It is not a case of choosing those [faces] which, to the best of ones judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees. (Keynes, General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, 1936).
Think there is anyone out there who is both a chess grandmaster and day trader?
Bart: Hey... hands off my pickle!
Homer: I don't see your name on it, boy!
Bart: No, but -licks it-
Homer: Oh yeah? -dunks in his drink- Check mate!
Bart: Always thinking two moves ahead.
Throwing out a general question for the "usual suspects"....any thoughts on SLV? Currently have no PM exposure in core portfolio, and was looking at a small stake in SLV to get feet wet, so to speak. I know many here favor "physical", over "paper" (to that crowd,..yes, own a Mossberg "Cruiser" for "home defense"..had it for years). Maybe, in the somewhat near future, I'll add physical, as well.
She and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Zsófia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject. However, chess was not taught to the exclusion of everything else, as was the case with Gata Kamsky. Their father also taught his three daughters the international language Esperanto.
i: If you are thinking of precious metals as an inflation or dollar decline hedge, GLD or SLV should be OK.
If you are thinking of metals as a replacement for money when the financial system implodes, then remember in order monetize GLD or SLV they must be sold on a functioning exchange, settled through a functioning settlement system, and the proceeds wired through a functioning banking system.
If you are thinking of getting physical metals, you have the costs and risks of storage, along with the hassles of monetizing the bullion in order to buy things.
By 2025 you will be able to buy the computing power of the human brain for $1,000 (Dh3,672), according to Dr Colin Harrison, a director and Master Inventor for IBM.
Harrison, who recently took some time to speak to Gulf News on a trip to the UAE, said the estimate is based on the current state of super-computers, which IBM has a long history with.
The company built Deep Blue, a machine designed to beat Russian Chess Champion Gary Kasparov, about 12 years ago and it is currently producing a line of high-performance machines called Blue Gene.
Deep Blue has roughly the processing capacity of a lizard, and the early Blue Genes has roughly the processing capacity of small rodent, said Dr Harrison. If you want to get to the processing capacity of a human being, I think you need something like 10 petaFLOPS.
How fast it that? The fastest version on the Blue Gene runs at 500 teraFLOPS, which means about 500 trillion mathematical operations per second.
Think there is anyone out there who is both a chess grandmaster and day trader?
No, they require different types of intelligence. The most salient characteristic of chess grandmasters is not that they can react quickly to a constantly changing situation, but that they have astounding, world-class memories.
By 2025 you will be able to buy the computing power of the human brain for $1,000
After reading that article about 42 million adult Americans being illiterate, I think you can buy one smarter than those people for a thousand dollars now.
More importantly, what do you want it to do? If it's truly capable of out thinking a human being, then it very well may just start calling you a dope. Or tell you the ultimate answer to everything is,..."42".
Computers are half the problem with this housing bubble, i.e, all the lenders had east to use software to daytrade mortgage applications and the underwriters had a tsunami of collateral to blend in with all the synthetic shit that was connected to other computers and other software and nothing really existed but a mountain of debt.
Think there is anyone out there who is both a chess grandmaster and day trader?
Being good at chess is one thing, being a grandmaster is another; it takes work to be a grandmaster, even for a chess prodigy. I would guess there's a strong correlation historically between World Chess Champion and insanity.
Futures up, but .... Target reports and seeing as they are down almost 50% in a year and retail hitting the wall, they probably will hit a new low, on decreased sales, which may drag other crap down, but .... sometimes, bad news is looked at like really good news and maybe crappy earnings will help with that operating cash flow stuff and not impact the dividend (not).
"The most salient characteristic of chess grandmasters is not that they can react quickly to a constantly changing situation, but that they have astounding, world-class memories."
El Cliffo
"I would guess there's a strong correlation historically between World Chess Champion and insanity."
Monday: Lowe's (LOW, Fortune 500) is expected to report earnings of 28 cents per share, versus 38 cents a share a year ago. Target (TGT, Fortune 500) is expected to have earned 49 cents per share versus 56 cents a share a year ago. Both reports are due before the opening bell.
Absolutely wrong. Chess grandmasters can remember the placement of pieces on a chessboard no better than a casual chess player can when the pieces are placed at random instead of in logical chess positions.
So if someone can recite contents of a book after reading it once, but can't remember random arrrangements of letters better then a casual book lover, he doesn't have an astounding, world-class memory? Interesting.
1worldcurrencyyogi writes:
The only proven characteristic of chess masters, as compared to other humans, is ten years of study and competition.
1worldcurrencyyogi | 11.17.08 - 2:26 am | #
EPS Magic & XMAS footnote: Puck's trademark laugh in the early ballads is "Ho ho ho."[13] In modern mythology, the "merry old elf" who works with magical swiftness unseen in the night, who can "descry each thing that's done beneath the moone", whom we propitiate with a glass of milk, lest he put lumps of coal in the stockings we hang by the hob with care, and whose trademark laugh is "Ho ho ho"is Santa Claus. Puck (mythology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Ten years of study and competition" is beyond the ability of 99% of humanity.
I mean Mickey Mantle and I might have started off, at some point, at the same level. We both had baseball gloves and took turns at the plate. Somewhere along the line though, I lost my chance to play centerfield for the New York Yankees and Mantle gained his.
