Page 1 of 2 [ 17 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 36,524
Location: Long Island, New York

27 Jan 2025, 12:56 pm

Bill Gates: Trump, Musk and how my neurodiversity made me

Quote:
Gates has just finished the autobiography of his early life, Source Code, which is why he is in uncharacteristically reflective mode, trying to make sense of his astonishing career. “I suppose I am turning 70 this year, Microsoft is 50 and the Gates Foundation is 25, so I decided to take a crack at it. I don’t like to look back that much because there is so much stuff to look forward to — the innovations in vaccines, AI, nutrition, clean energy — but it’s ended up being fun.”

The book is surprisingly moving about how the brilliant, neurodiverse coder came to set up Microsoft with the sideburned Paul Allen and lead the tech boom before deciding to rescue the world, giving away more than $59 billion through his foundation to help eradicate polio and eliminate malaria and HIV, fuelled mostly by Diet Coke.

It’s a fascinating portrait of a complicated, challenging child who would be diagnosed “on the autism spectrum” if he were growing up today, he explains. “My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, missed social cues and could be rude or inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others.” He still rocks back and forth like a metronome as he talks, but he’s learnt to embrace being different. “This might help those raising a kid who doesn’t fit the norm,” he agrees.

But in Gates’s case, he thinks his superpower is his neurodiversity and ability to hyperfocus — he can remember all the numberplates of his first employees — combined with an insane drive and energy. “You need stamina. I was also optimistic and not risk-averse and my appetite for, ‘Let’s go try this thing,’ is high.” He still loves a rollercoaster ride as much as setting up a new company.

The small skinny boy with the Barbie blond hair found it hard to fit in. “The grand notion that I was different didn’t occur to me, but you’d see it at times. I was still goofing around, then one day I had to do a report on a state and I turned in 200 pages on Delaware, when the other kids turned in fewer than ten. I knew I could focus when I was curious. But it signalled me out as a weirdo. My social skills were slow to develop with my peers.”

His parents tried their best. His mother encouraged her unsporty son to sign up for tennis lessons, skiing, Scouts and football. “I only won the wheelbarrow race. We had adults around a lot and she pushed me to serve hors d’oeuvres and coffee and chat.” The young Gates became increasingly belligerent and withdrawn. “They found me difficult and uncommunicative, but that turned out to be a good thing as they took me to a therapist, and he focused me away from battling my parents to battling the world.”

In the Seventies, no one understood about neurodiversity. “If they ever invent a pill where they could say, ‘OK, your social skills will be normal, but your ability to concentrate would also be normal,’ I wouldn’t take the pill. Maybe I am forgetting how painful it was, but I needed my neurodiversity to write that software; I could do all that stuff in my head. That takes a lot of concentration. I wrote my first code as a young teenager on a hike in the snow when I was tired and wet, and I used it later for Microsoft.”

Gates was soon teaching his peers computer studies, while also being paid to find a way to computerise the school timetable. “He was just a little kid who’d grasped the importance of this machine. He was also a great gamer and hacker. But without that computer, he could have gone off the track,” his old maths teacher, Frederick Wright, told me.

Harvard days
Harvard was the obvious next step. “I took twice as many courses as everyone else — I nearly killed myself. Even my Greek writing class was super-interesting.” But for the first time he realised he wasn’t going to be the best mathematician, however hard he tried. Every kid in his advanced maths class was the best in their school. “It was, ‘Oh s**t, there may be people better than me at math.’ ” Would he have preferred to win a Nobel prize instead of becoming a billionaire? “There is no Nobel prize in math — that is an interesting thing, because Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician,” he says.

“My friends were like, ‘You are lucky [that word again], you are the best at computing.’ But for ages I was like, ‘It’s too easy.’ ”

Within days of arriving, Gates was at Harvard’s computers, putting in 674 hours one March, only remembering to wash his sheets once every six weeks. Harry Lewis, his Harvard professor, who taught him applied mathematics, tells me, “He was more mature than the other students and willing to question adults. The first day I showed them the pancake problem [a mathematical sorting question involving different-sized pancakes] and two days later he came back to show me he could do it better. He always wanted a challenge. I wasn’t surprised when he dropped out — I just wish I’d invested in him.” Gates smiles at this.

