10 ms·

Bill Gates: My parents took me to a child psychologist

90 points by salmonet 11y ago

m-i-l 11y ago
Source link (Desert Island Discs interview): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35442969 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35442969
- doe88 11y ago
  Thanks for the link, it made me look for the corresponding podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt
  - Brakenshire 11y ago
    The programme goes back continuously to the 1940's. It's very well known in the UK. Unfortunately they only have occasional fragments for the early programmes, but for instance I just found clips from the Dave Brubeck and Alfred Hitchcock episodes, from 1959: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7kb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7kb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7js http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7js Hitchcock mentions his upcoming production, a 'rather gentle horror picture' called Psycho!
dorfsmay 11y ago
> I knew everybody's licence plate I have trouble remembering my own license plate number... but I'll argue that it makes me a better contractor, because I have to document everything, from the current architecture to the work I do.
- Retra 11y ago
  That sounds exactly like something that a person who is unaware of their irrational biases would say.
  - visakanv 11y ago
    But it might just as well be said by someone who IS aware of their irrational biases. So that's not actually a meaningful statement.
jgh 11y ago
I had a particularly awkward conversation with my parents about 10 years ago when a family friend had joked about a psychologist following me around in kindergarten.. It turned out to be true and no one had ever told me.
- johnchristopher 11y ago
  Now I have to ask you to tell the whole story, pretty please :).
  - jgh 11y ago
    I honestly don't know much about it other than I was a weird kid and the school thought I was weird enough for observation. I don't think anything ever came of it though, I never changed schools or classes (not that I know what they would necessarily do about a "weird" 5 year old)
samfisher83 11y ago
This was an interesting quote. "I worked weekends, I didn't really believe in vacations," Gates says of his early years at the helm of Microsoft. "I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard [others at the company] worked. I knew everybody's licence plate so I could look out the parking lot and see, you know, when people come in. Eventually I had to loosen up as the company got to a reasonable size."
- Swizec 11y ago
  > I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard [others at the company] worked. The hard part is to avoid applying them to friends and family. They will resent you for all those sideways glances and scoffs when you're working at home and they're relaxing on the couch. They also won't be happy when you never have time to do things with them.
- bluedino 11y ago
  >> I knew everybody's licence plate Wouldn't it'd be easier to just remember what car people drove, than the plate? Dave drives a green, older Ford Bronco. Jim drives a new red Porsche.
  - alfanick 11y ago
    it depends - some minds are good with numbers others with different associations
  - furyofantares 11y ago
    I have this thing where I accidentally memorize license plates in the same way you might accidentally memorize what car people you know drive. It's a completely automatic process just like everything else we effortless memorize throughout the day. And, I've never thought about this before, but the cars themselves actually don't stick very well. Bill says it so casually that I wonder if it's the same for him. I grew up near Microsoft, and it might help to know that until recently Washington plates for standard cars have all been 6 characters long in the form 123-ABC or ABC-123. On top of that there are a ton of common patterns on the road at any given time due to the way they are distributed. So they are pretty well designed to be memorable. As an aside: We're now on a 7 letter system in the format ABC1234, and that's most of what you see on the road. These don't stick quite as often -- I can't tell if that's the format change or if I'm just aging or more often lost in thought and not noticing the world around me or what. I believe they all start with A now, so it's not actually an extra letter to memorize, but I think the format change modifies the rhythm to the plate and makes it so it doesn't automatically chunk and therefor doesn't automatically get memorized. I guess trucks (before this change) have always been something like B12345D (where it's always B and usually ends with D, I think) and those didn't stick very well, either.
hackbinary 11y ago
From the BBC source program: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt "Hopefully make it [polio] the second decease ever, after Smallpox, to be completely eradicated" Wrong, it would be the third decease ever. Rinderpest was the second. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?p... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest
- selectodude 11y ago
  I have a feeling that statement meant to only include diseases that infect humans.
seibelj 11y ago
I started drinking in 8th grade, moved to marijuana soon after, and did many drugs in high school. I did many stupid things, and graduated with barely a 3.0. I was a "wild child", and although I was raised by a very intelligent and successful single mother, she said I couldn't be controlled and thought giving me freedom was the best solution for me. In college, I had sort of a "been there, done that" attitude to parties and substances while many of my peers were just starting to experiment. I realized that this was my chance, and if I didn't buckle down and study, I was going to wind up a failure in my own eyes. Would I want what I went through for my own kids? No. In hindsight I would have put more boundaries and controls on myself. But I turned out OK. There's hope for everyone.
- id 11y ago
  > There's hope for everyone. Except for the hopeless.
- sleazebreeze 11y ago
  Your's is an interesting story. I'm glad for you that you were able to recognize what was happening and change. I agree that there is hope for everyone. Freedom to create your future is a heavy task, but as a song goes: "the weight is a gift". I had a similarly difficult transition to "adulthood" - mine happened after a vanilla engineering college experience though. After I found out post-college life isn't anything at all what I expected, I went through a period of self-loathing, depression, reckless behavior and substance abuse. Somewhere in the fog, I found a wonderful book about self-compassion and was able to muddle towards a better sense of wholeness. Then, I re-discovered a love for programming and threw myself into that with a renewed sense of direction. A common theme that I've observed in people's stories who were able to "help themselves" was the realization that they are solely responsible for their success in life. Circumstances and other people will aid or obstruct, but ultimately the only thing you can control is your response to external events.
autoreleasepool 11y ago
