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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates

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To: mauser96 who wrote (30591)8/28/2000 2:00:03 PM
From: lurqer  Read Replies (1) of 54805
 
"The Age of Spiritual Machines"

amazon.com

One of the books that I read on my recent Utah trip as a way of updating me on the emerging cyborg. It sensitized me to the possible upcoming investment opportunities in Virtual Reality and nanotechnology (long time scale). While I had some familiarity with both, I had never thought of the synergistic interaction between them.

Also of interest was Kurzweil's current fascination with investment opportunities divined with "evolutionary algorithms". If I understood him correctly this is the focus of his current attention. Given Don's post (#30596) and the following quote one can understand why.

"There are several large funds today that use genetic algorithms and related mathematical techniques that appear to be out performing more traditional funds. Analysts estimate that in 1998, the investment decisions for 5 percent of stock investments, and a higher percentage of money invested on derivative markets, are made by this type of program, with those percentages rapidly increasing. The controversy won't last because it will become apparent before long that leaving such decisions to mere human decision making is a mistake."

The controversy referred to is whether humans or computers will be better at investment decisions. While I believe Kurzweil tends to err on the optimistic side wrt both the capabilities of machines and the ease of solving difficult software problems, the above quote gave me pause. I decided perhaps I'd "better get while the getting was good".

lurqer
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