The artist's website[a] described the program perfectly using the soul-crushing jargon of corporate bureaucracy:
> Our program is a professional service to the financial industry; rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Using our own methodology in accordance with well-established animal training techniques, our subjects learn to recognize pattens in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.
Left unsaid is that many human traders are subjected to similar Pavlovian "training" -- and are treated with about as much kindness and dignity as those rats.
> Left unsaid is that many human traders are subjected to similar Pavlovian "training" -- and are treated with about as much kindness and dignity as those rats.
Is this art a statement about how poorly society treats the financial services industry?
at least it could be argued that FOREX traders actually provide something of value because they provide liquidity for businesses to trade internationally and people to carry their wealth between different nations.
I struggle to see the value of publicly traded companies, and even more so options and other "exotic vehicles" other than enticing people to gamble and make some lucky few people rich. I see the corporatization of businesses as harmful to almost everybody, including investors who are lied to or denied profits from the companies their shares control (but mainly to the working class, for humanitarian reasons).
Even capital intensive industries could just borrow money from investors, which would bring everything back to reality. build the oil rig, or you go into default, thats it. no trickery, no growth promises or "pivoting". If you don't make money you go out of business. I don't see any need for shareholders.
Since learning that pigeons can compete with radiologists in terms of accuracy for mammography screenings [1], I'm willing to believe almost anything. Turns out neural nets really are pretty good at pattern matching/function approximation!
Thank you, I read about this story years ago, but this is a fuller telling of the story.
So much promise but I had not heard of any updates on progress on either Parkinson’s detection, or the identification of the metabolites that make the smell.
This in turn raises another question about the acute sense of smell, is this like the people who have four cones in the eye and so can see a whole set of colours?
I think this genetic mutation only occurs in women, I guess the genetics of olfaction are a lot more complicated.
Should photos be taken to accommodate for these four sets of cone colours, adding a new level for RGB? Very few people can see it, but there’s surely a demand.
Seems like pulling punches to call this art or a joke. If we can simplify the UX on a technology that creates value to where animals can use it, that's an amazing technology.
It's likely that we can use AI (not necessary tho) to interpret human interfaces to find and create symbolic games with analogous dynamics that can be "played" or managed by animals.
doing this for FX is a great insight as that market is relatively pure or efficient from an information perspective. Rats are interesting, but building this for crows could be a game changer. Avian arbitrage.
It's been a good year on hackernews, this is I believe my 3rd occasion where i get to show off Shadow the Rat's best tricks compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
Nah that's shadow, the lady who trained her is known in the rat world as one of the best trainers. Mine will come when they're called, go to their cage when I tell them to, pee and poo where they are supposed to, respond to their names and some basic spin stuff, but I never bothered to get that intense with them (not enough time!)
imo rats are by far the best pet, the only annoying part I would say is, as soon as you both start to fall deeply in love with each other: they die.
Yeah the problem is that the average rat lives for less than four years, which doesn't let them see multiple market cycles. We must selectively breed or biologically engineer longer lived rats or else we will be curve fitting for a single market regime.
Brilliant.
The artist's website[a] described the program perfectly using the soul-crushing jargon of corporate bureaucracy:
> Our program is a professional service to the financial industry; rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Using our own methodology in accordance with well-established animal training techniques, our subjects learn to recognize pattens in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.
Left unsaid is that many human traders are subjected to similar Pavlovian "training" -- and are treated with about as much kindness and dignity as those rats.
---
[a] https://web.archive.org/web/20150111121618/http://www.rattra...
[delayed]
BF Skinner legit trained pigeons to work in manufacturing assembly lines at hight of his popularity. I think it was maybe part QA at auto plants.
I seem to recall program was cancelled only because it was very demotivating for the humans also working on the line.
IIRC it (or was it another assembly line using pigeons) was stopped because it was considered cruel to get them to perform such work.
OK for humans though, apparently!
