While human social loners fit the mould, I don't think that's the lone point we should get out of this. What is actually beneficial to society (whether mold or human) is diversity in genetics, neuro-diversity, and in general.

>beneficial to society

Isn't the point that being a 'loner' is beneficial to the individual (slimemold), regardless of society?

I wouldn't characterize Bill Gates as a loner in the traditional sense, or even an outcast, but decidedly unique and exceptional.

Loners and outcasts are a subset of a diversity.

So, for one kind of "loner", the psychopaths with their psychopathy, as they relate to general human society and culture:

- do psychopaths prey on and drag down society in most circumstances until there's an "evolutionary bottleneck" and they're the only ones with the will-to-power and ability to bring a "remnant" portion of humanity through dire circumstances that would otherwise lead that portion perishing? ... are they the failsafe?

- is psychopathy an emergent always-negative phenomenon that arises randomly once in a while as a result of random couplings among a pool of people on whom not-quite-psychopathic-behavior-derived-from-genetic-traits confers survival benefits and perhaps overall good to society?

- or are psychopaths on overall good for society? do they always confer benefit even though we perceive them negatively?

- other alternatives?

[edit: punctuation]

I read a game theory paper a while ago (can't find a link, but maybe someone will remember it) that suggested a stable small population of defectors (ie, psychopaths) does confer a benefit to the overall group in a cooperative public goods game. if the group becomes accustomed to having zero defectors (ie, excessively trusting), the spontaneous emergence of even one defector will wreak havoc. if there are too many, the whole thing falls apart because there is no cooperation. so the small population of defectors provides something like immunity to the whole group.

could just be a consequence of the model they chose, but interesting to think about nonetheless. I'd be very grateful if someone could remember the name of the paper!

Speaking as someone who used to worry about people so much, even those large degrees from my circle, that I'd drag myself down to very depressive episodes, I can see how some amount of psychopathy would be selected evolutionarily. Besides that, any work where you're dealing with people in pain such as a soldier, police, medics, etc, it's not often beneficial to be squeamish to others' pain, especially as a medical professional since the pain (negativity) you induce will often have positive effects. Perhaps psychopathy is just an extremely selective form of this.

... and the story here is that it can be a real stretch to recognize the value in slimy behavior.

When you say "neuro-diversity" is beneficial, what exactly do you mean?

Take curiosity. If everyone in the village is highly curious and off exploring the jungle with tigers, everyone in the village, sooner or later, dies.

On the other hand if everyone in the village sees tigers behind every bush and stays put within the safe confines of village walls, no one in the village learns how to tame or hunt the tiger.

A Tiger here being a placeholder for any threat/unknown the group faces, requiring talents as yet not known to the group.

If you do find a village that has managed to Not fall victim to both those scenarios think about what it tells you about the distribution of curious/non-curious within the village.

This. I remember there being articles about Neandertals having almost no curious explorers, being very catious, whereas homo sapiens skeletons found in swamps, with deadly mushrooms in their stomach and whatnot. So even though Neandertals had a more advanced brain during their time compared to the homo sapien competitor, they died because they did not make it, maybe because they did not take enough risk.

>So even though Neandertals had a more advanced brain

I'm aware that it's accepted Neandertals might've been as capable in many areas of survival, however I'm not aware that it's been accepted they had more advanced brains. Got a source?

I remember hearing somewhere, one source I remember [1], that despite their intelligence, they tended to rove in smaller tribes partly perhaps due to less inter-communication skills, which may've led to a disadvantage in warfare.

Or perhaps, my own thoughts, the 'loner genes', for lack of a better term, iterated more throughout the Neaderthal ancestry which led to smaller tribes. Another guess, maybe forested Eurasia, which may act as natural barriers compared to more open African plains caused a selection for smaller groups or gave way to human genetics that naturally selected for smaller groups. Of course, take it all with a grain of salt.

1. https://www.history.com/news/neanderthals-likely-lived-in-sm...

We know they had a larger brain volume than us, even when correcting for overall body size. That much is an established fact. What that means, if anything, regarding their behavior & abilities is strictly, and highly, speculative.

(Still lots of fun to think about. If I were to hazard a guess, it would be something along the lines of greater neoteny in h. Sapiens sapiens. For an analogy, compare dogs and wolves. Wolves have larger brains, but dogs have a greater ability to read social cues.)

Look at Satya Nadella and his spl needs kid. Good example of how dealing with someone with diff needs shapes ones experiences and thinking and actions. He constantly talks about empathy in ways you won't find others doing.