But he keeps coming back to the word lucky. “You don’t end up with a Microsoft result, being on top of the world, unless an unbelievable number of things converge: the year I am born, the way my parents are, being a white male in the United States, having a grandmother shaping my competitive vibe, teachers who said, ‘Your kid is weird but smart,’ my marriage to Melinda that kept me grounded.”


I have left out Gates opinions about hot button political topics of the moment and current controversies about him as a person.

In my first few years on WP the topic of is Bill Gates autistic was a topic often discussed. People who suspected he was autistic pointed to his quirkyness and rocking motions. People who disagreed pointed out it takes a lot of social skills to create a company that at the time dominated the tech world.

On our site Gates was seen by some as an important example of a person armchair diagnosed based on no more than social awkwardness in order to boost the armchair diagnosers ego. A larger part of the is Autism a curse or gift debate.

From the 1980s until that time the computer world was tribal based on operating system preference. What operating system you preferred often defined how people thought of your personality. The people who preferred other operating systems were seen as stupid, sheep, evil etc.

While I have always been skeptical of armchair diagnosis of people especially those who have not disclosed I have always highly suspected him. The rocking motion was more than the usual social awkwardness. Also Microsoft success was not just Gates but a combination of Gates and Steve Balmer. Balmer was the uber extraverted salesman type who complemented Gates.

Now it is 2025. Gates is still a controversial public figure whose opinions are still quoted in the mainstream media. But it is not nearly the same. Microsoft is still an important tech company but not dominant. Operating systems have been superseded in importance by other technologies. Gates has not been involved with Microsoft in years.

Here on WP while there is still disagreement on the merits of being autistic it is generally a lot more nuanced these days.

A bitter controversy back in the day was self diagnosis. For those who still care about the issue the article does not definitively say. Would have been diagnosed back in the day and has been diagnosed are two different things. There are more interviews and the book itself upcoming so we will see.

While there is no way of definitively knowing if a public figure is autistic. I am comfortable enough to move him from the “highly suspect is autistic” category to the “is autistic” category.

It was a shock to see that headline because I have not thought about Bill Gates never mind is he autistic in years.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


carlos55
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 5 Mar 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,998

27 Jan 2025, 3:42 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Bill Gates: Trump, Musk and how my neurodiversity made me
Quote:
Gates has just finished the autobiography of his early life, Source Code, which is why he is in uncharacteristically reflective mode, trying to make sense of his astonishing career. “I suppose I am turning 70 this year, Microsoft is 50 and the Gates Foundation is 25, so I decided to take a crack at it. I don’t like to look back that much because there is so much stuff to look forward to — the innovations in vaccines, AI, nutrition, clean energy — but it’s ended up being fun.”

The book is surprisingly moving about how the brilliant, neurodiverse coder came to set up Microsoft with the sideburned Paul Allen and lead the tech boom before deciding to rescue the world, giving away more than $59 billion through his foundation to help eradicate polio and eliminate malaria and HIV, fuelled mostly by Diet Coke.

It’s a fascinating portrait of a complicated, challenging child who would be diagnosed “on the autism spectrum” if he were growing up today, he explains. “My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, missed social cues and could be rude or inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others.” He still rocks back and forth like a metronome as he talks, but he’s learnt to embrace being different. “This might help those raising a kid who doesn’t fit the norm,” he agrees.

But in Gates’s case, he thinks his superpower is his neurodiversity and ability to hyperfocus — he can remember all the numberplates of his first employees — combined with an insane drive and energy. “You need stamina. I was also optimistic and not risk-averse and my appetite for, ‘Let’s go try this thing,’ is high.” He still loves a rollercoaster ride as much as setting up a new company.

The small skinny boy with the Barbie blond hair found it hard to fit in. “The grand notion that I was different didn’t occur to me, but you’d see it at times. I was still goofing around, then one day I had to do a report on a state and I turned in 200 pages on Delaware, when the other kids turned in fewer than ten. I knew I could focus when I was curious. But it signalled me out as a weirdo. My social skills were slow to develop with my peers.”

