This article in the NY Times about brain enhancement was pretty interesting.

…Two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance.

One person who posted anonymously on the Chronicle of Higher Education Web site said that a daily regimen of three 20-milligram doses of Adderall transformed his career: “I’m not talking about being able to work longer hours without sleep (although that helps),� the posting said. “I’m talking about being able to take on twice the responsibility, work twice as fast, write more effectively, manage better, be more attentive, devise better and more creative strategies.�

The article seems to be concerned about whether this is right or wrong. I see absolutely no reason why it would be wrong if there were no side-effects. In fact, I am confident that more and more people will be taking these drugs in the future, and that it will only benefit humanity.
As for traders - I’ve said it many times before - you are trading at a disadvantage if you are trading without cognitive enhancement drugs.

AI experts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have been building a knowledge base for a character that they will use to try to pass the Turing Test this fall.

“This synthetic person based on our mathematical theory will carry on a conversation about himself, including his own mental states and the mental states of others,” said Bringsjord. “Our artificial intelligence algorithm is now making this possible, but we need a supercomputer to get real-time performance.”

They will be using IBM’s Blue Gene, and they call the software “Rascals,” for Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for Living Systems.

Bringsjord’s research group recently passed a milestone by programming a synthetic character to understand a “false belief.” For instance, to create a false belief you could hide a stuffed bear in a cabinet in front of a child and an adult, and then when the adult leaves the room, move the bear to a closet while the child is still watching. Here, the child should know that the adult now has a false belief–that the bear is still in the cabinet.

Unfortunately, children less than four years old don’t typically conceptualize the beliefs of others, but only their own, and, thus, expect the adult to know that the bear has been moved. Somewhere around five years of age, however, children begin to have second-order beliefs–that is, beliefs about the beliefs of others, enabling them to understand that other people can have beliefs different from their own. Now, Bringsjord’s research group claims to have achieved second- and third-order beliefs in their synthetic characters.

“Children below about four years old don’t have second-order beliefs–they just have first-order beliefs. But we have a mathematical account that passes the test,” said Bringsjord. “We have a formal theory of second- and third-order beliefs, and a way to make them computationally real.”

The researchers are supported by IBM. As is Blue Brain. IBM does some cool stuff. I do not think it is a bad investment to go long IBM.

Three trades today: 1 win and 2 losses. Nothing too interesting.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

Wall Street fluctuated again today.

Days like this aren’t nearly as fun. But you can’t win them all. Here’s our worst trade of the day, long FMCN stopped out for -1.22R:

The stop was pretty tight on this one.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

Wired has a new article about Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity. It’s pretty good - nothing really new, I guess. I like the picture of Kurzweil’s daily pill intake. I think I recognize the fish oil capsules.
They briefly mention FatKat, but no new information about his hedge fund.

“If you’re just very good at doing mathematical theorems and making stock market investments, you’re not going to pass the Turing test,” Kurzweil acknowledged in 2006 during a public debate with noted computer scientist David Gelernter. Kurzweil himself is brilliant at math, and pretty good at stock market investments. The great benefits of the singularity, for him, do not lie here. “Human emotion is really the cutting edge of human intelligence,” he says. “Being funny, expressing a loving sentiment - these are very complex behaviors.”