I've always been puzzled how it could be possible for a machine to predict stock markets, even on an purely hypothetical basis. To me the idea seems to generate the same kind of paradoxes as time travel or oracles.
I mean, imagine there is a machine that is capable of predicting the markets with 100% reliability. Then soon enough, the machine will acquire a reputation and everyone will follow its advice. The machine says "the price of X will go up", everybody would buy X, so the price of X would indeed go up, but this price surge would have only been initiated by the machine statement and we'd have a self-realizing prophecy. Other situations would be more complicated I suppose, but in every case the machine would have to take into account its own prediction, which would be some kind of a mise en abyme.
In the end just like antic oracles, the machine would have to make cryptic predictions that would make sense only with hindsight.
I mean, imagine there is a machine that is capable of predicting the markets with 100% reliability. Then soon enough, the machine will acquire a reputation and everyone will follow its advice. The machine says "the price of X will go up", everybody would buy X, so the price of X would indeed go up, but this price surge would have only been initiated by the machine statement and we'd have a self-realizing prophecy. Other situations would be more complicated I suppose, but in every case the machine would have to take into account its own prediction, which would be some kind of a mise en abyme.
In the end just like antic oracles, the machine would have to make cryptic predictions that would make sense only with hindsight.