> 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.