His parents tried their best. His mother encouraged her unsporty son to sign up for tennis lessons, skiing, Scouts and football. “I only won the wheelbarrow race. We had adults around a lot and she pushed me to serve hors d’oeuvres and coffee and chat.” The young Gates became increasingly belligerent and withdrawn. “They found me difficult and uncommunicative, but that turned out to be a good thing as they took me to a therapist, and he focused me away from battling my parents to battling the world.”

In the Seventies, no one understood about neurodiversity. “If they ever invent a pill where they could say, ‘OK, your social skills will be normal, but your ability to concentrate would also be normal,’ I wouldn’t take the pill. Maybe I am forgetting how painful it was, but I needed my neurodiversity to write that software; I could do all that stuff in my head. That takes a lot of concentration. I wrote my first code as a young teenager on a hike in the snow when I was tired and wet, and I used it later for Microsoft.”

Gates was soon teaching his peers computer studies, while also being paid to find a way to computerise the school timetable. “He was just a little kid who’d grasped the importance of this machine. He was also a great gamer and hacker. But without that computer, he could have gone off the track,” his old maths teacher, Frederick Wright, told me.

Harvard days
Harvard was the obvious next step. “I took twice as many courses as everyone else — I nearly killed myself. Even my Greek writing class was super-interesting.” But for the first time he realised he wasn’t going to be the best mathematician, however hard he tried. Every kid in his advanced maths class was the best in their school. “It was, ‘Oh s**t, there may be people better than me at math.’ ” Would he have preferred to win a Nobel prize instead of becoming a billionaire? “There is no Nobel prize in math — that is an interesting thing, because Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician,” he says.

“My friends were like, ‘You are lucky [that word again], you are the best at computing.’ But for ages I was like, ‘It’s too easy.’ ”

Within days of arriving, Gates was at Harvard’s computers, putting in 674 hours one March, only remembering to wash his sheets once every six weeks. Harry Lewis, his Harvard professor, who taught him applied mathematics, tells me, “He was more mature than the other students and willing to question adults. The first day I showed them the pancake problem [a mathematical sorting question involving different-sized pancakes] and two days later he came back to show me he could do it better. He always wanted a challenge. I wasn’t surprised when he dropped out — I just wish I’d invested in him.” Gates smiles at this.

But he keeps coming back to the word lucky. “You don’t end up with a Microsoft result, being on top of the world, unless an unbelievable number of things converge: the year I am born, the way my parents are, being a white male in the United States, having a grandmother shaping my competitive vibe, teachers who said, ‘Your kid is weird but smart,’ my marriage to Melinda that kept me grounded.”


I have left out Gates opinions about hot button political topics of the moment and current controversies about him as a person.

In my first few years on WP the topic of is Bill Gates autistic was a topic often discussed. People who suspected he was autistic pointed to his quirkyness and rocking motions. People who disagreed pointed out it takes a lot of social skills to create a company that at the time dominated the tech world.

On our site Gates was seen by some as an important example of a person armchair diagnosed based on no more than social awkwardness in order to boost the armchair diagnosers ego. A larger part of the is Autism a curse or gift debate.

From the 1980s until that time the computer world was tribal based on operating system preference. What operating system you preferred often defined how people thought of your personality. The people who preferred other operating systems were seen as stupid, sheep, evil etc.

While I have always been skeptical of armchair diagnosis of people especially those who have not disclosed I have always highly suspected him. The rocking motion was more than the usual social awkwardness. Also Microsoft success was not just Gates but a combination of Gates and Steve Balmer. Balmer was the uber extraverted salesman type who complemented Gates.

Now it is 2025. Gates is still a controversial public figure whose opinions are still quoted in the mainstream media. But it is not nearly the same. Microsoft is still an important tech company but not dominant. Operating systems have been superseded in importance by other technologies. Gates has not been involved with Microsoft in years.

Here on WP while there is still disagreement on the merits of being autistic it is generally a lot more nuanced these days.

A bitter controversy back in the day was self diagnosis. For those who still care about the issue the article does not definitively say. Would have been diagnosed back in the day and has been diagnosed are two different things. There are more interviews and the book itself upcoming so we will see.

While there is no way of definitively knowing if a public figure is autistic. I am comfortable enough to move him from the “highly suspect is autistic” category to the “is autistic” category.

