From a computational complexity standpoint, the big-Oh of "superhuman" matters a whole lot; for fast-enough growing functions, even the most paltry of individual arbitrage opportunities will accumulate into more wealth than has ever existed..
If he does not feel pain, then he is not superhuman, but subhuman.
When we designed an artificial limb, we "discovered" how useful pain is. We really need some skin that could discover on their own collisions with other objects, that should not be there, but are.
I've always been curious if we'd interpret pain differently if we knew with certainty that any injuries it could represent would not be fatal, nor permanent.
I think so. Pain is a way of alerting us that some damage took place and that it needs to be taken care of.
I imagine the brain would evolve to ignore pain since the people who feel it less would have an advantage over the ones who feel it even if both were self-healing. We already have a version of this with adrenaline to numb the pain so that we can get out of a dangerous situation.
Now that my coworker Hydrothermal has outed me, I guess I should confess that I've been hiding in plain sight. on the bright side, I can finally be myself! You wouldn't believe what a relief this is as it's extremely hard to hide the fact that your arm grew back. The first time I used all my sick days but simply returning with the new arm gave me away (I didn't realize human medicine couldn't regenerate a limb).
Ouch ... you're right! I seem to also confuse words that vary only by their prefixes (includes/excludes seem too similar to be antonyms - you humans seem to be converging on English which is clearly a sub-optimal language).
Reminds me of Limitless movie. Probably gambling (no identity required to start) is good idea for the first step, and stock exchange is good idea for the second step.
Yeah, definitely gambling to start. He could simply play through (or watch others play) a full blackjack shoe. Since he now knows the starting order of the cards, with his supercomputer mind he could easily analyze the shuffle, know the exact order of the cards after it, and bet accordingly - knowing in advance what hands both he and the dealer will have. In a place like Vegas he could easily win $1 million in one night, starting with a nominal amount ($100 for example). Then he could move onto the financial markets.
You wouldn't get to see the shuffle though, as most casinos will use an auto shuffler that shuffles one shoe while the other is in play.
6-8 decks would be hard to figure out until maybe halfway through. Could do some analysis on the probability of a face card though that would really pay off towards the end of the shoe.
Many casinos don't use auto-shufflers on all games, especially on higher limit games, because gamblers generally don't trust them. This applies to all casinos on the Strip that I'm aware of. Re: it being hard to figure out on 6-8 decks, the scenario presented was that his mind is a supercomputer with perfect memory and he has perfect vision. So he could very easily determine the exact order of an unlimited number of cards by watching the shuffle and knowing the starting order of the cards (that being said, you can walk into any high end casino on the strip and play up to 6 blackjack spots at $10,000 each on a hand-shuffled, double deck game - MGM, Aria, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Caesars Palace, The Mirage, etc).
You're thinking in terms of human constraints; that's not what this hypothetical was about.
Fair enough, I wasn't considering the high limit rooms use a manual shuffle. Still it would be pretty suspicious to walk in, go straight to a high limit table, watch a full shoe, wait until a shuffle happens, then buy in and shoot for the max and win more than the odds say you should.
Finance Theory, the study of stock markets and related matters and which is recognized as an academically rigorous subfield of economics, does not offer the conclusion that being smarter is enough to win in the stock market.
I suppose you could say you could subscribe to and read all the news tickers more quickly? but you'd still have the problem of knowing what to do with the info, like you'd still have to realize how a 1 degree warmer temperature someplace would affect the banana crop, along with you'd have to know everything single thing everybody else in the world knows about their local industry, which the description didn't really say you could do.
To put it another way, IBM didn't conclude that they should plug their Jeopardy winning supercomputer into the market and let it trade stocks. To put it another nother way, the "perfect market hypothesis" says the best you are going to do is what the market is already doing, which is a good thing, it stops you from falling behind, but it doesn't put you ahead.
