I don’t think that the “show up neatly groomed and dressed” thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals that is less suitable to a programmer coming to an interview. Both scenarios are about conforming to social norms and for students that happens to be literally neatly groomed/dressed, which for the programmer means no business suit. It’s just more useful to use the phrase neatly groomed/dressed than socially appropriate because for most things socially appropriate is neatly groomed/dressed.
Being socially appropriate is not overrated conditional on IQ – you have already established that the programmer (presumably your high IQ example) is aware of the dangers of coming in like a weirdo in a business suit to an interview. Why wouldn’t the younger version of this person also want to not look like a weirdo to their peers while in school?
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living This is a good book.
Think about all the regrets and bad things that have happened to you, that you don’t know about – the time you dropped money or missed out on a life changing opportunity or mistakes you have made that never got your attention. You probably don’t or won’t because you don’t feel much for things that you don’t know that happened to you. So it is possible to feel no emotion about negative things. You have the power to hold no opinion about things, you just need to cultivate it. Regret is much like fear, you have come to your fate by dreading your fate.