Perhaps it was when he demonstrated the ability to hit a 95mph fastball 500 feet and I exhibited the ability to pop up to the pitcher when faced with that difficult circumstance.
I haven't played chess in years, in part because it is game of some skill
that one must practice as well as have some natural ability for. If you meet someone who has 10 years of study and competition at the game your ability to challenge him is very very limited.
Well that took a depressing short period of time...
CHICAGO (Reuters) The United States government should not worry about deficits over the next two years while spending money to jumpstart the ailing economy, President-elect Barack Obama said in a television interview that aired on Sunday.
Obama, a Democrat who takes over from President George W. Bush, a Republican, on January 20, said consensus had emerged between economists in both major U.S. political parties that expensive measures were necessary to avoid a deep recession.
More of the same "deal with it later" crap that created this mess...
1worldcurrencyyogi writes:
Are you saying all chess grandmasters can recite books after one reading?
1worldcurrencyyogi | 11.17.08 - 2:37 am | #
I was only pointing out a flaw in your argument. If someone says they have excellent memory, you counter that they don't, because in one specific instance (randomly positioned pieces), they don't remember better the Joe. Was trying to give you an analogy that would make the flaw more apparent.
As far as grandmaster memory goes, I don't have any specific data or oppinion.
"Securitization trusts hold $1.5 trillion of subprime and alt-A loans. As of late August, according to figures from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, roughly $400 billion of the loans were delinquent and $1.1 trillion were current on interest and principal payments."
OK, so if governments worldwide had guaranteed that $1.5T, which will ultimately lose a lot less unless properties that make up those securities are imaginary, there would have been no writedowns, bancrupcies, etc in the financial industry? Can someone enlighten me?
that guy from IBM, so typical of the institutional arrogance I have long associated with Big Blue... I follow Roger Penrose's argument that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modeled by a conventional Turing machine-type of digital computer. Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function.
let's see that 'human brain' write a simple one act play in the style of Beckett...
as for grandmasters, check out the fantastic leap in ability Bobby Fischer made from about 14 to 17 years of age....
The only proven characteristic of chess masters, as compared to other humans, is ten years of study and competition.
Somewhat related might be the nature of the Dreyfus skills acquisition model. After enough experience, experts can rely on intuition for the right answer. Forcing experts to follow fixed rules causes them to underperform. The point is that experience builds some intuitive mechanism based on some subconcious model. Which might be related to the fact that when asked to memorize a chess board and return pieces to it, the expert chess players will return the board to a strategically equivalent configuration while novices will return a chess board to a literally close but strategically far different configuration. Even if you can do as many ops/sec as a brain, you still need the right software otherwise you are just trying to run Vista on an IBM XT.
Foolish Arabs. If only they could think as well as Supergenius Jas, they could have taken possession of 1/3500th of the current American debt.
And if you act today, you'll also receive this extra bonus of a 2% return on your money. Hurry today and put your life savings at risk in a negative-value investment!
as for grandmasters, check out the fantastic leap in ability Bobby Fischer made from about 14 to 17 years of age....
30 years ago, I played a guy that had drawn a game with the young Bobby Fischer. I made sure to beat that guy. Good thing, too. For the rest of my life I wasn't even good enough to lose to anyone who had lost to Bobby Fischer.
Agree PMs sometimes attract the nervous regardless of the source of anxiety.
A couple of caveats. Fund managers are in and out of SLV with some frequency. This can wreck your short-term equanimity if you are even a little excitable. Also (and as has been pointed out here previously) since SLV settles daily it will not track spot price with precision, so don't go in with unrealistic expectations.
Otherwise, yes, it can be useful if you are among those who consider the dollar to have become a bit fizzy of late. Rich is informative on the subject when he elects to comment on it.
Disclosure - I've increased my exposure to PMs over the past few weeks, subject to revision on fresh developments/interventions.
Broward -
you do realize that the Saudis just spent about 8 days worth of oil exports at current prices to buy that gold, right? Not that the Saudis use the spot price for their oil contracts, just as I'm pretty sure they didn't pay spot prices for the gold, either.
Scale matters. Even if the Saudis bought 35 billion dollars worth (less than 3 months worth of exports), it wouldn't be worth much notice.
I'll put their gold purchase into another light - they just spent about a tenth of their military budget on gold instead of jets.
If only the American government would follow that example, we could buy 70 billion dollars worth of gold.
And for the final point about scale - Paulson's now seemingly inadequate TARP is basically equal to the U.S.'s total military expenditures for a year - and Paulson blew through it, by his own admission in asking for more, in a couple of months.
Broward -
that article was worse than I thought -
'It is very unlikely that such a large hoard of physical gold could have been bought for the depressed current price.'
Oh please - the Saudis pay with oil, not dollars. Dollars are just a medium of exchange on both sides of the transaction, for the convenience of accountants and make the paperwork easier to handle.
And oil's value dwarfs gold's in ways that only an idiot would be blind to. Unless, of course, you possess oil in such abundance that you can't even imagine what to with it - after all, you can only buy so many private jets, American banks, and European chateaus before ennui sets in.
Krugman, Donaldson and Roberts are all calling for the auto bailout. As AIG and Fannie have taught us, if granted today, this won't be the last request.
