Tags
autism, Bill Gates, executive function, IQ, Lion of the Blogosphere, nerdiness, petals around the rose
Like many of the greatest minds in STEM, Bill Gates has been accused of having a touch of autism by armchair psychologists. Others argue he is simply a nerd.
While some argue that nerdiness is a mild form of autim, others, like LOTB, argue that the two concepts are distinct.
I have not done enough research to have a strong opinion either way, but a key deficit in autism involves executive functioning.
What is executive functioning?
Executive functions (collectively referred to as executive function and cognitive control) are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals. Executive functions include basic cognitive processes such as attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Higher order executive functions require the simultaneous use of multiple basic executive functions and include planning and fluid intelligence (e.g., reasoning and problem solving)
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions (2019-11-24)
What does any of this have to do with Bill Gates? My subjective impression is that Gates is relatively weak at EF. Perhaps not compared to the average person, but certainly compared to his super IQ matched peers. In support of this impression are three (admittedly weak) pieces of evidence.
1) He sucked at petals around the rose
If you’ve never heard of this game please check it out and record how many dice rolls it takes you to get six consecutive correct scores.
Then compare your performance to Gates’s.
This game strikes me as very similar to the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (a common measure of EF) in that it requires you to infer a rule based on repeated feedback. I infered the rule simply from the name of the game even before any feedback.
In Gates’s defense, he thought the game was called “pedal around the roses”, so this may explain his poor score.
2) He can’t control his hands
Anyone who has watched Gates in interviews knows how erratically his hands move around when he talks. I’m no neurologist, but this strikes me as an inability to inhibit certain responses, a lack of cognitive control or self-monitoring, and poor communication between the left and right brain. I tend to overuse my hands when I talk too so I see a bit of myself in Gates but I was insecure enough about it to stop.
I also have a problem where whenever I wave to someone, I also say “hi” even though they’re often too far away to hear me. I think this relates to the huge gap between my verbal (left-brain) and performance (right-brain) IQs. In extreme cases this can lead to unbuttoning your shirt with your left hand while simultaneously buttoning it up with your right-hand, thus never getting undressed.
3) He’s not that articulate
Despite the fact that Bill Gates’s verbal SAT score equates to a spectacular verbal IQ of 157, he’s not an especially impressive impromptu speaker. As commenter ” caffeine withdrawals” noted, he’s clearly above average, but not much more than that.
A professor of linguistics informed me that based on factor analysis, linguistic ability is actually three different abilities: vocabulary, working memory, and executive functioning. We know from Gates’s sky high verbal and math SAT scores that he’s likely extremely high in the first two, so only the third factor could be dragging down his speaking skills.
How does EF affect speaking skills? EF is all about planning and if you can’t plan your sentences and paragraphs in real lime, they wont be especially succinct. EF also relates to fluency because a certain amount of flexibility is needed to find the right word to express a given thought. People who perseverate too much on one word, or one type of word, will not be smooth talkers.
Pumpkin Person 
Gates isn’t autistic. At least from what I can see. But I’ve never read a book about his life the way I have warren buffet.
Gates is basically just a super nerd.
Gates needed 15 before finding the solution, so his score is 21. I needed 4 (thus ten). I found this kind of « logic » very irritable in fact even if I usually can solve quickly this kind of problem. But it’s a feeling of stupidity of the question I can’t resist having.
Another stupid problem like this one I was given was :
1
1 1
2 1
1 2 1 1
3 1 1 2
1 3 2 1 1 2
….
1113122112
Good executive function 😃
Good executive function 😃
The next row is either 311311222112 based on pp’s logic or 611332 based on row 5 of bruno’s logic(mistake? still works though). Hmmmm not sure which makes more sense. The latter seems neater but the former is more descriptive. I choose PP.
Yes my line 5 implies factoring. But the descriptive method is more fitted to the spirit of this (stupid) test. Thats why I didn’t answer correct answer, but good executive function, because its even more in line with the descriptive test that I passed. I would accept that 5 would be an “error” of mine – even if its not a logical error – because I didn’t even remember the full descriptive aspect of this test (I passed it like 10 years ago though …). When I wrote it, I thought about the two possibilities though, to be fuly honest, but didn’t choose the “stupidest” one even if it was my point 🙂
Well done.