Now, you might say "what about Warren Buffett", but that's probably more along the lines of the robot's buy and sell people skills, like maybe go into real estate and be a super good salesman coaxing people to buy where there is a lot of sloppy money on the table. There is not a lot of money lying around the stockmarket; while we hear of winners, they are always balanced by losers, and nobody yet knows if the two can be separated in advance.
>Finance Theory, the study of stock markets and related matters and which is recognized as an academically rigorous subfield of economics, does not offer the conclusion that being smarter is enough to win in the stock market.
I understand what you are saying, but to inform other people it would be better if you indicated that you know what I'm saying. Refute the point? I disagree.
if this robot could do approximately what Renaissance has been already doing, that would not create wealth, that would take Renaissance's milkshake and share it for two, or worse, by creating competition, dry up Renaissance's milkshake for both. i.e. the money that Renaissance is making is not "lying around to be taken", it's already being wrung out of the market, and is being picked up and put in somebody's pocket, Renaissance's.
And for perspective, what Renaissance has been doing for all the time it has existed (65 billion in 25 years is your unicorn) is less than what Apple did, less than what Microsoft did before that, less than Berkshire Hathaway, etc. Facebook... Google... Uber is already closing in on Renaissance's value in a fraction of the time and in terms of trendline will blow past it. "Money lying on the floor of the stock exchange" is nothing compared to actual value creation.
Still, Renaissance is a pretty good gig for some uber mathnerds who realize they don't actually have other ways to create value (as our robot does) so I'd give it a bump for low opportunity cost.
Perhaps, it could just become very good at manipulating the perceptions of the reactive humans who are participating in the market? Create false crisis... Or real ones.
I agree the manipulation of, or it's hyper perception, is a good direction to take; the point I'm making here is that, that doesn't mean "in the stock market"; the stock market is a faceless buy/sell with a lot of savvy players. I think a more direct facing manipulable buy/sell is a better choice, like used cars, insurance, real estate, gold, etc.
the stock market is one of our most efficient markets, that's why it attracts big money, the money is safe; if you are manipulating the stock market to make it unsafe, you're going to attract attention. Better to manipulate as a rug merchant in a bazaar.
why isn't the answer "hang around outside Yankee Stadium hitting balls, running, and catching them, till you get discovered and signed"? or something athletic like that. Seems a lot better than the "super productive web designer" answer that was getting love over on stackexchange.
I considered boxing, but you probably have to pay too many dues (timewise) first. But you can be signed and stuck out on a baseball field pretty quick; signing bonuses, etc. Tennis? Basketball? Soccer (in one of the places that calls it football)? Golf?
Where can you get a signing bonus and start hauling in the big money right away?
Also worth mention, I have heard recently that there is a way to break PHP, hack Pornhub and earn $20k!
edit: just out of curiosity, why was this answer disliked by somebody? cuz I said Yankees? soccer? athletics rather than nerd dreams? Cu-uz, I still think this is the best answer I have seen.
well, winning the world series of poker is the way to make a lot at poker, otherwise you aren't make a lot at poker. And etc. for a lot of other endeavors.
The fun of the question is to engage in the speculation. The question didn't identify how much it was necessary to earn, and all the people saying "gambling" aren't saying how much is being talked about, etc.
Even if you are a "lucky phenom kid" in baseball, you aren't all that famous till you establish a bit of a track record; plenty of journeymen players remain completely unkown, and our people-smart robot could calibrate his goodness (he's not even stronger than a human, he just has fast reaction times)
I'm not trying to weasel out of your point, it's a good point, I'm trying to weasel into this thing being an interesting question, and find some parameters that would find an interesting answer.
I'm still looking for the answer to, what does our economy recognize quickly and reward greatly, and how quick are we talking, and how greatly are we suggesting, and ok, how obscure can you remain?
I think "super smart high end real estate broker" is lucrative and not that "famousy", and perhaps within the easy win range of this robot, but it's deathly dull so what would actually be a good, robust, and fun answer?
If I remember the movie Tin Cup correctly, anyone can qualify for the US Open. Win that and you'd probably be on an easy path to a professional golf career.