Contact elected officials:
1)No Detroit bailout
2)Demand transparency regarding Fed/Treasury spending
3)No more Paulson press conferences
Scale matters. Even if the Saudis bought 35 billion dollars worth (less than 3 months worth of exports), it wouldn't be worth much notice.
I'll put their gold purchase into another light - they just spent about a tenth of their military budget on gold instead of jets.
Take a different perspective. Total annual primary mine output of gold is about 80-90 million ounces. So, if Saudi Arabia bought $35 billion of gold, they would be buying about half of global annual mine output. It would pressure prices, I think.
Silver is a thinner market, with about 800 million ounces mined. So, a silver purchase of $35 billion would be about 6 times annual mine output.
On Saudi scale, it would only take a little money to move the PM market.
Giezcubed, well.. I like 2 and 3 anyway. As for Detroit, I suppose the right question is how to go about reorganizing US auto manufacturing in such a way as to allow the sector to produce cars that people want to buy... It seems a waste to let our manufacturing capacity decrease any further. Without healthy large-scale manufacturing we are just a third world country with aging expensive toys...
Speaking og oil, it may come as no surprise why the actual barrels in the ground number is kept secret. Very secret. Some have postulated that it is much less than assumed. And a significant percentage bordering on or above a majority is sour crude.
So, if Saudi is buying gold, then they are the shrewd traders we know them to be. Combine this with Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China and others and who knows--can anyone else see a short squeeze?
In 1977 Life magazine (I think Life) ran an article on machine intelligence. They predicted the first conscience computer by 1987 when the first 3000 gigabyte memory computer would come online.
MIT had a robot named Shaky that year and he was a break through that was going to start the age of robots.
"The Future is already here, it's just not Evenly Distributed..."
Isn't that a William Gibson quote?
You already can buy the computing power of a human brain. The scientific calculator on my phone calculates square roots better than I do. But surpassing human thinking isn't about computing power; it is about programming. Even an idiot can make better contextual decisions that a modern AI. Unless it comes to real estate, evidently. Then prices only go up, and programming for that would be easy.
I have no idea what's possible but I know that I was holding gold in 1995-1996 in expectation of an inflationary panic and it never happened. But I was watching some really strange gold movements in / out of the NY Reserve bank. Later, I discovered the Sumners' gold price manipulation paper.
A couple of weeks ago, somebody floated the idea that the Chinese could get out from under $2 trillion in US bonds through a shorting strategy which would leave somebody holding the back when supply met demand.
Perhaps the same strategy could be applied to the gold market.
Ponyless. Good thoughts, certainly change is needed. My concern is that money without a fundamental shift will be handed out that support the existing structure (requirements on outputs, ie fuel efficiencies miss the core problems). Our education system is much the same, money is not the answer, a complete redesign is needed.
Bob Lawless over at credit slips seems to prefer the AACER data to that of the US Courts. The stories are quite similar regardless.
One thing that I am curious about is that the credit card default rates seem to if anything lead bankruptcy filings, and I would expect the reverse. Does anyone have any idea why?
Also how much of the post 2005 dip in filings was due to
a) People preemptively filing before the changes in the law.
b) Lawyers and courts feeling their way around the new law. In my experience lawyers are loath to perform any action the result of which they are not certain of. (A good thing, probably.)
c) The structure of the new law.
PM's for all the attention they garner, are quite a small part of the 'market'. It doesn't take much to move them. That's why many think they are manipulated. Of course, there's a great deal of power behind the suspected manipulation.
I don't know how the conversation turned to chess masters and memory or day trading; but I was one of the people they studied in that report on chess masters and memory. Some of the highlights that I remember was that they rated my chess memory when playing multiple games blindfolded the same as a chess grandmaster. But the random chess configuration was pretty hard. I remember it took me 3-4 times to get it right; and I managed to do it by converting it into relationships based on real chess game setups.
Interesting study.
As for day traders who are also chess grandmasters, I think Ron Henley (a chess grandmaster from Texas) became a day trader (or was it investment banker?). I am pretty sure there were others, although I am not sure I could tell you without contacting some old acquaintances. If there weren't other GMs, then I am certain there were some IMs (International Masters), which are almost as strong.
Volker the Viking(Unrated) writes:
1929er: The new world order of finance sounds suspiciously the same as the existing world of finance. Of course, I could be wrong.
Volker the Viking |
I agree, but Wharton is probably not the place to find the edge opinion - a lot of younger pigmen go there for an MBA between scams. Don't want to endanger those tuitions and endowments. They'll come around when lashed to the stake and the woodpile about their waist.
"Take a different perspective. Total annual primary mine output of gold is about 80-90 million ounces."
Why? Gold is not concrete, after all, whose major value is its (hoped for) lack of movement.
I still find it strange how many people focus on 'production' when metals are constantly being recycled. Look at the number of cars in America currently being greater than the number of drivers - those 'excess' cars represent a lot of metal that does not need to mined, and yet, we all focus on what is newly mined, as if the existing metal is no longer of any value at all.