No worries, clearly you know how to figure it out. Looks like your methodology got momentarily derailed, kind of like counting and going from 59 to 70(yes i did that once counting to myself as a kid lol) even though you continue counting perfectly after that.
the correct answer is: 7337334727336
Mug of Pee lacks the executive function to solve Bruno’s number sequence. Richard Klein should study you to learn about humans before the upper Paleolithic. You lack behavioural modernity
Executive functioning is the most important cognitive process there is.The whole idea behind executive functioning is that it goes beyond intelligence in that organizes thoughts, prioritizes different thought-patterns over others, and makes qualitative rather than quantitative decisions on what is going to happen in the future for someone.
Psychopaths and autists have impaired executive functioning. Possibly schizos as well. Regardless, our minds are doing millions of calculations to properly analyze our environment and react to it. An emotional thought will require much more energy and metabolic output than a guiding thought that sets an action into motion, whereas a very complex thought will require more energy to be put together.
Executive functioning can be measured by how much metabolic output there is from a thought and how much productivity the resulting action brings.
Executive functioning relies on impulse control and other “higher-order” properties of the brain to actually be effective. It’s a great point you make, Pumpkin, that being articulate is an executive-functioning property and does not denote intelligence because you have to organize the words in a proper sequence of events for it to make sense, a function of the frontal lobe, where executive functioning originates.
It requires a lot of future-orientation as well and Gates seems to have a lot of that, tbh. On top of that, billionaires are nowhere near as intelligent as they are organized and resistant to impulses. That’s probably their biggest strength, thus making it hard to believe that Bill Gates does not have near genius-level executive-functioning (a paradox since most geniuses are known for lacking executive functioning, their biggest weakness) since he amassed a wealth of billions and billions of dollars. But yes, his executive functioning is disproportionately low when compared to his raw intelligence. .
It’s a great point you make, Pumpkin, that being articulate is an executive-functioning property and does not denote intelligence because you have to organize the words in a proper sequence of events for it to make sense, a function of the frontal lobe, where executive functioning originates
I think it’s a hugely important part of intelligence but one not well measured by conventional IQ tests
I never got this despite 40+ tries and had to look up the solution. It’s a fairly simple metaphor, so I don’t understand why I didn’t get it. I tend to do good with purely verbal information but struggle with processing visual information, or with synthesising the two.
My sister has always been much better than me at dealing with visual stuff, like rubix cubes, solving block puzzles etc. I’m clumsy, not good with my hands and fail to perceive some things in my sight that are obvious to others.
In school, one of my teachers, assuming that I was good at math, and I was an A-student in math without giving any effort, gave me the task of assembling a 3-D shape from a 2-D paper net. My head hurt trying to visualize the shape and I gave up after a while. Even if I understand, perfectly, the process of creating something, I still have trouble executing that vision in person.
What could be wrong with me, PP?
A person who is famous and pretty autistic is Mark Zuckerberg. Hes much more autistic than gates even though they have similar interests and abilities.
16 tries
7 tries but I feel like I was spoiled since you kept talking about how important the name was. 🙂
“Anyone who has watched Gates in interviews knows how erratically his hands move around when he talks. I’m no neurologist, but this strikes me as an inability to inhibit certain responses, a lack of cognitive control or self-monitoring, and poor communication between the left and right brain. I tend to overuse my hands when I talk too so I see a bit of myself in Gates but I was insecure enough about it to stop.”
Does this hold for Italians too?
Hello, PumpkinPerson and readers! I have been a lurker on this fascinating blog for some time, but have not posted before. For a bit of background, I am a woman who took the WAIS-IV as an adult and qualified for the Triple Nine Society. In many ways I pass for “normal” with a mainstream career, but my thinking style and some mannerisms/quirks have led friends to wonder if I am autistic. I’ve taken various online surveys and scored as “neurodiverse,” yet do not have many of the traits typically seen in autism. For example, I can understand humor and have a lot of empathy and awareness of others’ feelings in social settings. Overall, though, my thinking is very rigid, so I have difficulty understanding sentences that are stated or written improperly- For example, if someone with poor grammar skills speaks with double negatives, I misinterpret his/her intended meaning to be what was actually stated.
