, and power. Some of them changed their minds later, but most of them didn't. Once you start seeing yourself as a "person interested in X", it gets difficult to become something else.