You're restricting yourself with the giant caveat that the system must be perfectly deterministic (i.e. capable of being executed by code). Why? For the convenience of your testing?
An analogy: humans have beaten computers at Go for decades. Is the human strategy random chance? It must be, since they cannot write down their algorithm so well that anyone else can be a Go master!
Go strategy (similar to investment strategy) cannot be perfectly laid down (though the general principles can), and yet the results are clear. Would you argue there is nobody inherently better at Go than anyone else? Even if they are the best performing Go-perfomer ever, who has beaten every computer system for decades and decades?
I'm not sure how much of a butt-kicking Buffett needs to perform against the market for you to believe there may be an element of skill at play.
An analogy: humans have beaten computers at Go for decades. Is the human strategy random chance? It must be, since they cannot write down their algorithm so well that anyone else can be a Go master!
Go strategy (similar to investment strategy) cannot be perfectly laid down (though the general principles can), and yet the results are clear. Would you argue there is nobody inherently better at Go than anyone else? Even if they are the best performing Go-perfomer ever, who has beaten every computer system for decades and decades?
I'm not sure how much of a butt-kicking Buffett needs to perform against the market for you to believe there may be an element of skill at play.