I felt like a lot of the answers people suggested were assuming it was actually more superhuman than we know it to be from the description.
The intriguing part for me was simply the question "assuming you could win/succeed at any endeavor, what endeavors deliver how much reward how quickly?" i.e. not about the robot at all, but what will our economy quickly discover and reward, because "building a better Amazon than Amazon" or a better Microsoft or IKEA would still take decades to pay off.
can you control getting onto Jeopardy quickly? And then there is no evidence that by being smart and informed that you can be smarter and better informed than the crowd-sourced stock market.
The Talk Show circuit. Write a book about your life as a robot, throw in a couple of amusing anecdotes about being too heavy to swim, or trying to get through metal detectors at customs, then a heart rending story about not giving up on your dreams - robot or human.
Option the rights to Hollywood and big money is yours. Spend it on replacing the diodes down your left hand side.
I'd have to lean meta on this one. The superhuman would come up with a way previously unimaginable to pull it off on account of being superhuam and all. Thats kind of the point.
I'd have to lean meta on this one. The superhuman would come up with a way previously unimaginable to pull it off on account of being superhuam and all. Thats kind of the point.
Pessimistic answer: The robot wakes up, the humans are dead. Oh well.
Optimistic answer: The robot wakes up and tries to find a bank. The robot goes to downtown San Francisco and can't find any, eventually asking a bald man wearing a strange-looking red and black leotard where the nearest bank is.
"Bank? I don't believe there have been any banks here for some time." The man talks to you and quickly finds out the robot is from another time. He smiles wryly, and begins, "The economics of the future are somewhat different; you see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century..."
What does the robot really want? Literally money? Power over people? Just the planet itself, with humans as nuisance?
In any case, break in to a modern biotechnology lab with everything needed for genetic engineering. Create a highly infective biological thing (not necessarily a virus) that, after infection, creates a biological circuitry that makes a human perfectly obedient after some defined signal. A much simpler versions of that already exist [0]. Now just start infecting people and use their resources to spread it even wider. Even if a small part of a population is immune it's not a problem.
Inside trading using lots of shell companies through lots of offshores.
Use his people skills to gather confidential information, use his mental skills to disguise correctly the trading.
Creating a crypto virtual currency, convincing a lot of key people to put trust in it, working behind shadows to make its value goes unprecedently high. Uses an admittedly fake name to uncover its identity while still managing to create trust that it is ok for it to keep most of the value that this crypto-currency is creating.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadPlay poker.
Trade currency.
When we designed an artificial limb, we "discovered" how useful pain is. We really need some skin that could discover on their own collisions with other objects, that should not be there, but are.
If you can self-heal from the worst of injuries, you don't need to feel pain.
I imagine the brain would evolve to ignore pain since the people who feel it less would have an advantage over the ones who feel it even if both were self-healing. We already have a version of this with adrenaline to numb the pain so that we can get out of a dangerous situation.
6-8 decks would be hard to figure out until maybe halfway through. Could do some analysis on the probability of a face card though that would really pay off towards the end of the shoe.
You're thinking in terms of human constraints; that's not what this hypothetical was about.
I suppose you could say you could subscribe to and read all the news tickers more quickly? but you'd still have the problem of knowing what to do with the info, like you'd still have to realize how a 1 degree warmer temperature someplace would affect the banana crop, along with you'd have to know everything single thing everybody else in the world knows about their local industry, which the description didn't really say you could do.
To put it another way, IBM didn't conclude that they should plug their Jeopardy winning supercomputer into the market and let it trade stocks. To put it another nother way, the "perfect market hypothesis" says the best you are going to do is what the market is already doing, which is a good thing, it stops you from falling behind, but it doesn't put you ahead.
Now, you might say "what about Warren Buffett", but that's probably more along the lines of the robot's buy and sell people skills, like maybe go into real estate and be a super good salesman coaxing people to buy where there is a lot of sloppy money on the table. There is not a lot of money lying around the stockmarket; while we hear of winners, they are always balanced by losers, and nobody yet knows if the two can be separated in advance.
