Warren Buffett - an aspie?

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TimesOfLondon-WarrenBuffett

In the light of the financial crisis - look at one of the major players.

I would not be surprised to find him on the spectrum. He is such an independent thinker, and has a perspective and discipline that is so much more focused than the average person.

Sounds like he could be an Aspie. I hate that people made nasty comments about him though.

Aspies seem to have family histories of severe mental illness-my own father is bipolar and would abuse me mentally and physically seemingly for his own aggrandizement. Britney Spears's son Jayden is showing signs of autism according to the tabloids, and we all know that Britney is nucking futs. The good thing with her is that she's being treated so that Jayden will have a chance at a normal life. Some people on the Autism Speaks boards have claimed that the latest boogeyman among parents, mitochondrial dysfunction, is at the root of both mental illness and autism. Certainly, John Best is nuttier than a fruitcake, and his son has pretty severe autism. Many aspies have had their lives made much worse by uncaring or abusive parents who viewed their kids as trash to be discarded or whipping boys to take frustrations out on. Considering that, and Buffett's indifference to the trappings of wealth, his dislike of any change to his routine, his limited diet, and his savantlike business and financial talents, I think that he really is on the spectrum. If he had chosen a real biographer instead of an investment analyst to write his magnum opus, we might have gotten some speculation on Buffett's possible autism. See, all that's needed for aspies to become rich beyond their wildest dreams are the right special interests. Trains and Star Trek won't make you rich. Finance will.

Warren Buffett cannot be an Aspie.

He's too NT to be one.

Every time I see a video clip of Warren Buffett his Aspieness just jumps out at me. Bill Gates is perhaps more obviously on the spectrum. In their interview with Charlie Rose, Gates was seen doing the stereotypical Aspie thing of rocking back and forth. But Buffett, though he appeared very composed in that interview, said a lot of inappropriate things. Jokes about sperm for instance should be left out of an interview to be broadcast to the world. Buffett did not seem to know that. In other interviews or public speeches, Buffett is often disheveled and appears to be sweating uncontrollably. Some have mentioned his fixed routines and his first wife talks about a man who is simply unable to take care of himself. And yet he has become the world’s richest man from what most would agree is genius-savant abilities. As an investor myself, I have to say that what Buffett has done for investing is the equivalent of what Einstein did for physics or what Wittgenstein did for philosophy. Even if you do not agree that Buffett is on the spectrum, there is no denying his exceptional skills in harnessing wealth from financial markets.

Very interesting article.

Let's flip this, and ask if an NT could have done what Buffett and Gates have done? It seems that their laser focus and savant abilities have enabled them to make more money than any other individual people who have ever lived. Gates was the world's richest man for an incredible 13 years. Others have noticed the similarities between how a computer works and how the aspie brain works. Computers have been one of mankind's greatest inventions.

The inventors of the light bulb and alternating current (Edison and Tesla) were definitely considered odd. Edison was repeatedly called stupid during his school years, and eventually dropped out to tinker. Tesla had little use for social niceties, but he was so brilliant that not even we can understand some of his patents. Without those two men, modern society would not exist. Now we have Gates and Buffett, who have revolutionized the world yet again but are socially awkward, and in Buffett's case he can't care for himself, Susan viewed him as a charity case and married him because she felt sorry for him.

Indeed, I think one of our society's problems is that it is TOO NT, valuing social networking and brown nosing over results. Anybody who has ever worked in the bowels of a huge corporation knows that all those expensively educated twentysomethings do all day is gossip, backstab, and brown nose. Nobody bothers to do any work. It's always the aspies doing the actual work, if they get hired at all. Employers value "fitting in" to a corporate culture more than getting any work done, so aspies are abandoned to scrape by on government welfare payments. I really think that if society doesn't start valuing aspieism a little more, we'll be in extremely deep trouble.