Warren Buffett - a most exceptional individual, but not unique

Warren Buffet b. 1930, American investor, businessman and philanthropist, currently the third richest person in the world. In 2008 he was listed as the world’s richest person by Forbes magazine. Buffett has a legendary reputation as an investor, and is known as “the sage of Omaha”. Many books have been written about Buffett and his investment strategies.

As a toddler Buffett showed a lack of confidence when we was learning to walk, and at around the age of 2 he was content to sit at his mother's feet staring quietly at a toothbrush for "two hours at a stretch" (Schroeder 2008 p.46). He had some unusual childhood hobbies - browsing a model train catalogue for hours, repetitively timing marbles rolling down a bathtub with a stopwatch, recording the license plate numbers of passing cars with a friend, memorizing facts. Buffett also collected bottle caps, stamps and coins when he was a boy. He made money from working in his own businesses and bought his first shares at around the age of 10. During his college years Buffett’s prodigious memory made studying easy, but he dressed poorly, had little luck with girls, was an annoying smartarse, a fussy eater and was generally “socially maladjusted” (Schroeder 2008 p. 97). He discovered a much-needed system for getting along with people and self-presentation in Dale Carnegie’s famous book How to win friends and influence people. Buffett conducted his own informal controlled trial of the advice given in this book, and he found that it worked, but Buffett was still a man with a restless mind and a limited diet who had little interest in social climbing.

Buffett’s mother was intelligent and had excelled as a student of mathematics. She was “obsessed with fitting in” (Schroeder 2008 p.207), and was verbally abusive to Warren and his older sister when they were young children. Her family had a history of high intelligence and depression in women, some of them admitted to mental institutions, but no clear diagnosis was made. The biography of Buffett The snowball by Alice Schroeder contains much evidence indicating that Buffett may be an autist (and possibly also his business partner and his mother), it inspired at least two writers to speculate about Buffett and autism (Cowen 2009 p.30), (Lawson 2008), but there is no explicit mention of autism or AS in this book.

Despite his incredible wealth, Buffett is known for his frugal ways and has shown little interest in fashion or fancy food. For a large part of his life Buffett had a wife who he lived apart from but was on good terms with and also openly lived with a female companion, who he married in 2006. Buffett is reportedly an agnostic. Bill Gates, who has also been identifed by various sources as possibly autistic, has also been listed as the richest person in the world, is also known for his philanthropy, also has an unpretentious taste in food, and wears suits of the same Chinese label that Buffett wears, has been described as having a son-like relationship with Buffett. (Rushe 2008).


References

Cowen, Tyler (2009) Create your own economy: the path to prosperity in a disordered world. Dutton, 2009.
http://createyourowneconomy.org/
[Vernon Smith, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Mark Roget, Adam Smith, Hermann Hesse, Warren Buffett, Tim Page, Hikari Oe, Craig Newmark, Bram Cohen, Temple Grandin, Glenn Gould, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson are all discussed in this book with reference to the autistic spectrum]

Lawson, Dominic (2008) The snowball: Warren Buffet and the business of life by Alice Schroeder. Sunday Times. TimesOnline October 12th 2008.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article4914636.ece
[In this review of the biography Lawson argues that Buffet possibly has Asperger syndrome.]

Rushe, Dominic (2008) Warren Buffet lifts the lid on his secrets. Sunday Times. TimesOnline September 28th 2008.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4837164.ece
[an interesting article about the man and the story behind the biography, no mention of AS or autism]

Schroeder, Alice (2008) The snowball: Warren Buffett and the business of life. Bantam, 2008.
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/snowball/
[This authorized biography does not mention AS or autism, but does mention Buffett’s “social skill deficiencies” a number of times.]

Numerous clips of interviews with Mr Buffett can be found on YouTube and Google Videos.

A referenced list of 155 famous or important people diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition or subject of published speculation about whether they are or were on the autistic spectrum
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2006/09/referenced-list-of-famous-or-important.html