I wish my parents had taken me to a psychologist when I was having trouble in school. Instead, I was usually punished. I was raised by conservative, psychiatrophobic parents and I never got the help I needed until after college. I'm in my early 20's. I was lucky to have the meta-cognitive awareness needed to identify that something was wrong, and that it had gotten worse. After recently getting care from a professional my quality of life and productivity improved across the board. It almost breaks my heart how much it has helped me. I feel as if I could have been so much more successful in academia. I definitely would have led less of guilt-ridden academic life. Even if you do not have anxiety, major depression, or other disorder - I think basic psychological therapy is something almost anyone can benefit from. We like to think friends and family are all we need for help during a rough time or troubling period, but, no matter how well intentioned they might be, they are usually the least qualified to help you. It's important to have a professional to talk to in these situations. With children this is even more so. Psychiatrists can see the red-flags that others often ignore, or brush off as personality quirks. This was the case with me for long time. I would have had a better academic life if the "ADD is bullshit" meme never happened. For me, this prevalent mentality prevented me from receiving the health-care I needed, especially with regards to my very private (and personally shameful) crippling anxiety. I hope one day basic psychological check ups for children become as routine as a dentist visits. There are so many benefits to keeping tabs on your mental health and the only downside is the current social stigma. If your child is acting up, consistently has trouble with areas such as organization, or is all over the place with grades - please don't assume he or she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed. Help them by taking them to someone who can see things you cannot, and possibly find an easily solvable underlying problem.
- childpsychismeh 11y ago
  While I certainly wouldn't affirm what your parents did or suggest it to be a preferred course of action, I'd also hesitate to suggest taking a child to Psychiatrists as any sort of knee jerk reaction. While you say you'd have had a better academic life if the "add is bullshit" meme was gone, mine would have been far better if the meme caught on faster. I hope you understand my wanting to disclose the following on a throwaway, but I was medicated HEAVILY for "ADD" for the vast majority of 2nd through 4th grade, and to this day some of my strangest memories are from those years, during which I developed broad slews of physical ticks and OCD-like behaviors that took me decades to train myself out of, and certainly compounded the damage to my learning and social development that the medication had already begun. I would be TERRIFIED if psychological checkups became routine, and see that as near-dystopian as some aspects of brave new world. For so many people (I say this now being married to a psychologist of my own) including myself are diagnosed with disorders of extremely variable diagnostic validity at extremely young ages (beyond even what the DSM, with its already spotty contents, would recommend) and then medicated past functionality and/or told we have something wrong with us. What would have helped me? If instead of being told "you need these pills to fix you" someone told me that "normal is a spectrum", and people even with behaviors we love to tag with fancy names and try and treat can learn to control them and live perfectly normal lives without drastic intervention. Don't take this as a "we should ignore psychological disorders", it's not the intent at all. Take it as a, I've seen the culture that arises out of LOOKING for mental issues rather than encouraging growth and maturation, and I'd rather resort to a psychological approach as we do with antibiotics, _when needed and after extensive exploration of other options_, lest we unconsciously do ourselves further disservice. Although I have a different takeaway than you though, I'd echo the same guiding thought, "don't assume he or she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed" but would append "or assume they are broken."
Decade 11y ago
"I wrote the original software on Apple 2." How Steve Wozniak Wrote BASIC for the Original Apple From Scratch http://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-original-apple-fr-1570573636 http://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-ori... In case you were wondering why people in computing hated Bill Gates with an undying passion. He still won't stop taking credit for others' work, and using the legal system to give himself special privileges (copyright and such) because of it.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Gates is talking about the Apple II there. This snippet doesn't really leave Wozniak out of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPpduYLvvZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPpduYLvvZ0
- hanspeter 11y ago
  "The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic, and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple II series (though it ran at a noticeably slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series
acqq 11y ago
> He also selected copies of the world's great lectures on DVD as his luxury item The company and the products weren't named in the article but here's the link where Gates writes about them: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Great-Lectures-from-The-Teaching-Company https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Great-Lectures-from-The... Disclaimer: just their satisfied customer.
pedagogyotd 11y ago
I wish we could move towards a world where those of us who aren't billionaires or Stanford grads can disclose our mental health issues. During a particularly bad episode of depression I wrote "Pedagogy of the Depressed"[1] for Boing Boing. I'd have loved to have written more, but we don't live in a society that's supportive of people with depression or anxiety. Gates himself says that he often monitored how long people were at work - the exact sort of behavior that can exacerbate someone's mental illness. Silicon Valley needs to learn the value of working smart over working hard, and that it's perfectly valid for someone to want to work to live, instead of the other way around. Anyone can say something when they have a safety net, but more and more often the people in this country whose voices we need to hear most are silenced, not by censorship, but by economics. [1] https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.html https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.htm...
amydav27 11y ago
BEWARE OF SCAM,, the only liable hacker,that I have tested,trusted, and he doesn't lie,, He told me iPhone can never be hacked,so I do better not waste my money, but he did great stuufs,email hack,gmail hack.he even upgraded my daughters school grade, exam score, vpn.,website hack,credit upgrade,erase criminal record .etc..thats so amazing.you can contact him too...he can do alot of impossible stuffs.and he doesn't lie. WALTSTEPH82@GMAIL.COM. or text +1 601 866 5203