Saudi Arabia exports oil to countries in Asia, and it is quite possible to create the following scenario -
1. Saudi oil production is dispersed solely at the discretion of Saudi interests
2. Saudi interests desire gold
3. If Asian importers x,y, and z expect to be alloted the expected amount of Saudi oil, said importers will provide gold as part of the process
4. Rinse and repeat as long as oil remains the most critical resource for transportation, and is integral to many aspects of food production/distribution
Gold doesn't really do much - no one will starve without it. Ships will keep moving, trucks will keep trucking, etc. in the absence of gold.
The reverse is not true of oil.
Gold is just part of a game, in its way, something that people consider valuable, especially in light of the fact that it seems to be almost universally valuable.
Oil is currently the resource underpinning the societies many of us live in.
Oddly, the Saudis, being much farther removed from that industrial world than many of us realize, are not really good indicators of much of anything. That a royal family, perched precariously on top of a resource/religious pinnacle, is interested in getting its hands on something with independent value could have several grounds. For example, a reliably untraceable method to keep financing its various Islamic institutions world wide, without fear of interference from outsiders that may object to the content of the educational message.
Or more likely, when the kingdom finally collapses, a few thousand princes can safely keep their comfortable lifestyles in exile, with just some carry-on luggage in hand.
K. Rogoff is an economics professor at Harvard. Roughly a year ago, he co-authored a study predicting big bank failures. In the late 60's, he represented the US at chess in international tournaments for students, and was probably grandmaster strength, although I don't know whether he officially earned the title.
E. Lasker, world champions from 1892 to 1921 and the author of at least one important math paper, is reported to have been an unworldly and unsuccessful investor.
I hate the bankruptcy series. I wish CR would give some guidance on the trends here.
There was a big revision of laws at the spike, yes? This made bankruptcy more onerous. Too much so, but still, we were overdue.
And so people temporally shifted declarations forward to just before the legal changes. So the spike was abnormally large, and in some sense it borrowed or stole declarations from the post-legal change environment.
Hence the trend up after the spike. 2006-2007 is certainly not a real change?
Mortgage pig FTW!
Is there an attorney bubble?
And if so, how to deflate?
Btw, where can I find lawyer to incorporate myself as a bank?
Guess the night crew doesn't have the plug in?
"Say goodnight, Dick."
"Goodnight, Dick."
BK attorneys aren't always able to collect their fees...
Bk atty's are PAID IN ADVANCE,Many take AMEX...
Sometimes the bullseye just hits my arrow:
from previous thread,
MS writes:
Actually the nikkei looks like it always does after a sake' break. THe euphoria of lunch time binge drinking is wearing off.
BTW I am well aware of how the futures are played.....
Closes flat IMO
MS
MS | 11.17.08 - 12:01 am | #
Hence the smiling BK attorney ..
Keynesian beauty contest
Keynesian beauty contest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It is not a case of choosing those [faces] which, to the best of ones judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees. (Keynes, General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, 1936).
Ate?
Kona,
Think there is anyone out there who is both a chess grandmaster and day trader?
Bart: Hey... hands off my pickle!
Homer: I don't see your name on it, boy!
Bart: No, but -licks it-
Homer: Oh yeah? -dunks in his drink- Check mate!
Bart: Always thinking two moves ahead.
Throwing out a general question for the "usual suspects"....any thoughts on SLV? Currently have no PM exposure in core portfolio, and was looking at a small stake in SLV to get feet wet, so to speak. I know many here favor "physical", over "paper" (to that crowd,..yes, own a Mossberg "Cruiser" for "home defense"..had it for years). Maybe, in the somewhat near future, I'll add physical, as well.
Thanks.
When I saw this pop up, I thought of Spot, the Bankruptcy attorney, and pictured a dog with a tie screwing the mortgage pig.
s_p,
This was interesting:
Judit Polgár - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
She and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Zsófia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject. However, chess was not taught to the exclusion of everything else, as was the case with Gata Kamsky. Their father also taught his three daughters the international language Esperanto.
i: If you are thinking of precious metals as an inflation or dollar decline hedge, GLD or SLV should be OK.
If you are thinking of metals as a replacement for money when the financial system implodes, then remember in order monetize GLD or SLV they must be sold on a functioning exchange, settled through a functioning settlement system, and the proceeds wired through a functioning banking system.
If you are thinking of getting physical metals, you have the costs and risks of storage, along with the hassles of monetizing the bullion in order to buy things.
I wish I were foolish enough to need to BK. Alas, I am a prudent saver with little debt. I will pay for my foolishness.
By 2025 you will be able to buy the computing power of the human brain for $1,000 (Dh3,672), according to Dr Colin Harrison, a director and Master Inventor for IBM.
Harrison, who recently took some time to speak to Gulf News on a trip to the UAE, said the estimate is based on the current state of super-computers, which IBM has a long history with.
The company built Deep Blue, a machine designed to beat Russian Chess Champion Gary Kasparov, about 12 years ago and it is currently producing a line of high-performance machines called Blue Gene.
Deep Blue has roughly the processing capacity of a lizard, and the early Blue Genes has roughly the processing capacity of small rodent, said Dr Harrison. If you want to get to the processing capacity of a human being, I think you need something like 10 petaFLOPS.
How fast it that? The fastest version on the Blue Gene runs at 500 teraFLOPS, which means about 500 trillion mathematical operations per second.
i: Also consider, Central Fund of Canada. It owns both gold and silver.
