2026-04-23
original post 2026-02
Does Silicon Valley have higher base rate for bad childhoods?
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Incomplete
- I haven't done enough research on both sides, the below list is biased. I think someone should research this more rigorously. Or maybe just go ask GPT-N a bunch of queries and report back.
What?
- I honestly don't even remember where, but some psychologist somewhere made an online comment that this is true. And now I seem to be paying more attention to noticing other comments that also say this.
Examples
- Paul Graham says his own bad childhood was a major reason he considered not having kids.
- I assume this post is aimed at persuasion, not just sharing his own personal experience. If he chose to mention it here, maybe he thinks this is among the top reasons a lot of his readers don't want kids.
My other source of data about kids was my own childhood, and that was similarly misleading. I was pretty bad, and was always in trouble for something or other. So it seemed to me that parenthood was essentially law enforcement. I didn't realize there were good times too.
- Naval Ravikant
- Naval says his childhood was financially hard, but doesn't mention any difficulties otherwise.
Your family is broken, but you're going to fix the world
- This sentence seems to have a negative vibe. Does he think this is ineffective strategy or this is immoral?
- Or is he just literally describing what he sees in front of him, which is a higher base rate for people whose family is broken but want to fix the world.
- Elon Musk claims his father was abusive to him
- Sam Altman is currently being sued by his sister for sexual abuse
- Peter Thiel's family fled Nazi Germany. His father then worked with South African govt's secret nuclear programme. Finally they left for the US.
- Dara Khosrowshahi's family fled Iran when he was small, and he got separated from his father for some years.
- Larry Ellison was given up for adoption by his biological father, and he probably had a poor relationship with his adopted one.
- Jeff Bezos father left him as a child, and his mother remarried.
- Sergey Brin's parents left the Soviet Union for the US, due to antisemitism in the soviet union.
- Jan Koum fled Ukraine with his mother, leaving his father behind.
- Piere Omidyar's parents fled from Iran, and his family is related to people running the Iranian govt.
Unclear examples
- Steve Jobs was given up for adoption by his biological father, although it is not yet clear to me what his childhood was actually like.
- Gordon Moore's family relocated several times, and may have been diagnosed as on the spectrum as a kid, but it is unclear otherwise what his childhood was actually like.
- Alex Karp's parents faced financial difficulties and were civil rights activists, but it is not clear otherwise what his childhood was like.
- Gabe Newell had Fuchs' dystrophy.
Counterexamples
- People for whom I haven't found any info indicating they had a bad chilhood (not that I searched it very rigorously) - Patrick Collison, Brian Chesky, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Bankman Fried, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Marc Andreessen, Dario Amodei, Jaan Tallin, Dustin Moskowitz, Brian Acton, Palmer Luckey, Travis Kalani
Untested hypotheses from my side
- Do first-gen immigrants to US (who then become billionaires) have more family issues than those who parents are american?
- Is there a difference between those with jewish versus christian versus atheist parents?
- There is also a much simpler hypotheses which is that poorer people in childhood have more family issues.
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