90 points by salmonet 11y ago

m-i-l 11y ago

Source link (Desert Island Discs interview): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35442969 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35442969

doe88 11y ago
Thanks for the link, it made me look for the corresponding podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt
- Brakenshire 11y ago
  The programme goes back continuously to the 1940's. It's very well known in the UK. Unfortunately they only have occasional fragments for the early programmes, but for instance I just found clips from the Dave Brubeck and Alfred Hitchcock episodes, from 1959: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7kb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7kb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7js http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7js Hitchcock mentions his upcoming production, a 'rather gentle horror picture' called Psycho!

dorfsmay 11y ago

> I knew everybody's licence plate I have trouble remembering my own license plate number... but I'll argue that it makes me a better contractor, because I have to document everything, from the current architecture to the work I do.

Retra 11y ago
That sounds exactly like something that a person who is unaware of their irrational biases would say.
- visakanv 11y ago
  But it might just as well be said by someone who IS aware of their irrational biases. So that's not actually a meaningful statement.

jgh 11y ago

I had a particularly awkward conversation with my parents about 10 years ago when a family friend had joked about a psychologist following me around in kindergarten.. It turned out to be true and no one had ever told me.

johnchristopher 11y ago
Now I have to ask you to tell the whole story, pretty please :).
- jgh 11y ago
  I honestly don't know much about it other than I was a weird kid and the school thought I was weird enough for observation. I don't think anything ever came of it though, I never changed schools or classes (not that I know what they would necessarily do about a "weird" 5 year old)

samfisher83 11y ago

This was an interesting quote. "I worked weekends, I didn't really believe in vacations," Gates says of his early years at the helm of Microsoft. "I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard [others at the company] worked. I knew everybody's licence plate so I could look out the parking lot and see, you know, when people come in. Eventually I had to loosen up as the company got to a reasonable size."