Think there is anyone out there who is both a chess grandmaster and day trader?
No, they require different types of intelligence. The most salient characteristic of chess grandmasters is not that they can react quickly to a constantly changing situation, but that they have astounding, world-class memories.
ni: If you are thinking of precious metals as an inflation or dollar decline hedge, GLD or SLV should be OK.
Personally, I'm thinking more like blued steel, brass and lead.
El Cliffö,
Chess grandmaster and profitable day trader is an even better question...
does the tinfoil over my head qualify as a precious metal for the coming storm?
By 2025 you will be able to buy the computing power of the human brain for $1,000
After reading that article about 42 million adult Americans being illiterate, I think you can buy one smarter than those people for a thousand dollars now.
More importantly, what do you want it to do? If it's truly capable of out thinking a human being, then it very well may just start calling you a dope. Or tell you the ultimate answer to everything is,..."42".
bestest sigline ever from forum ticker:
"The Future is already here, it's just not Evenly Distributed..."
wish I was that clever.
You can buy the working power of a horse today, but good luck getting it to canter.
Computers are half the problem with this housing bubble, i.e, all the lenders had east to use software to daytrade mortgage applications and the underwriters had a tsunami of collateral to blend in with all the synthetic shit that was connected to other computers and other software and nothing really existed but a mountain of debt.
Think there is anyone out there who is both a chess grandmaster and day trader?
Being good at chess is one thing, being a grandmaster is another; it takes work to be a grandmaster, even for a chess prodigy. I would guess there's a strong correlation historically between World Chess Champion and insanity.
Futures up, but .... Target reports and seeing as they are down almost 50% in a year and retail hitting the wall, they probably will hit a new low, on decreased sales, which may drag other crap down, but .... sometimes, bad news is looked at like really good news and maybe crappy earnings will help with that operating cash flow stuff and not impact the dividend (not).
So the CEOS of banks are willing to forgo bonuses!! What is the world coming too...
"The most salient characteristic of chess grandmasters is not that they can react quickly to a constantly changing situation, but that they have astounding, world-class memories."
El Cliffo
"I would guess there's a strong correlation historically between World Chess Champion and insanity."
sdtfs
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
Ingrid Bergma
The current World Chess Champion, who recently made a successful defense of his title, is Viswanathan Anand of India.
Monday: Lowe's (LOW, Fortune 500) is expected to report earnings of 28 cents per share, versus 38 cents a share a year ago. Target (TGT, Fortune 500) is expected to have earned 49 cents per share versus 56 cents a share a year ago. Both reports are due before the opening bell.
Absolutely wrong. Chess grandmasters can remember the placement of pieces on a chessboard no better than a casual chess player can when the pieces are placed at random instead of in logical chess positions.
The only proven characteristic of chess masters, as compared to other humans, is ten years of study and competition.
So if someone can recite contents of a book after reading it once, but can't remember random arrrangements of letters better then a casual book lover, he doesn't have an astounding, world-class memory? Interesting.
1worldcurrencyyogi writes:
The only proven characteristic of chess masters, as compared to other humans, is ten years of study and competition.
1worldcurrencyyogi | 11.17.08 - 2:26 am | #
And their Elo rating.
That should say "And the difference in their Elo rating".
Are you saying all chess grandmasters can recite books after one reading?
Only chess books. (ducking)
It's a myth. Their memory capacity is no better than average.
EPS Magic & XMAS footnote: Puck's trademark laugh in the early ballads is "Ho ho ho."[13] In modern mythology, the "merry old elf" who works with magical swiftness unseen in the night, who can "descry each thing that's done beneath the moone", whom we propitiate with a glass of milk, lest he put lumps of coal in the stockings we hang by the hob with care, and whose trademark laugh is "Ho ho ho"is Santa Claus.
Puck (mythology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Norka West,
Thanks...(gives her a sweeping bow). Currently thinking more a dollar/inflation hedge, rather than as tender in a Mad Max world.
Here's how yah play chess: YouTube - Judit Polgar simul 1999
"Ten years of study and competition" is beyond the ability of 99% of humanity.
I mean Mickey Mantle and I might have started off, at some point, at the same level. We both had baseball gloves and took turns at the plate. Somewhere along the line though, I lost my chance to play centerfield for the New York Yankees and Mantle gained his.
Perhaps it was when he demonstrated the ability to hit a 95mph fastball 500 feet and I exhibited the ability to pop up to the pitcher when faced with that difficult circumstance.
I haven't played chess in years, in part because it is game of some skill
that one must practice as well as have some natural ability for. If you meet someone who has 10 years of study and competition at the game your ability to challenge him is very very limited.
Well that took a depressing short period of time...
CHICAGO (Reuters) The United States government should not worry about deficits over the next two years while spending money to jumpstart the ailing economy, President-elect Barack Obama said in a television interview that aired on Sunday.
Obama, a Democrat who takes over from President George W. Bush, a Republican, on January 20, said consensus had emerged between economists in both major U.S. political parties that expensive measures were necessary to avoid a deep recession.
More of the same "deal with it later" crap that created this mess...
Funny.
The TinWiki Discussion Forum Topic List
trademark laugh in the early ballads is "Ho ho ho."[13]
Damn.
I've been outed.
