And in my industry experience, having an encyclopedic knowledge of an obscure subject around a bunch of imposters does not go well, doubly so if their career depends on convincing others that they have skills on par with yours despite never putting the time into acquiring them.
To me it's like they demand everyone be fungible when the real power move is using comparative advantage to build a winning team.
The problem isn't that savant's are above these things, but that they matter very little to them. They aren't helpless geniuses who don't know the path to learning social skills, but understand that the reward of those skills just isn't high enough for them personally as it is to most people.
Its hard to relate to that because most human beings are wired to feel good in social situations, but there are those who feel good only when they obsess over the things that they're interested in (and find deep satisfaction from). Put differently, the reward centers that guide most people don't guide them as much. They understand what they're "giving up", but while for others that might be something of great value, it means very little to them.
Then, the savants need to learn that the world doesn't revolve around them.
I think the key to understanding insanity is that it's a visceral, primal thing. It is difficult for one to recognize, let alone control, let alone master. Insanity from genius even more so, because people are socially conditioned to "want to be smart" and that "bad things happen to people who are not smart", even though "being smart" is multivariate. It takes a lot of work to let go. Being able to understand the mental models of these people and empathizing with them is how we can build a kinder world, and maybe capture some of the surplus these people have to offer as a nice bonus.
I know you're railing against the Linus Torvalds man-child types, and I agree that I wouldn't really enjoy working with a person like that. The parent comment wasn't really about excusing poor treatment of others though, it was just describing the isolation that can be felt.
What makes you think it would be easier for that person to develop the social skills than for their peers to learn to understand their work? Maybe those people just neglected to develop their reasoning/coding skills? Or maybe people's brains actually can work in profoundly different ways.
I have met a number of programmers that could be very well defined as 10x and not a single one of them were unpolite or lacking hygiene.
I have met a number of programmers that were rude and lacked hygiene and they were more like fractional or negative.
I see it so often in tech — the “10x” engineer who is just too smart for social norms like polite communication or hygiene. They are not held to them same social standards as others because they are “just different.” In reality, these folks just use the fact that no one else knows how their code works as an excuse for antisocial behavior.
Here’s the thing. If you’re so brilliant, you should be able to learn basic social skills, manners, and hygiene. It’s not that hard. And if you do find it hard, maybe it’s not because you’re a savant who is above these things, but because you have simply neglected to develop that skill set.