Hacker News Reader

Comment by erichocean | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, it's Jobs that has all of the typical Aspy traits, not Woz—right down to deciding on one set of clothes and sticking to it.

If you actually read an S. Jobs bio and are familiar with Aspy traits, he's a textbook case.

What confuses people (if they are confused) is that most people with Aspergers are not artistic, don't like speaking in front of crowds, or running teams.

However, it makes a ton of sense if you understand what the underlying brain differences are. People with Aspergers can be superior at artistic and group endeavors because they can easily ignore human quirks and are able to instead focus on the archetypal aspects. Certainly Jobs did.

A handful of extremely successful film writer/directors are also on the spectrum, and I suspect, for similar reasons. All, like Jobs, are considered to be "assholes" by some, and absolutely loved by others.

View on HN

I have read SJobs bio(s). My father, brother and fiance have Aspergers. My father and brother especially relate more to Woz and are scared of people like Jobs. I relate more to Jobs than Woz, and I am more OCPD. If Jobs is Aspergers, he is also very manic spectrum. My father/brother are strictly unipolar. Here is more on the OCPD thing if you are curious: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

Oh for sure, I didn't mean to imply that Jobs was _only_ on the spectrum.

I work in film (in addition to tech) and know a lot of people on the spectrum that I think people who only meet autistic programmers would have difficulty recognizing.

Even in TFA, one of the descriptors is:

> They generally marry the first girl they date

Maybe, but in my experience, that's only one specific kind of person with Aspergers (who I agree definitely exists). However, at least in film and other artistic/people disciplines, that wouldn't describe the "typical" person on the spectrum—I think you mainly see that type in tech/engineering circles. (To be fair, that's what the article is focused on.)

In my experience, at least in the fields I work in, people with Aspergers are "sigmas" (to use PUA terminology for a moment) and have no difficulty whatsoever dating, meeting people, etc. Certainly they don't do it the "normal" way, but they're very successful.

UDPATE: Thinking about it further, most people on the spectrum are not intuitive feelers (in the Myers Briggs taxonomy), they're sensory thinkers. When you find an Aspie who is an intuitive feeler, like Jobs, it's certainly confusing to people: if he's an Aspie, how can he get up in front of crowds? Lead a team? Negotiate? Etc. Unpossible.

It's really just "normals" applying their own biases on what a normal person would/could do, without understanding what makes those on the spectrum—especially those that are more emotional/intuitive—tick.

Completely agree with the Sigma thing. I found the PUA stuff (my interest was more evo pysch) so frustratingly irrelevant and misguided until I read about the Sigma reproductive model. I think the difference (clinically speaking) between narcissists and aspergers is the need for admiration. No one I know with aspergers wants any attention, basically ever. I think Jobs is more of an INFJ narcissist. As opposed to more borderline INTJ (Aspergers).

Thanks for the comments, I don't find many people who are into this stuff AND don't have cartoonish views of people on the spectrum.

I wanted to share this next bit because you seem like you might appreciate it. At least it took me awhile to figure it out. :)

In my experience, Myers Briggs is most helpful if you think of all eight attributes as independent capabilities each person can have, and then rate each on a scale, say, from 1-10. From each pairing, the one with the highest value determines their type, e.g. INFJ.

So, I would agree that Jobs is an INFJ (let's say that all are "10s"), but that doesn't mean that his ESTP traits are all pegged at zero. Instead, you might say Jobs has E=5, S=2, T=8, and P=6 in addition to I=10, N=10, F=10, J=11.

Mostly what the dominant Myers Briggs type gets you is a way to determine a person's typical problem solving pattern. NFs feel (and get excited) about a solution first, then convince (think) themselves why it's right.

OTOH My wife is an ENTP, and she thinks things through first and then gets excited—the opposite of me. If I wasn't aware of the underlying dynamics, I'd get super frustrated every time I brought her some exciting thing only to get calm analysis and no excitement (at least, at first).

Interesting. That is actually quite helpful. My fiance is INFJ and Aspergers, and I am ENTJ and not Aspergers. She gets excited and blurts things out, where as my excitement builds as my mental model of something does.

I don't follow PUA stuff and had to look up sigma. For anyone else: It's a term for the cool outsider/loner who gets the chicks.

I fear that thanks to Hollywood etc, aspies and sociopaths bleeds over into each other in popular culture.

If Jobs as aspie, there is no way he would have been up on that stage every WWDC to woe the crowd with superlatives.

>If Jobs as aspie, there is no way he would have been up on that stage every WWDC to woe the crowd with superlatives.

Exactly...

Autism is complicated. Asberger originally labeled people with these traits as people with "psychopathic autism".