It was a shock to see that headline because I have not thought about Bill Gates never mind is he autistic in years.


Except he`s never been diagnosed, he`s never been diagnosed because what ever his "difference" was never really a problem or got in the way of living in a NT world or interacting with NTs and being hugely successful.

Its the same with Musk.

Autism diagnosis is based on deficits alone that are problems enough for people or parents of to get diagnosed.

His comments are nothing more than the "we`re all a little autistic" you often hear from NT`s, usually made out of ignorance than anything else.

70% of autism is unidentified brain condition, its like two people with unknown conditions finding they have something in common.


_________________
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."

- George Bernie Shaw


AsaboveAsbelow
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 2 Jan 2025
Gender: Female
Posts: 72
Location: Southern dolomitic, northern mediterranean.

27 Jan 2025, 5:42 pm



He went diagnosed after a 1:1 with Bill Gates. (You need to open this, is "Bill Gross on His Asperger's Diagnosis and its Advantages" nothing weirdo)


_________________
"Before selling his soul to the painting, he didn’t see it was a caricature He doesn’t seek a pact with the devil if it’s an eternal pain And he lives on the edge between a flying castle and a world inland Now a shadow moves in Italy, stealing while pretending to be a parody Do you know a road, perhaps a secondary one? Gondolier, take him away"
Rancore - Arlecchino


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 36,524
Location: Long Island, New York

27 Jan 2025, 7:40 pm

carlos55 wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
Bill Gates: Trump, Musk and how my neurodiversity made me
Quote:
Gates has just finished the autobiography of his early life, Source Code, which is why he is in uncharacteristically reflective mode, trying to make sense of his astonishing career. “I suppose I am turning 70 this year, Microsoft is 50 and the Gates Foundation is 25, so I decided to take a crack at it. I don’t like to look back that much because there is so much stuff to look forward to — the innovations in vaccines, AI, nutrition, clean energy — but it’s ended up being fun.”

The book is surprisingly moving about how the brilliant, neurodiverse coder came to set up Microsoft with the sideburned Paul Allen and lead the tech boom before deciding to rescue the world, giving away more than $59 billion through his foundation to help eradicate polio and eliminate malaria and HIV, fuelled mostly by Diet Coke.

It’s a fascinating portrait of a complicated, challenging child who would be diagnosed “on the autism spectrum” if he were growing up today, he explains. “My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, missed social cues and could be rude or inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others.” He still rocks back and forth like a metronome as he talks, but he’s learnt to embrace being different. “This might help those raising a kid who doesn’t fit the norm,” he agrees.

But in Gates’s case, he thinks his superpower is his neurodiversity and ability to hyperfocus — he can remember all the numberplates of his first employees — combined with an insane drive and energy. “You need stamina. I was also optimistic and not risk-averse and my appetite for, ‘Let’s go try this thing,’ is high.” He still loves a rollercoaster ride as much as setting up a new company.

The small skinny boy with the Barbie blond hair found it hard to fit in. “The grand notion that I was different didn’t occur to me, but you’d see it at times. I was still goofing around, then one day I had to do a report on a state and I turned in 200 pages on Delaware, when the other kids turned in fewer than ten. I knew I could focus when I was curious. But it signalled me out as a weirdo. My social skills were slow to develop with my peers.”

His parents tried their best. His mother encouraged her unsporty son to sign up for tennis lessons, skiing, Scouts and football. “I only won the wheelbarrow race. We had adults around a lot and she pushed me to serve hors d’oeuvres and coffee and chat.” The young Gates became increasingly belligerent and withdrawn. “They found me difficult and uncommunicative, but that turned out to be a good thing as they took me to a therapist, and he focused me away from battling my parents to battling the world.”

In the Seventies, no one understood about neurodiversity. “If they ever invent a pill where they could say, ‘OK, your social skills will be normal, but your ability to concentrate would also be normal,’ I wouldn’t take the pill. Maybe I am forgetting how painful it was, but I needed my neurodiversity to write that software; I could do all that stuff in my head. That takes a lot of concentration. I wrote my first code as a young teenager on a hike in the snow when I was tired and wet, and I used it later for Microsoft.”