The other faces are lawyers who wish they'd gone into bankruptcy practice. Or foreclosure.
1worldcurrencyyogi writes:
Are you saying all chess grandmasters can recite books after one reading?
1worldcurrencyyogi | 11.17.08 - 2:37 am | #
I was only pointing out a flaw in your argument. If someone says they have excellent memory, you counter that they don't, because in one specific instance (randomly positioned pieces), they don't remember better the Joe. Was trying to give you an analogy that would make the flaw more apparent.
As far as grandmaster memory goes, I don't have any specific data or oppinion.
From FAIR GAME; Everyone Out of the Security Pool - NY Times
"Securitization trusts hold $1.5 trillion of subprime and alt-A loans. As of late August, according to figures from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, roughly $400 billion of the loans were delinquent and $1.1 trillion were current on interest and principal payments."
OK, so if governments worldwide had guaranteed that $1.5T, which will ultimately lose a lot less unless properties that make up those securities are imaginary, there would have been no writedowns, bancrupcies, etc in the financial industry? Can someone enlighten me?
6,you are so right.
Where is the 'brilliance' we were told
Mr. Obama possessed? If deficit spending can 'fix' the problem why do we even have the problem.
Has there been a shortage of deficits
lately?
This video had me in stitches:
AFSCME union ad
YouTube - AFSCME
Obama just announced new Treasury Secretary
YouTube - Bagdad Bob: Iraqi Information Minister
The superior ability of chess masters to remember piece positions at a glance was taken as evidence of their superior memory skills.
The random placement results surprised both memory and chess experts.
Are you saying all chess grandmasters can recite books after one reading?
Ooooh, you guys are so close to doing the CR equivalent of the Coconut bit from 'The Holy Grail'
YouTube - Monty Python-Coconuts
To keep it going,
Hoopajoops for all!
All have a go:
YouTube - Johnny Cash - As Long As the Grass Shall Grow
CC
Kona, 1worldcurrencyyogi, et al.
that guy from IBM, so typical of the institutional arrogance I have long associated with Big Blue... I follow Roger Penrose's argument that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modeled by a conventional Turing machine-type of digital computer. Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function.
let's see that 'human brain' write a simple one act play in the style of Beckett...
as for grandmasters, check out the fantastic leap in ability Bobby Fischer made from about 14 to 17 years of age....
cheers
The only proven characteristic of chess masters, as compared to other humans, is ten years of study and competition.
Somewhat related might be the nature of the Dreyfus skills acquisition model. After enough experience, experts can rely on intuition for the right answer. Forcing experts to follow fixed rules causes them to underperform. The point is that experience builds some intuitive mechanism based on some subconcious model. Which might be related to the fact that when asked to memorize a chess board and return pieces to it, the expert chess players will return the board to a strategically equivalent configuration while novices will return a chess board to a literally close but strategically far different configuration. Even if you can do as many ops/sec as a brain, you still need the right software otherwise you are just trying to run Vista on an IBM XT.
Nice and thought provoking cartoon and the chart. Expecting your updates soon.
MyInvestorsPlace - trading, value, investing, forex, stock, market, technical, analysis, systems
Extra! Extra!
Read all about it!
Foolish, ignorant savages ignore the miraculous once-in-a-lifetime deal on US treasuries to buy barbarous relic...
Saudi Arabia buys $3.5bn of gold in two weeks
Foolish Arabs. If only they could think as well as Supergenius Jas, they could have taken possession of 1/3500th of the current American debt.
And if you act today, you'll also receive this extra bonus of a 2% return on your money. Hurry today and put your life savings at risk in a negative-value investment!
as for grandmasters, check out the fantastic leap in ability Bobby Fischer made from about 14 to 17 years of age....
30 years ago, I played a guy that had drawn a game with the young Bobby Fischer. I made sure to beat that guy. Good thing, too. For the rest of my life I wasn't even good enough to lose to anyone who had lost to Bobby Fischer.
What's a republic?
@ni & the barbarous relic:
Agree PMs sometimes attract the nervous regardless of the source of anxiety.
A couple of caveats. Fund managers are in and out of SLV with some frequency. This can wreck your short-term equanimity if you are even a little excitable. Also (and as has been pointed out here previously) since SLV settles daily it will not track spot price with precision, so don't go in with unrealistic expectations.
Otherwise, yes, it can be useful if you are among those who consider the dollar to have become a bit fizzy of late. Rich is informative on the subject when he elects to comment on it.
Disclosure - I've increased my exposure to PMs over the past few weeks, subject to revision on fresh developments/interventions.
/market chatter
Incidentally, when did equanimnity become equanimity? My back was turned, evidently.
Per CNBC, Citibank to lay off 50K instead of 40K.
Broward -
you do realize that the Saudis just spent about 8 days worth of oil exports at current prices to buy that gold, right? Not that the Saudis use the spot price for their oil contracts, just as I'm pretty sure they didn't pay spot prices for the gold, either.
Scale matters. Even if the Saudis bought 35 billion dollars worth (less than 3 months worth of exports), it wouldn't be worth much notice.
I'll put their gold purchase into another light - they just spent about a tenth of their military budget on gold instead of jets.
If only the American government would follow that example, we could buy 70 billion dollars worth of gold.