Ofcourse what you learn from dealing with people with different needs depends on your own personality, needs, circumstances etc.

What is interesting to me at work, is lot of people struggle to deal with each other because of differences in needs, personalities, skillgaps, knowledgegaps. And as the world gets more complex, as info explodes, these gaps and differences increase.

Those people who think about and try to deal with differences in needs (like those who deal with autistic kids), will learn things that those who filter out people in the group they can't deal with wont.

For people that flagged my message: "The word neurodiversity is attributed to Judy Singer, an Australian social scientist on the autism spectrum, who used the term in her sociology honors thesis published in 1999." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity). You can bury your head in the sand, that doesn't change the meaning of words.

Also, it's is quite ironical that people advocating for it can't handle an opinion deviating slightly from their own beliefs.

NO. People aren't flagging you for defining neurodiversity accurately. They're flagging you for questioning that high-needs people with Autism add no value to human society.

I'm happy to say it: that's a pretty terrible opinion to have.

Really remarkable that somebody could completely miss the fact that most people consider the opinion "I'm skeptical these people have any value whatsoever" execrable.

People who think and act differently, not just people who have genetics that physically allow them to be different (though genetics can result in expressed neuro-diversity as well).

A disadvantage in one situation can be a blessing in another situation. A savant who has Aspergers, someone who has OCD during a Covid-19 epidemic, etc...

I wonder what happened with the other, dead reply to your comment. Looking at the other comments from that user there seems to be something wrong with YC News or someone with lots of karma was triggered and went on a rampage.

Well, phrases like this are just empty, negative hyperbole:

> Creative people make for lousy project planners and directors.

That warranted the downvotes I think.

This activity can sometimes be annoying in biology experiments, especially when you get down to the bacterial size and do measurements on the population.

Think the average expression of gene X is 100? Well, it is, with 90% of the population expressing the gene at 111 and 10% not expressing it at all.

Unlike computers, cells like to do their own thing :(

>Unlike computers, cells like to do their own thing

As an ex-repair tech, I can't applaud this comment.

> Unlike computers, cells like to do their own thing :(

Fairly the same, if everything at the lowest level is just programmed to do what occurs.

technically true, the best kind of true

i can assure you that if you counted the amount of processors or perhaps independent computers in what's commonly referred to as a 'computer' you'd be surprised the thing actually responds to input in a somewhat predictable way.

This makes me think of how certain types of people, i.e. the experimental, inventors, entrepreneurs, artists, etc, who live life to the beat of their own drums, don't really ever let society tell them how they should act, but if they ever strike gold, the rest of society immediate starts to follow along using their products, or mimicking their style. Also the majority of these types of people never strike gold, but they will wander on their own path regardless - very similarly to those 'loners'.

Mandatory Agent Smith speech follows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrBdYmStZJ4

I feel validated by mold

We are mold people now

You seem like a fungi

I think being a loner is a high variance strategy. In a majority of the time, it hurts you in our society. But certain individuals will see huge levels of success.

It's similar to the genetics of schizophrenia. Families with genetic schizophrenia and more specifically individuals with high chances of mental illness often see bifurcated life outcomes, they are both more likely to end up down and out, homeless, in a mental hospital etc. But they are also more likely to see outsized success, academically and business wise. This has been studied and proven. It's common among siblings, one succumbing to schizophrenia, the other reaching upper echelons of society.

> I think being a loner is a high variance strategy. In a majority of the time, it hurts you in our society. But certain individuals will see huge levels of success.

I have been thinking through this question quite a lot recently. In an employment scenario loners often appear to be driven to manage or encompass all aspects of their domain. This leads to a breadth of knowledge and skills.

If this pattern has occurred across their entire life, then they can appear to be highly intelligent, "across everything", driven, etc - or they can appear frenetic, unfocused and disorganised.

Well, be careful not to assume that the modern-day loner is the same as the Pleistocene-era loner.

I'm both somewhat shy and very much introverted. I don't like artificially-created social situations. But I'll talk at great length to family members and people I work closely with.

If I were in a Pleistocene tribe where basically I'm surrounded by 120 members of my extended family, coworkers, etc. etc., I'd probably talk a lot more. I like social interactions, I'm just uncomfortable in novel situations and I don't like small talk.

True, our modern societies where most people meet strangers often are historically unusual. Before industrialization the vast majority of population lived their lives in small village communities where everybody knew each other. Traits that might be harmful today weren't necessarily so back then.