You may think there is some rational choice to be made about obsessive curiosity. Maybe not.
In 1960, my mom lived near a six year old who could fix electric stuff. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him and brought him things to fix. TV's were no problem; dead radios were great; telephones were cool. He was a super happy kid with a constant enthusiasm and a sparkle in his eye, running home from school every day to see what he could learn and what neighbors had brought for his help. He had thrown circuit breakers in the house many times. One day, there was a blackout and he came down from his room to apologize to this parents, again. They had an idea and they pointed out the window. "Well you really did it this time. Look, the entire city went down." And that was it. He stopped with electronics.
At first he was morose and anxious, but his parents figured he would get used to his new life. He left for college the same disconnected and subdued kid he became at six. My mom bumped into him again around 1990, when he was about 35, and he never did recover: still sad, puffy, disconnected from people, uninspired, hating his job, unhappy with friends.
That's a great contrast. Yes, Feynman had a thriving business fixing electronics as a kid. Difference: his parents didn't worry that he was going to grow up weird. They were happy with what might have become his bus ticket collecting
No. They meant to stop him from his compulsive interest in electronics. They wanted him to play with other kids, play sports, run around. He seemed weird and they thought he would seem weird when he grew up. And running shop that fixes radios didn't look like success to them. (Until recently, "nerd" was a very offensive insult.)
> (Until recently, "nerd" was a very offensive insult.)
In that sense, perhaps society has made a little progress, in socially embracing those that seem eccentric, quirky or uncomfortable - maybe not always for the right reasons, but it allows more people to be themselves and be happy.
I think it's less of actual progress, and more of economy: what was considered nerdy two decades ago, now is the easiest path to both upper-class and 1%-levels of wealth. People don't hate nerds anymore, they want to be them - not because the topics are interesting, but because they're a good career.
There's certainly some of that, but the long tail of the Internet means there are all sorts of communities and real-life meet ups of the strangest obsessions where their interests are celebrated, not made fun of. This means it's safe to declare your weird obsessions. Even if you're family doesn't understand it, they don't have to - theres a community to connect with, whereas previously there was little/no such ability, and Nerd interests were shunned. Now they're the feature of Comic Con, SDCC, Pax, etc.
Rather, the connotations of the word "nerd" have lessened significantly. In the 60s and 70s, it was like what being called an "incel" is today. It was meant to mark you as unlikeable, unpleasant, unattractive, and pretty much outside of the realm of normal human consideration.
Very dubious that a electronics mini-wizard could not figure by himself that it's impossible to take down the electric city distribution system from your house.
I' vaguely remember confronting my father over a similar issue during my electrical experimental days as a kid, asking him why our house had no adequate protection (those days simple fuses where still normal).