And for the final point about scale - Paulson's now seemingly inadequate TARP is basically equal to the U.S.'s total military expenditures for a year - and Paulson blew through it, by his own admission in asking for more, in a couple of months.
a $500 billion a year military budget
Broward -
that article was worse than I thought -
'It is very unlikely that such a large hoard of physical gold could have been bought for the depressed current price.'
Oh please - the Saudis pay with oil, not dollars. Dollars are just a medium of exchange on both sides of the transaction, for the convenience of accountants and make the paperwork easier to handle.
And oil's value dwarfs gold's in ways that only an idiot would be blind to. Unless, of course, you possess oil in such abundance that you can't even imagine what to with it - after all, you can only buy so many private jets, American banks, and European chateaus before ennui sets in.
Krugman, Donaldson and Roberts are all calling for the auto bailout. As AIG and Fannie have taught us, if granted today, this won't be the last request.
Contact elected officials:
1)No Detroit bailout
2)Demand transparency regarding Fed/Treasury spending
3)No more Paulson press conferences
Time to Re-Leverage
Take a different perspective. Total annual primary mine output of gold is about 80-90 million ounces. So, if Saudi Arabia bought $35 billion of gold, they would be buying about half of global annual mine output. It would pressure prices, I think.
Silver is a thinner market, with about 800 million ounces mined. So, a silver purchase of $35 billion would be about 6 times annual mine output.
On Saudi scale, it would only take a little money to move the PM market.
Giezcubed, well.. I like 2 and 3 anyway. As for Detroit, I suppose the right question is how to go about reorganizing US auto manufacturing in such a way as to allow the sector to produce cars that people want to buy... It seems a waste to let our manufacturing capacity decrease any further. Without healthy large-scale manufacturing we are just a third world country with aging expensive toys...
Speaking og oil, it may come as no surprise why the actual barrels in the ground number is kept secret. Very secret. Some have postulated that it is much less than assumed. And a significant percentage bordering on or above a majority is sour crude.
So, if Saudi is buying gold, then they are the shrewd traders we know them to be. Combine this with Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China and others and who knows--can anyone else see a short squeeze?
If the arabs and persians are buying up large quantities of gold then who is selling to cause the price to drop?
In 1977 Life magazine (I think Life) ran an article on machine intelligence. They predicted the first conscience computer by 1987 when the first 3000 gigabyte memory computer would come online.
MIT had a robot named Shaky that year and he was a break through that was going to start the age of robots.
So much for break throughs.
Ponyless: It does beg the question. Who is depressing the price?
For the CEO view of the New World Financial Order, the Wharton website:
How the Credit Crisis Could Forge a New Financial Order - Knowledge@Wharton
"The Future is already here, it's just not Evenly Distributed..."
Isn't that a William Gibson quote?
You already can buy the computing power of a human brain. The scientific calculator on my phone calculates square roots better than I do. But surpassing human thinking isn't about computing power; it is about programming. Even an idiot can make better contextual decisions that a modern AI. Unless it comes to real estate, evidently. Then prices only go up, and programming for that would be easy.
1929er: The new world order of finance sounds suspiciously the same as the existing world of finance. Of course, I could be wrong.
So what is today's #1 topic going to be? Auto bailout? Retailers? Bread lines?
So, if Saudi Arabia bought $35 billion of gold, they would be buying about half of global annual mine output. It would pressure prices, I think.
I posted this before but...
Premiums for 100 Ounce Silver Bars
I have no idea what's possible but I know that I was holding gold in 1995-1996 in expectation of an inflationary panic and it never happened. But I was watching some really strange gold movements in / out of the NY Reserve bank. Later, I discovered the Sumners' gold price manipulation paper.
A couple of weeks ago, somebody floated the idea that the Chinese could get out from under $2 trillion in US bonds through a shorting strategy which would leave somebody holding the back when supply met demand.
Perhaps the same strategy could be applied to the gold market.
Ponyless. Good thoughts, certainly change is needed. My concern is that money without a fundamental shift will be handed out that support the existing structure (requirements on outputs, ie fuel efficiencies miss the core problems). Our education system is much the same, money is not the answer, a complete redesign is needed.
Ponyless: It does beg the question. Who is depressing the price?
There's been rumors for years that naked short selling on Comex is being used to artificially keep gold prices down.
I suppose that if I were holding dollars and wanted gold, I might use dollars to short Comex while simultaneously take delivery of physical bullion.
Then... KA-POW, the thing would blow apart like a mouse trap after I was clear with my gold in hand.
Perhaps the same strategy could be applied to the gold market.
Broward Horne | Homepage | 11.17.08 - 8:22 am
Yep.
Then... KA-POW, the thing would blow apart like a mouse trap after I was clear with my gold in hand.
Broward Horne | Homepage | 11.17.08 - 8:24 am
Bagholders: Scotia Mocatta(sp?), JPM, what remains of Morgan Stanley?
I honestly don't know what's possible. I've never applied myself to cheating the system.
The Chinese make the Saudis look like un-ranked amateurs.
My understanding is that there might be a Kapow on delivery in Dec.
But like an idiot, I did not save the link to article which referenced it.
Nostrovia,
Bob Lawless over at credit slips seems to prefer the AACER data to that of the US Courts. The stories are quite similar regardless.