Gates was soon teaching his peers computer studies, while also being paid to find a way to computerise the school timetable. “He was just a little kid who’d grasped the importance of this machine. He was also a great gamer and hacker. But without that computer, he could have gone off the track,” his old maths teacher, Frederick Wright, told me.

Harvard days
Harvard was the obvious next step. “I took twice as many courses as everyone else — I nearly killed myself. Even my Greek writing class was super-interesting.” But for the first time he realised he wasn’t going to be the best mathematician, however hard he tried. Every kid in his advanced maths class was the best in their school. “It was, ‘Oh s**t, there may be people better than me at math.’ ” Would he have preferred to win a Nobel prize instead of becoming a billionaire? “There is no Nobel prize in math — that is an interesting thing, because Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician,” he says.

“My friends were like, ‘You are lucky [that word again], you are the best at computing.’ But for ages I was like, ‘It’s too easy.’ ”

Within days of arriving, Gates was at Harvard’s computers, putting in 674 hours one March, only remembering to wash his sheets once every six weeks. Harry Lewis, his Harvard professor, who taught him applied mathematics, tells me, “He was more mature than the other students and willing to question adults. The first day I showed them the pancake problem [a mathematical sorting question involving different-sized pancakes] and two days later he came back to show me he could do it better. He always wanted a challenge. I wasn’t surprised when he dropped out — I just wish I’d invested in him.” Gates smiles at this.

But he keeps coming back to the word lucky. “You don’t end up with a Microsoft result, being on top of the world, unless an unbelievable number of things converge: the year I am born, the way my parents are, being a white male in the United States, having a grandmother shaping my competitive vibe, teachers who said, ‘Your kid is weird but smart,’ my marriage to Melinda that kept me grounded.”


I have left out Gates opinions about hot button political topics of the moment and current controversies about him as a person.

In my first few years on WP the topic of is Bill Gates autistic was a topic often discussed. People who suspected he was autistic pointed to his quirkyness and rocking motions. People who disagreed pointed out it takes a lot of social skills to create a company that at the time dominated the tech world.

On our site Gates was seen by some as an important example of a person armchair diagnosed based on no more than social awkwardness in order to boost the armchair diagnosers ego. A larger part of the is Autism a curse or gift debate.

From the 1980s until that time the computer world was tribal based on operating system preference. What operating system you preferred often defined how people thought of your personality. The people who preferred other operating systems were seen as stupid, sheep, evil etc.

While I have always been skeptical of armchair diagnosis of people especially those who have not disclosed I have always highly suspected him. The rocking motion was more than the usual social awkwardness. Also Microsoft success was not just Gates but a combination of Gates and Steve Balmer. Balmer was the uber extraverted salesman type who complemented Gates.

Now it is 2025. Gates is still a controversial public figure whose opinions are still quoted in the mainstream media. But it is not nearly the same. Microsoft is still an important tech company but not dominant. Operating systems have been superseded in importance by other technologies. Gates has not been involved with Microsoft in years.

Here on WP while there is still disagreement on the merits of being autistic it is generally a lot more nuanced these days.

A bitter controversy back in the day was self diagnosis. For those who still care about the issue the article does not definitively say. Would have been diagnosed back in the day and has been diagnosed are two different things. There are more interviews and the book itself upcoming so we will see.

While there is no way of definitively knowing if a public figure is autistic. I am comfortable enough to move him from the “highly suspect is autistic” category to the “is autistic” category.

It was a shock to see that headline because I have not thought about Bill Gates never mind is he autistic in years.


Except he`s never been diagnosed, he`s never been diagnosed because what ever his "difference" was never really a problem or got in the way of living in a NT world or interacting with NTs and being hugely successful.

Its the same with Musk.

Autism diagnosis is based on deficits alone that are problems enough for people or parents of to get diagnosed.

His comments are nothing more than the "we`re all a little autistic" you often hear from NT`s, usually made out of ignorance than anything else.

70% of autism is unidentified brain condition, its like two people with unknown conditions finding they have something in common.

I have no reason to think he was or was not diagnosed. There is just no evidence either way. How do you prove someone was diagnosed? Demand they produce their diagnostic report, that can be forged. He is almost 70 years old enough to learn how to mask and rich enough to hire people to teach him how to present as not having “real autism” in public.

