Ah, you misunderstand what I mean.
When I say "where he ended up in life", I don't mean his job, where he lives, etc. These are irrelevant material conditions. I mean who he is as a person. How he carries himself, his perspectives, the set of mental frameworks he's capable of utilizing, etc. Essentially "could he have wounded up contented and emotionally healthy" is what I assert is effectively impossible. How could he have? Without having the experience to internalize, process, interpret, and evade what is left to reject? How is he to know what he does not value? And my point even extends beyond that, it is not a utilitarian one.
> he'd probably say that the most vital decision he ever made was rejecting the "deep and woeful strife" that came from his ultra-disciplined, intellectual, and otherwise profoundly empty childhood.
This too isn't quite understanding what I mean, along a few axes. I think I'll cast the same point in different light and context:
No life which is spent from cradle to grave without ever knowing deep and personal loss can have claim to have been a proper or healthy life, or to be truly human at that. It is an existence left stunted and incomplete. The take away from this is not that we are to maximize our propriety or healthiness by killing those closest to us. What I broadcast is excruciatingly a non-dualistic, anti-utilitarian signal.
> it seems hard to argue that the painful childhood he rejected is the only way that could have happened.
I don't mean to imply that the environmental stress from being raised as a child prodigy is particularly unique in substance. Only that the stress (in a sense which extends beyond the shallow emotional sense of the word) with a valence aligned with the experiencer at that moment in time is an essential part to living.