Renaissance would refute that point
if this robot could do approximately what Renaissance has been already doing, that would not create wealth, that would take Renaissance's milkshake and share it for two, or worse, by creating competition, dry up Renaissance's milkshake for both. i.e. the money that Renaissance is making is not "lying around to be taken", it's already being wrung out of the market, and is being picked up and put in somebody's pocket, Renaissance's.
And for perspective, what Renaissance has been doing for all the time it has existed (65 billion in 25 years is your unicorn) is less than what Apple did, less than what Microsoft did before that, less than Berkshire Hathaway, etc. Facebook... Google... Uber is already closing in on Renaissance's value in a fraction of the time and in terms of trendline will blow past it. "Money lying on the floor of the stock exchange" is nothing compared to actual value creation.
Still, Renaissance is a pretty good gig for some uber mathnerds who realize they don't actually have other ways to create value (as our robot does) so I'd give it a bump for low opportunity cost.
the stock market is one of our most efficient markets, that's why it attracts big money, the money is safe; if you are manipulating the stock market to make it unsafe, you're going to attract attention. Better to manipulate as a rug merchant in a bazaar.
I considered boxing, but you probably have to pay too many dues (timewise) first. But you can be signed and stuck out on a baseball field pretty quick; signing bonuses, etc. Tennis? Basketball? Soccer (in one of the places that calls it football)? Golf?
Where can you get a signing bonus and start hauling in the big money right away?
Also worth mention, I have heard recently that there is a way to break PHP, hack Pornhub and earn $20k!
edit: just out of curiosity, why was this answer disliked by somebody? cuz I said Yankees? soccer? athletics rather than nerd dreams? Cu-uz, I still think this is the best answer I have seen.
The fun of the question is to engage in the speculation. The question didn't identify how much it was necessary to earn, and all the people saying "gambling" aren't saying how much is being talked about, etc.
Even if you are a "lucky phenom kid" in baseball, you aren't all that famous till you establish a bit of a track record; plenty of journeymen players remain completely unkown, and our people-smart robot could calibrate his goodness (he's not even stronger than a human, he just has fast reaction times)
I'm not trying to weasel out of your point, it's a good point, I'm trying to weasel into this thing being an interesting question, and find some parameters that would find an interesting answer.
I'm still looking for the answer to, what does our economy recognize quickly and reward greatly, and how quick are we talking, and how greatly are we suggesting, and ok, how obscure can you remain?
I think "super smart high end real estate broker" is lucrative and not that "famousy", and perhaps within the easy win range of this robot, but it's deathly dull so what would actually be a good, robust, and fun answer?
Maybe some capabilities should be removed from this robot?
The intriguing part for me was simply the question "assuming you could win/succeed at any endeavor, what endeavors deliver how much reward how quickly?" i.e. not about the robot at all, but what will our economy quickly discover and reward, because "building a better Amazon than Amazon" or a better Microsoft or IKEA would still take decades to pay off.
Option the rights to Hollywood and big money is yours. Spend it on replacing the diodes down your left hand side.
The "fastest way" is to be superhuman isn't it?
The "fastest way" is to be superhuman isn't it?
Optimistic answer: The robot wakes up and tries to find a bank. The robot goes to downtown San Francisco and can't find any, eventually asking a bald man wearing a strange-looking red and black leotard where the nearest bank is.
"Bank? I don't believe there have been any banks here for some time." The man talks to you and quickly finds out the robot is from another time. He smiles wryly, and begins, "The economics of the future are somewhat different; you see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century..."
In any case, break in to a modern biotechnology lab with everything needed for genetic engineering. Create a highly infective biological thing (not necessarily a virus) that, after infection, creates a biological circuitry that makes a human perfectly obedient after some defined signal. A much simpler versions of that already exist [0]. Now just start infecting people and use their resources to spread it even wider. Even if a small part of a population is immune it's not a problem.
Few days at most and you own everything.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasites_an...