I think it's important to remember that there are two types of progress - evolutionary and revolutionary. By numbers, advancements are overwhelmingly evolution

I think it's important to remember that there are two types of progress - evolutionary and revolutionary. By numbers, advancements are overwhelmingly evolutionary - small steps in a predictable direction. If you want to be a scientist or an inventor or what have you, most of your career is going to be spent on these evolutionary steps. Such evolutionary work is well suited to teams and larger organizations, and results are a consequence of the amount of effort that goes in to them rather than individual competency. However the revolutionary advances which shift our paradigms are extremely important, despite being very rare. Such revolutions can not be planned and thus are rarely the product of large scale collaboration. Maybe an individual has a moment of insight while taking a bath, perhaps some friends on a train have just the right conversation, but it's always a unique mind viewing the problem from a new perspective that upends everything. Yes that person is probably not literally cut off from all of society, but unless you're being ridiculously pedantic "lone genius" is a pretty good description. While as stated it's incredibly dumb to bet everything on being one of these lone geniuses, the fact is societal advance does depend on large numbers of people cultivating unique minds that might glean such rare insights under the right circumstances. Statistically you are much more likely to be successful as an accountant than an artist, but how terrible would life be if therefore no one pursued art?