My experience has been that most "smart" people are actually high-functioning autistic savants. I mean, if they were actually +2 std deviations above on the whole enchilada, their lives wouldn't be such a mess.
You can make a lot of money and still be a hot mess. Look at celebrities. Alpha nerds are just a variation on the theme.
I think that might be colored by the "culture" of tech workers where you happen to be, that has certainly not been my experience. The smart folks I've met in tech, including the outright geniuses, have been almost universally well-rounded with a strong set of "soft skills" and typically a widely varied set of interests outside of their work specialty. Indeed, I'd describe them as "fully fleshed out human beings", perhaps more so than the average human being in fact. The number of "smart tech workers" I've come across who I would describe as "high-functioning autistic savants" I could count on the fingers of one hand, and even then that description would be a decidedly uncharitable characterization for them.
Wasn't talking specifically about tech workers. I was talking about academically gifted "smart" people I've known in various walks of life who are, generally speaking, not happy.
If their lives aren't a mess, they're not the ones I'm talking about.
I don't disagree with you. But celebrities have a far wider audience. Your rockstar programmer doesn't have that.
A lot of social problems disappear when you're accepted as a famous accomplished person. So a celebrity can be weird and not face the same social isolation.
Technical skills have higher economic value but lower social status than skills in the arts. An eccentric painter or musician achieves a level of cachet that an eccentric programmer doesn't. Dysfunction has a certain glamour if you have artistic talent; there's no such thing as a tortured engineer.
As an alpha-nerd, social isolation is just a symptom.
The pathology is that we started with a weak arm and a strong arm, and most of our parents and teachers downplayed the importance of the weak arm while encouraging us to work the absolute shit out of the strong one.
Then they send us out into the world looking like teenagers who just discovered xtube. The world can smell weakness and throws loads of curve-balls at the weak arm, and most of us never notice because we're still too obsessed with the other arm.
You can make a lot of money and still be a hot mess. Look at celebrities. Alpha nerds are just a variation on the theme.