Anyway, this post is very interesting. I spent some time on Petals Around the Rose, but ultimately gave up in frustration. Then I looked up the answer, and am pretty confident I would never have solved the puzzle on my own. I am trying to write the next part in a spoiler-free way. The reason for being unable to solve the puzzle is that my mental concept of dice is that they are used numerically/mathematically. I would not think of them being used visually. More significantly, the name of the game– which is supposed to be an important clue– actually seems to be misleading. Petals Around the Rose implies one rose. So even if the thought of how to solve the puzzle crossed my mind, I would not have tested it because the title indicates there is only one rose.
From your explanation of executive functioning, I think I would score highly in attention, impulse control, and working memory, but have extreme difficulty with cognitive flexibility.
Thank you for this interesting entry!
Carrie, thanks for the interesting comment!
My theory (& I have no hard science to back this up) is that a lot of extremely high IQs like your own are caused by de nouveau mutations, but because mutations are genomic accidents, they may also damage certain cognitive functions despite enhancing IQ overall.
Because social IQ & executive functioning seem to be highly overlapping complex abilities that are quite recently evolved, these are probably the most fragile. In your case it looks like social IQ was largely preserved (with the exception of taking people too literally).
The theory makes sense, though all of my immediate family members are similar (though not as extreme). I’ll keep reading and thinking on this!
Sounds like you got confused about which part of the flower is supposed to be the rose as well.
I kind of relate to the part of your story where you describe a relative disability with the ambiguity of language. When people try to schedule things with me, for example, I often get it wrong. I can give an example.
When I got one of my first jobs, I went to an orientation room for about 20 people. Recruiter says, “Be here at 12am tomorrow night.” It was already 6pm. He wants us to come back six hours from now, after an orientation, right before the normal sleep time, and work for 8-10 hours? Because, 12am is tomorrow. Night is just the dark period, which is also now, but also at the beginning of tomorrow, and the end of it.
So I ask for clarification, “So, you mean tomorrow at 12am? Or the day after tomorrow?” He says, “That’s right, tomorrow.”
Out of the roughly 20 people who heard that exchange, I was the only one that showed up six hours later. I could never figure it out, was that specific enough for them? Or did they just not care because they’re too tired to come then, planning to use the ambiguity as an excuse if they wound up being wrong?
Misunderstandings of that kind happen to me a lot, I have to force people to be extremely specific, or be the only one to misunderstand. I don’t think I’m autistic, but language is often used so ambiguously, and often it seems to me as if everyone is using normal words to speak in a code that only I’m not privy to.
Remilia, that is a fantastic example and I definitely relate to it (and would have interpreted “12 AM tomorrow” the same way that you did). It’s interesting that most people seem able to understand phrases that are stated incorrectly, perhaps not even realizing what the syntax actually means. What interests me most about that is why/how most people get it “right” (which is grammatically wrong) *in the same way.* I’m not sure if that’s something inherent in the way the brain works, something about how English is structured, or something about how English is taught.
Took me nine rolls. At first I tried looking at their picture of a rose, since they said the name is important. I thought the green leaves were also petals. Couldn’t see a pattern. I thought maybe I should be looking for a ratio between the red and green “petals”, because my first roll had red and green dice, and more red dice than green ones, like in the picture of the rose.
In the end I just guessed the sum of both dice colors, since both colors summed to the same value (8).
Answer is 4, not 8.
I looked at the picture again, and thought maybe only the red parts are petals. But looking at the middle, it’s just pinched red petals there too, just like all around the middle, I couldn’t see anything distinct with something else going around it, so I assumed the whole collection of red petals is the rose part.
I saw a couple of patterns after that which could have explained the behavior, and each following roll those patterns were immediately contradicted. Better figure out the hint about the name then.
I go look at roses in Google images. In the pictures, I see that roses can blossom and there’s a middle part that looks different. I think back to my first roll (I had stared at it for a couple of minutes trying to find a pattern, so I remembered it) and realized that both dice with a middle dot were five-dotted dice with four dots around the middle-dot, so that’s where the correct answer of 8 must come from.
In conclusion, this test is unfair to people who have never seen a flower. It’s also unfair to people who are told it’s called “pedals around the roses.”
My recounting of events for my guess and the correct answer on the first roll makes no sense. It’s not even remotely accurate, I don’t know why I wrote that.
I put 4 for first the first roll (which was accurately described later), and I don’t remember why now, and the correct answer was 8.
Whatever.
RIP Bill Gates’ dad, William H. Gates Sr.