Osinski is 'still proud' of his work. That seemed slightly sociopathic to me.

I didn't have exactly the same reaction, it hit me from a different angle. He admits to feeling guilt right at the beginning, though definitely he tries to rationalize as well. But I think there is something in that bigger, broader, something he has difficulty expressing.

. ..I used to go to the trading floor and watch my software in use amid the sea of screens. A programmer doesn’t admire his creation so much for what it does but for how it does it. This stuff was beautiful and elegant.

The aim of software is, in a sense, to create an alternative reality. After all, when you use your cell phone, you simply want to push the fewest buttons possible and call, text, purchase, listen, download, e-mail, or browse. The power we all hold in our hands is shocking, yet it’s controlled by a few swipes of a finger. The drive to simplify the user’s contact with the machine has an inherent side effect of disguising the complexity of a given task. Over time, the users of any software are inured to the intricate nature of what they are doing. Also, as the software does more of the “thinking,” the user does less.

Among other things, that reminded me of things like quinn's blog (and further riffs on neurology) on birds being able to see ultraviolet light. What he seems to be trying to get at, I think when we use complex "machines," we shut down certain sensing techniques, in order to use the new system, skip certain neurological functions, and it's quite possible that those thought processes we are cutting out could be linked to good judgment. Does that make any sense?

I'm not making excuses for him, I just think he's struggling to say something there that's more like a warning, like: these are tools that expand some things for humans but limits others, for that reason, they are dangerous.

And he did, after all, agree to a title of "My Manhattan Project, How I Helped Build the Bomb..." which does most definitely refer to "beautiful" theoretical science being turned to deadly aims with even larger moral questions at issue. Were the Manhattan Project scientists sociopaths? Amoral? Immoral?

Part of it is also probably just the way he writes (he's a geek, after all, and the stereotype is high math ability, low emotional I.Q.), because he does say things like this:

I never would have thought, in my most extreme paranoid fantasies, that my software, and the others like it, would have enabled Wall Street to decimate the investments of everyone in my family.

and this

The world around me, though, had become bizarre. At the time, I had an odd sensation that mortgage traders felt they had to outdo the loutish behavior in Liar’s Poker. The more money they made, the more juvenile they became. What do you expect from 30-year-old megamillionaires whose overwhelming aspiration was something vaguely called Hugeness? They had wrestling matches on the floor. Food-eating contests. Like little kids, they scrambled to hide the evidence when the head of fixed income paid his rare visits to the floor.

He just doesn't go into the moral side of it that much, but there are hints that he could, it just wasn't what the article was about. He does seem kind of self-centered, but that is like most folks, most aren't the Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker) type of personality who when they see activity that disturbs them, have a big picture conversion and feel the need to drop out and make a crusade about it.

What a great piece Thanks for sharing AA. Although I could have done without the 2 million dollar pissing contest.

I go to parties, sometimes until 4.
It's hard to leave when you can't find the door.
It's tough to handle this fortune and fame.
Everybody's so different, I haven't changed.

A significant number of people grow up because they must, not simply because they got older. Large amounts of money enable people to avoid the growing-up part.

Sufficiently-smart folks, like Warren Buffett, recognize this and shelter their kids from inheriting huge fortunes. Others (Conrad Hilton, perhaps) do not, and ... do not.

This is also one reason why a very high estate tax is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. High estate tax levels prevent the sort of empire-building that leaves 50-year-old callow youths in positions of political and economic power. Or, as others have put it, the C students wind up in charge of the A students. (Not that getting "A"s is a measure of wisdom either, but getting "C"s is hardly an indicator that one should be in charge.)

And thank you back for all your recent thank you's. :-)

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