One thing that I am curious about is that the credit card default rates seem to if anything lead bankruptcy filings, and I would expect the reverse. Does anyone have any idea why?
Also how much of the post 2005 dip in filings was due to
a) People preemptively filing before the changes in the law.
b) Lawyers and courts feeling their way around the new law. In my experience lawyers are loath to perform any action the result of which they are not certain of. (A good thing, probably.)
c) The structure of the new law.
PM's for all the attention they garner, are quite a small part of the 'market'. It doesn't take much to move them. That's why many think they are manipulated. Of course, there's a great deal of power behind the suspected manipulation.
bloomie has article about gs naked shorting.
seems i have to post to refresh.
I don't know how the conversation turned to chess masters and memory or day trading; but I was one of the people they studied in that report on chess masters and memory. Some of the highlights that I remember was that they rated my chess memory when playing multiple games blindfolded the same as a chess grandmaster. But the random chess configuration was pretty hard. I remember it took me 3-4 times to get it right; and I managed to do it by converting it into relationships based on real chess game setups.
Interesting study.
As for day traders who are also chess grandmasters, I think Ron Henley (a chess grandmaster from Texas) became a day trader (or was it investment banker?). I am pretty sure there were others, although I am not sure I could tell you without contacting some old acquaintances. If there weren't other GMs, then I am certain there were some IMs (International Masters), which are almost as strong.
"By 2025 you will be able to buy the computing power of the human brain for $1,000"
And it's legal to pull the plug.
"Even an idiot can make better contextual decisions that a modern AI. Unless it comes to real estate, evidently."
Funny.
Volker the Viking(Unrated) writes:
1929er: The new world order of finance sounds suspiciously the same as the existing world of finance. Of course, I could be wrong.
Volker the Viking |
I agree, but Wharton is probably not the place to find the edge opinion - a lot of younger pigmen go there for an MBA between scams. Don't want to endanger those tuitions and endowments. They'll come around when lashed to the stake and the woodpile about their waist.
Good cartoon. Lawyers are always there to profit from any misfortune.
"Take a different perspective. Total annual primary mine output of gold is about 80-90 million ounces."
Why? Gold is not concrete, after all, whose major value is its (hoped for) lack of movement.
I still find it strange how many people focus on 'production' when metals are constantly being recycled. Look at the number of cars in America currently being greater than the number of drivers - those 'excess' cars represent a lot of metal that does not need to mined, and yet, we all focus on what is newly mined, as if the existing metal is no longer of any value at all.
Saudi Arabia exports oil to countries in Asia, and it is quite possible to create the following scenario -
1. Saudi oil production is dispersed solely at the discretion of Saudi interests
2. Saudi interests desire gold
3. If Asian importers x,y, and z expect to be alloted the expected amount of Saudi oil, said importers will provide gold as part of the process
4. Rinse and repeat as long as oil remains the most critical resource for transportation, and is integral to many aspects of food production/distribution
Gold doesn't really do much - no one will starve without it. Ships will keep moving, trucks will keep trucking, etc. in the absence of gold.
The reverse is not true of oil.
Gold is just part of a game, in its way, something that people consider valuable, especially in light of the fact that it seems to be almost universally valuable.
Oil is currently the resource underpinning the societies many of us live in.
Oddly, the Saudis, being much farther removed from that industrial world than many of us realize, are not really good indicators of much of anything. That a royal family, perched precariously on top of a resource/religious pinnacle, is interested in getting its hands on something with independent value could have several grounds. For example, a reliably untraceable method to keep financing its various Islamic institutions world wide, without fear of interference from outsiders that may object to the content of the educational message.
Or more likely, when the kingdom finally collapses, a few thousand princes can safely keep their comfortable lifestyles in exile, with just some carry-on luggage in hand.
K. Rogoff is an economics professor at Harvard. Roughly a year ago, he co-authored a study predicting big bank failures. In the late 60's, he represented the US at chess in international tournaments for students, and was probably grandmaster strength, although I don't know whether he officially earned the title.
E. Lasker, world champions from 1892 to 1921 and the author of at least one important math paper, is reported to have been an unworldly and unsuccessful investor.
Lawyers are not the only ones making money off of this mess - the banks have a system now where they make more money by foreclosing on borrowers now:
Message to Distressed Borrowers: You Have to Help Yourselves « Your Mortgage or Your Life…
We are paying them with our tax dolllars to repo and REO our homes, then they get to sell the homes too?
Oh ya, now Paulson is going to give the tarp money to credit Card companies - unsecured debt - while they foreclose on the middle class!
This is Class Warfare!
"Exit writes:
Is there an attorney bubble?
And if so, how to deflate?"
Wouldn't a bubble made up of pricks be self-deflating?
survey says Crisis Indicators Up , Down, All Around which translates to -
SNAFU.
Cordially,
Kilgore Trout
I hate the bankruptcy series. I wish CR would give some guidance on the trends here.
There was a big revision of laws at the spike, yes? This made bankruptcy more onerous. Too much so, but still, we were overdue.
And so people temporally shifted declarations forward to just before the legal changes. So the spike was abnormally large, and in some sense it borrowed or stole declarations from the post-legal change environment.
Hence the trend up after the spike. 2006-2007 is certainly not a real change?
Any interpretation advice?