Musk is a whole different story. The totality of evidence that he is autistic is his mentioning on he has Aspergers on comedy show.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


carlos55
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 5 Mar 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,998

Yesterday, 7:27 am

I simply believe you can’t get to the age that he is and not have a personal mental health crisis while being autistic.

Same with musk

Hf autism / Asperger’s leads to mental health crisis as part of the deal.

Is there anyone on this site for example that can say they never had a mental health crisis?

It’s very difficult to succeed while dealing with serious mental health problems associated with hf Asperger’s as co-morbid unless you can mitigate things with some sort of unique talent like music, sport etc..

His talent required many NT skills like networking, sales , personal promotion.

Things known to be our week or non existent points

People will say “he’s a good programmer” but computer programmers are 10 a penny.

His success depended on what is viewed as NT skills of building interpersonal relationships

No doubt he has a quirky nerdy personality but he certainly isn’t autistic.

And same for musk

What’s likely happening is those with BAP but still NT are self diagnosing or have a misconception of the intensity of what autism is and that in nearly all cases restricts success unless it can be mitigated as mentioned.


_________________
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."

- George Bernie Shaw


TwilightPrincess
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Sep 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Female
Posts: 29,895
Location: Hell

Yesterday, 10:08 am

carlos55 wrote:
No doubt he has a quirky nerdy personality but he certainly isn’t autistic.

You can think he’s not autistic, but it’s not something we can know for certain one way or the other.

With that being said, when people say they are neurodivergent, I tend to believe them.



funeralxempire
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 40
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 30,024
Location: Right over your left shoulder

Yesterday, 10:11 am

carlos55 wrote:
No doubt he has a quirky nerdy personality but he certainly isn’t autistic.


May I ask what credentials you possess to make this undiagnosis?


_________________
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
"Many of us like to ask ourselves, What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now." —Former U.S. Airman (Air Force) Aaron Bushnell


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 36,524
Location: Long Island, New York

Yesterday, 10:36 am

carlos55 wrote:
I simply believe you can’t get to the age that he is and not have a personal mental health crisis while being autistic.

Same with musk

Hf autism / Asperger’s leads to mental health crisis as part of the deal.

Is there anyone on this site for example that can say they never had a mental health crisis?

It’s very difficult to succeed while dealing with serious mental health problems associated with hf Asperger’s as co-morbid unless you can mitigate things with some sort of unique talent like music, sport etc..

His talent required many NT skills like networking, sales , personal promotion.

Things known to be our week or non existent points

People will say “he’s a good programmer” but computer programmers are 10 a penny.

His success depended on what is viewed as NT skills of building interpersonal relationships

No doubt he has a quirky nerdy personality but he certainly isn’t autistic.

And same for musk

What’s likely happening is those with BAP but still NT are self diagnosing or have a misconception of the intensity of what autism is and that in nearly all cases restricts success unless it can be mitigated as mentioned.


How do we know these people have not had meltdowns, shutdowns, or mental health crises?

Very rich people hire people to cover up these things. Also unlike movie stars or politicians people who are celebrities for business reasons tend have less scrutiny of their personal lives for example Bill Gates did not have reporters and paparazzi following him to Microsoft board meetings and camping out at his home.

Like I said Steve Balmer did the lions share of public relations, networking and that type of thing. All Gates had to do was be coherent enough. I worked for two companies where the two owners had very different personalities and skill sets, the numbers guy, and the salesman. They respected each other and those companies thrived.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 36,524
Location: Long Island, New York

Yesterday, 11:05 am

A brief clip of his interview with the Wall Street Journal


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


gwynfryn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2004
Gender: Male
Posts: 570
Location: France

Yesterday, 11:37 am

I've always considered Bil Gates to be autistic, according to the historic meaning of the word, something he shares with all those now labelled as Natural Phiosophers. His lack of social skils is evident, but they aren't needed when one has a great product.

Marc Zuccerberg is another.

The current idea that autism has become a collection of dificulties, is a perversion. The only difficulty is having to deal with the herd humans, who will always find reasons for putting down anyone who is different!



