How Did Awkward People Survive Evolution? | A Bit of Optimism

How did awkward people survive evolution? There's this curious and strong correlation between social awkwardness and what researchers call extraordinary achievement or striking talent. People who achieve amazing things in this world, things that are kind of at the tail end of the bell curve, they're actually more likely to be awkward. And the reason for that is this obsessive interest in things. They become obsessed with the details and the minutiae and then trying to put those pieces together in different ways. That obsessiveness then translates into persisting through kind of hard times and challenges, and then also eventually getting to a point where they can achieve something that's really pretty exceptional. That's so interesting. So when I ask why, evolutionarily, would an awkward person even make it? It's because there are huge advantages.