Swizec 11y ago
> I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard [others at the company] worked. The hard part is to avoid applying them to friends and family. They will resent you for all those sideways glances and scoffs when you're working at home and they're relaxing on the couch. They also won't be happy when you never have time to do things with them.
bluedino 11y ago
>> I knew everybody's licence plate Wouldn't it'd be easier to just remember what car people drove, than the plate? Dave drives a green, older Ford Bronco. Jim drives a new red Porsche.
- alfanick 11y ago
  it depends - some minds are good with numbers others with different associations
- furyofantares 11y ago
  I have this thing where I accidentally memorize license plates in the same way you might accidentally memorize what car people you know drive. It's a completely automatic process just like everything else we effortless memorize throughout the day. And, I've never thought about this before, but the cars themselves actually don't stick very well. Bill says it so casually that I wonder if it's the same for him. I grew up near Microsoft, and it might help to know that until recently Washington plates for standard cars have all been 6 characters long in the form 123-ABC or ABC-123. On top of that there are a ton of common patterns on the road at any given time due to the way they are distributed. So they are pretty well designed to be memorable. As an aside: We're now on a 7 letter system in the format ABC1234, and that's most of what you see on the road. These don't stick quite as often -- I can't tell if that's the format change or if I'm just aging or more often lost in thought and not noticing the world around me or what. I believe they all start with A now, so it's not actually an extra letter to memorize, but I think the format change modifies the rhythm to the plate and makes it so it doesn't automatically chunk and therefor doesn't automatically get memorized. I guess trucks (before this change) have always been something like B12345D (where it's always B and usually ends with D, I think) and those didn't stick very well, either.

hackbinary 11y ago

From the BBC source program: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt "Hopefully make it [polio] the second decease ever, after Smallpox, to be completely eradicated" Wrong, it would be the third decease ever. Rinderpest was the second. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?p... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest

selectodude 11y ago
I have a feeling that statement meant to only include diseases that infect humans.

seibelj 11y ago

I started drinking in 8th grade, moved to marijuana soon after, and did many drugs in high school. I did many stupid things, and graduated with barely a 3.0. I was a "wild child", and although I was raised by a very intelligent and successful single mother, she said I couldn't be controlled and thought giving me freedom was the best solution for me. In college, I had sort of a "been there, done that" attitude to parties and substances while many of my peers were just starting to experiment. I realized that this was my chance, and if I didn't buckle down and study, I was going to wind up a failure in my own eyes. Would I want what I went through for my own kids? No. In hindsight I would have put more boundaries and controls on myself. But I turned out OK. There's hope for everyone.

id 11y ago
> There's hope for everyone. Except for the hopeless.
sleazebreeze 11y ago
Your's is an interesting story. I'm glad for you that you were able to recognize what was happening and change. I agree that there is hope for everyone. Freedom to create your future is a heavy task, but as a song goes: "the weight is a gift". I had a similarly difficult transition to "adulthood" - mine happened after a vanilla engineering college experience though. After I found out post-college life isn't anything at all what I expected, I went through a period of self-loathing, depression, reckless behavior and substance abuse. Somewhere in the fog, I found a wonderful book about self-compassion and was able to muddle towards a better sense of wholeness. Then, I re-discovered a love for programming and threw myself into that with a renewed sense of direction. A common theme that I've observed in people's stories who were able to "help themselves" was the realization that they are solely responsible for their success in life. Circumstances and other people will aid or obstruct, but ultimately the only thing you can control is your response to external events.

autoreleasepool 11y ago

I wish my parents had taken me to a psychologist when I was having trouble in school. Instead, I was usually punished. I was raised by conservative, psychiatrophobic parents and I never got the help I needed until after college. I'm in my early 20's. I was lucky to have the meta-cognitive awareness needed to identify that something was wrong, and that it had gotten worse. After recently getting care from a professional my quality of life and productivity improved across the board. It almost breaks my heart how much it has helped me. I feel as if I could have been so much more successful in academia. I definitely would have led less of guilt-ridden academic life. Even if you do not have anxiety, major depression, or other disorder - I think basic psychological therapy is something almost anyone can benefit from. We like to think friends and family are all we need for help during a rough time or troubling period, but, no matter how well intentioned they might be, they are usually the least qualified to help you. It's important to have a professional to talk to in these situations. With children this is even more so. Psychiatrists can see the red-flags that others often ignore, or brush off as personality quirks. This was the case with me for long time. I would have had a better academic life if the "ADD is bullshit" meme never happened. For me, this prevalent mentality prevented me from receiving the health-care I needed, especially with regards to my very private (and personally shameful) crippling anxiety. I hope one day basic psychological check ups for children become as routine as a dentist visits. There are so many benefits to keeping tabs on your mental health and the only downside is the current social stigma. If your child is acting up, consistently has trouble with areas such as organization, or is all over the place with grades - please don't assume he or she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed. Help them by taking them to someone who can see things you cannot, and possibly find an easily solvable underlying problem.