I don't think Jobs was heavy on the nerdy side of the autism spectrum. More likely on the psychopathic side - I don't mean this in a bad way. Just trying to analyse things.

I've both read the Isaacson bio and been diagnosed with Asperger's. I strongly disagree (with erichocean) that Jobs was on the Autism Spectrum.

Jobs's bio was in fact a textbook case of psychopathy: his eyeballs "drilled into your soul with a Deadpan Stare"; he was highly manipulative (which proves he was socially adept); and he was so charismatic that colleagues say his presence was a Reality Distortion Field.

Meanwhile, most Aspies can't even maintain eye contact (let alone herd cats). Regarding the diagnosis for Asperger's/Autism, the trait clinicians test for is literally "social ineptitude".

> Regarding the diagnosis for Asperger's/Autism, the trait clinicians test for is literally "social ineptitude".

And yet, on the Wikipedia page for Asperger Syndrome[0], the phrase "social ineptitude" is nowhere to be found. Strange.

From Wikipedia:

> Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a developmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

Jobs did have "significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication". Everyone who worked with him thought he was an asshole, he pissed off even his friends (e.g. Woz), and had an extremely difficult time in normal roles with his first wife and child, etc. In person, Jobs was a hot mess. Of course, this—by itself—is insufficient. Lots of normals are assholes, too.

The real tell for Jobs is the second requirement: restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. Jobs had that like crazy, right down to wearing the same clothes for—literally—decades. The history of Pixar actually has better information on Jobs (oddly enough), including a lot of his extremely non-normal behaviors that fall into this second category.

People who are just sociopaths don't have "restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests". In fact, they appear normal (it's part of the game, in fact). Jobs couldn't even begin to fake "normal"—and didn't try.

People are confused about Jobs because he could manipulate groups, and was, generally, successful. The Aspie types you find in tech are usually of the variety you mention: won't look people in the eyes. Jobs was definitely not that.

FWIW It's easy to confuse a sociopath and a non-engineer Aspie, because both have less empathy for normal people than is typical. You can tell them apart easily though: sociopaths also have less empathy for archetypal people, whereas Aspies (like Jobs) have more empathy than is typical for people and situations matching archetypes. This can be extremely frustrating to those closest to them, who (legitimately) are upset that they care so deeply for archetypal things, but can seemingly ignore the very real hurting of, say, their daughter who is right in front of them.

Incidentally, the ability to strongly relate to archetypes, IMO, is why Jobs (and others like him in, say, film) are successful. It allowed him to focus on what is truly important to a huge swath of people and ignore small details that are only important to the few people near them. (This is Jobs legendary ability to "focus".) Normals, in my experience, have a very hard time doing that precisely because they can so easily empathize with anyone.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome

> whereas Aspies (like Jobs) have more empathy

Let me tell you a little about the ADI-R [0]. The clinician reads your biography, makes small talk, asks you to make up stories, watches for any abnormal behavior, et al. The madeup story of a NeuroTypical will include the emotions of other people. E.g. "My friends and I went to the beach, but we were sad because it rained, and Alice got mad because it was her only day off, etc".

An aspie's story will show ZERO AWARENESS of other people's emotions. Their entire world consists of PvE. Not because they have no sympathy for others' emotions, but because deciphering non-verbal cues is as opaque as deciphering an enigma. It's like the opposite of clairvoyance. Does that sound like empathy to you?

I agree that Jobs must have had empathy. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so successful at manipulation. It's just that he was such an asshole that he abused his knowledge of others' emotional states to gain leverage over them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_Diagnostic_Interview

In what world does "social ineptitude" not map to "significant difficulties in social interaction and non-verbal communication"? This feels like one of those bifurcation situations where someone is like "I'm not fat, I just have a BMI of 9000".

> sociopaths (...) appear normal (it's part of the game, in fact).

Psychopaths are the ones who blend in. Sociopaths are pretty conspicuous.

> "restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests"

Also fits OCD. We agree that Jobs was highly neuroatypical. But whatever his quirk, it's not autism.

> the phrase "social ineptitude" is nowhere to be found.

then you quote:

> > developmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction

Significant difficulties in social interaction sounds like social ineptitude to me.

> All, like Jobs, are considered to be "assholes" by some, and absolutely loved by others.

I think the results are appreciated by-and-large by the people who haven't worked with them. For people who have, they might add the "...but he is an asshole" postscript/disclaimer.

> Ironically, it's Jobs that has all of the typical Aspy traits, not Woz—right down to deciding on one set of clothes and sticking to it.

You could easily say the same about Bill Gates. His rocking is a standard sign of Asperger's.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com