In practical terms, I would choose the latter since I would be interested in signalling heroism [...]

You mean the former, right? (Former was heroism, latter was laziness.)

the deservingness of those particular labels (lazy, etc) is dubious

I wonder whether there's a misunderstanding here. I was not accusing you of being lazy and selfish and cautious. I was suggesting a hypothetical situation. (Being "daring and altruistic" was not part of that hypothetical situation; it flatly contradicts it.)

I wonder why you ask the question?

Because the statement about courage you quoted appears to me to be badly wrong, and the thought experiment I describe is intended to show what I think is wrong about it.

If courage is "to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart" then someone who is lazy, selfish and cautious will show "courage" by being consistently, visibly and unashamedly lazy, selfish and cautious. There may be some virtue in that, but it doesn't seem to me to have much to do with what is usually called courage.