BillyTree
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 Oct 2023
Age: 58
Gender: Male
Posts: 838

Yesterday, 11:56 am

Bill Gates was the first celebrity/famous person I read rumours about in the media being likely autistic. This was back in the 1980's when the threshold was much higher than today. People thought about autistics like guys like "Rain man".Even Bob Dylan flew under the radar at the time. If he thinks of himself as autistic I see no reason whatsoever to doubt that he's correct. And for the record, I am no fan of Elon Musk but to be fair he appears clearly autistic to me.


_________________
English is not my first language.


demeus
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 24 Jul 2007
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 727

Yesterday, 12:13 pm

Bill Gates is about the same age as my mother. Until 1994 (release of DSM IV), the only people that got Autism DX's were children who had extreme difficulties (or should I say needs). Most children of the lower and middle classes were simply declared difficult children and punished for their quirkiness. Now, with Gates coming from a wealthy family, there would have been some leeway for his quirks in school, especially if the family donated money to the school to look the other way.

When Asperger's Syndrome came out (again, 1994), one of the requirements for DX was that it was causing disruption to the basic necessities of living. In Gates case, he was already a millionaire and heading to be a billionaire by the mid 90s. It is very doubtful that even if he went in for a DX, he would have been given one.

Now, at 70, there is really no need for him to be officially DX'd and makes no sense in his case.



Summer_Twilight
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 13 Sep 2011
Age: 43
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,245

Yesterday, 12:21 pm

No comment and I don't care for him.



carlos55
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 5 Mar 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,998

Yesterday, 12:55 pm

He never said he was autistic

He just made a casual assumption that he may have been diagnosed if born today

Maybe he would maybe he wouldn’t

Not much different from the “we’re all a little autistic” you’ll often hear.

For those who think your brain is like his what’s your excuse?

Why have you not got a successful career managing many people ?
why have you not got a large social contact group?
Why can’t you communicate effortlessly?
If it’s just discrimination why didn’t it impact him?
What are you doing here on this site?

The answer is simply he’s nothing like us


_________________
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."

- George Bernie Shaw


ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 36,524
Location: Long Island, New York

Yesterday, 1:45 pm

carlos55 wrote:
He never said he was autistic

He just made a casual assumption that he may have been diagnosed if born today

Maybe he would maybe he wouldn’t

Not much different from the “we’re all a little autistic” you’ll often hear.

For those who think your brain is like his what’s your excuse?

Why have you not got a successful career managing many people ?
why have you not got a large social contact group?
Why can’t you communicate effortlessly?
If it’s just discrimination why didn’t it impact him?
What are you doing here on this site?

The answer is simply he’s nothing like us

He did not say “I am autistic”. He did say “My neurodiversity”.

Talking about how you are different is not the same thing as “everybody is a little autistic”. “Everybody is a little autistic” is an underhanded accusation. It is a way of saying everybody has problems, stop whining and try harder. Nothing he has said resembles that.

He credits his success to getting lucky along the way. That is important, if my parents did not emphasize people are different and tried to beat the autistic traits out of me as often parents of boomer autistics tried to do I would be long dead.

Obviously my life does not resemble his. As different as we are we both have the core autistic traits. The severity is different, how these traits present themselves very different.

I have often said this but it bears repeating. There is a right way and a wrong way to react to famous celebrity “autistics” . Thinking you are a genius like Gates or Einstein and the only reason you have failed in life is because of stupid mean NT’s is self destructive. Saying this person with autistic traits has been wildly successful means being Autistic does not mean I am doomed to constant failure is the way to go.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


BillyTree
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 Oct 2023
Age: 58
Gender: Male
Posts: 838

Yesterday, 2:34 pm

carlos55 wrote:
I simply believe you can’t get to the age that he is and not have a personal mental health crisis while being autistic.

Same with musk

Hf autism / Asperger’s leads to mental health crisis as part of the deal.

Is there anyone on this site for example that can say they never had a mental health crisis?

I can say that for myself. I don't know what's the case with Gates or Musk. But judging from my own example it's not part of the deal. You can have strenghts and talents that helps you dealing with obstacles caused by your autism. It seems to me that when autism is discussed you tend to fall back to the same circular reasoning: "Autistic people are severely handicapped. If you are not severely handicapped you are not actually autistic."


_________________
English is not my first language.