childpsychismeh 11y ago
While I certainly wouldn't affirm what your parents did or suggest it to be a preferred course of action, I'd also hesitate to suggest taking a child to Psychiatrists as any sort of knee jerk reaction. While you say you'd have had a better academic life if the "add is bullshit" meme was gone, mine would have been far better if the meme caught on faster. I hope you understand my wanting to disclose the following on a throwaway, but I was medicated HEAVILY for "ADD" for the vast majority of 2nd through 4th grade, and to this day some of my strangest memories are from those years, during which I developed broad slews of physical ticks and OCD-like behaviors that took me decades to train myself out of, and certainly compounded the damage to my learning and social development that the medication had already begun. I would be TERRIFIED if psychological checkups became routine, and see that as near-dystopian as some aspects of brave new world. For so many people (I say this now being married to a psychologist of my own) including myself are diagnosed with disorders of extremely variable diagnostic validity at extremely young ages (beyond even what the DSM, with its already spotty contents, would recommend) and then medicated past functionality and/or told we have something wrong with us. What would have helped me? If instead of being told "you need these pills to fix you" someone told me that "normal is a spectrum", and people even with behaviors we love to tag with fancy names and try and treat can learn to control them and live perfectly normal lives without drastic intervention. Don't take this as a "we should ignore psychological disorders", it's not the intent at all. Take it as a, I've seen the culture that arises out of LOOKING for mental issues rather than encouraging growth and maturation, and I'd rather resort to a psychological approach as we do with antibiotics, _when needed and after extensive exploration of other options_, lest we unconsciously do ourselves further disservice. Although I have a different takeaway than you though, I'd echo the same guiding thought, "don't assume he or she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed" but would append "or assume they are broken."

Decade 11y ago

"I wrote the original software on Apple 2." How Steve Wozniak Wrote BASIC for the Original Apple From Scratch http://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-original-apple-fr-1570573636 http://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-ori... In case you were wondering why people in computing hated Bill Gates with an undying passion. He still won't stop taking credit for others' work, and using the legal system to give himself special privileges (copyright and such) because of it.

maxerickson 11y ago
Gates is talking about the Apple II there. This snippet doesn't really leave Wozniak out of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPpduYLvvZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPpduYLvvZ0
hanspeter 11y ago
"The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic, and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple II series (though it ran at a noticeably slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series

acqq 11y ago

> He also selected copies of the world's great lectures on DVD as his luxury item The company and the products weren't named in the article but here's the link where Gates writes about them: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Great-Lectures-from-The-Teaching-Company https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Great-Lectures-from-The... Disclaimer: just their satisfied customer.

pedagogyotd 11y ago

I wish we could move towards a world where those of us who aren't billionaires or Stanford grads can disclose our mental health issues. During a particularly bad episode of depression I wrote "Pedagogy of the Depressed"[1] for Boing Boing. I'd have loved to have written more, but we don't live in a society that's supportive of people with depression or anxiety. Gates himself says that he often monitored how long people were at work - the exact sort of behavior that can exacerbate someone's mental illness. Silicon Valley needs to learn the value of working smart over working hard, and that it's perfectly valid for someone to want to work to live, instead of the other way around. Anyone can say something when they have a safety net, but more and more often the people in this country whose voices we need to hear most are silenced, not by censorship, but by economics. [1] https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.html https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.htm...

amydav27 11y ago

BEWARE OF SCAM,, the only liable hacker,that I have tested,trusted, and he doesn't lie,, He told me iPhone can never be hacked,so I do better not waste my money, but he did great stuufs,email hack,gmail hack.he even upgraded my daughters school grade, exam score, vpn.,website hack,credit upgrade,erase criminal record .etc..thats so amazing.you can contact him too...he can do alot of impossible stuffs.and he doesn't lie. WALTSTEPH82@GMAIL.COM. or text +1 601 866 5203