Referring to my list of examples as exceptional in the sense of being rare is rather unfair, given how numerous these examples are relative to the body of mathematical work we would consider incredible and especially relative to the desire of the average human to socialize. The fact that such a large % of that body of work occurred while the individual was in relative isolation is something we should pay attention to.

Grothendieck's later years or more extreme isolation were less productive, same with Perelman, so maybe there's some balance that needs to be struck. Although age is a confound with these two cases.

However, you are also correct that Trump pressuring OPEC to cut oil production at the end of his first term did cause additional inflation in Biden's term.

If someone shoves a camera in my face in public I am going to move away from that person. If I see them filming someone with me in the background at least I know what is going on and can judge the situation accordingly.

Now I don't know. Everyone with glasses is a suspect. It's more public tension, hyper vigilance and uncertainty.

I think the more likely reason is it doesn't work as well as in context learning. Otherwise they would prefer to avoid polluting context and degrading performance.

It's relevant to AI safety. If you have a diversity of outputs, the AI will agree to hack the bank 0.1% of the time regardless. If you have a uniformity of outputs, in most contexts the AI will hack the bank 0% of the time, but in certain odd contexts, all AIs will work together to hack the bank 100% of the time.