On a darker note, he also tried to use pigeons to help guide bombs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
See-also "The Feeling of Power" (1958) a short story by Isaac Asmiov, which is... related.
https://archive.org/details/1958-02_IF/page/4/mode/1up
They literally employed monkeys as railway signalmen in 19th century
Yes fun story, Jack was an assistant signalman and got paid for the job, partially in beer! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_(baboon)
> Left unsaid is that many human traders are subjected to similar Pavlovian "training" -- and are treated with about as much kindness and dignity as those rats.
Is this art a statement about how poorly society treats the financial services industry?
Its a statement on how to deal with the limited intelligence of a rat and give it a sense of dignity and purpose.
Feels positively factual and hype-free compared with your average AI recommendation startup...
It’s a rat race out there…
at least it could be argued that FOREX traders actually provide something of value because they provide liquidity for businesses to trade internationally and people to carry their wealth between different nations.
I struggle to see the value of publicly traded companies, and even more so options and other "exotic vehicles" other than enticing people to gamble and make some lucky few people rich. I see the corporatization of businesses as harmful to almost everybody, including investors who are lied to or denied profits from the companies their shares control (but mainly to the working class, for humanitarian reasons).
Even capital intensive industries could just borrow money from investors, which would bring everything back to reality. build the oil rig, or you go into default, thats it. no trickery, no growth promises or "pivoting". If you don't make money you go out of business. I don't see any need for shareholders.
This seems like a great opportunity to share this amusing dialogue from Cosmopolis, a Don DeLillo book and its film adaptation by David Cronenberg:
"There's a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency."
"Yes. That would be interesting," Chin said.
"Yes. That would impact the world economy."
"The name alone. Better than the dong or the kwacha."
"The name says everything."
"Yes. The rat," Chin said.
"Yes. The rat closed lower today against the euro."
"Yes. There is growing concern that the Russian rat will be devalued."
"White rats. Think about that."
"Yes. Pregnant rats."
"Yes. Major sell-off of pregnant Russian rats."
"Britain converts to the rat," Chin said.
"Yes. Joins trend to universal currency."
"Yes. U.S. establishes rat standard."
"Yes. Every U.S. dollar redeemable for rat."
"Dead rats."
"Yes. Stockpiling of dead rats called global health menace.*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyaA3rWWHHs
Yes. Ratcoin virtual rats spike to new high after dead rats cause health menace.
Since learning that pigeons can compete with radiologists in terms of accuracy for mammography screenings [1], I'm willing to believe almost anything. Turns out neural nets really are pretty good at pattern matching/function approximation!
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34878151
The woman who can smell parkinsons, also fascinating: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/magazine/parkinsons-smell...
Thank you, I read about this story years ago, but this is a fuller telling of the story.
So much promise but I had not heard of any updates on progress on either Parkinson’s detection, or the identification of the metabolites that make the smell.
This in turn raises another question about the acute sense of smell, is this like the people who have four cones in the eye and so can see a whole set of colours?
I think this genetic mutation only occurs in women, I guess the genetics of olfaction are a lot more complicated.
Should photos be taken to accommodate for these four sets of cone colours, adding a new level for RGB? Very few people can see it, but there’s surely a demand.
I wonder if a well trained rat can beat an AI in terms of prediction quality per energy spent.
"Buy a bunch of H200s and build a SMR next to the data center? Nah, just take these rats and feed them for 3 years."
Fantastic
What a commentary on the traders of today.
"Remember, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."
Now that Wall St financiers are studied (chimps, rats), we now need a study of Sili Valley VCs.
Rats-as-VCs, yes?
Not rats, vultures! Vulture Capitalists is a catchy name!
Seems like pulling punches to call this art or a joke. If we can simplify the UX on a technology that creates value to where animals can use it, that's an amazing technology.
It's likely that we can use AI (not necessary tho) to interpret human interfaces to find and create symbolic games with analogous dynamics that can be "played" or managed by animals.
doing this for FX is a great insight as that market is relatively pure or efficient from an information perspective. Rats are interesting, but building this for crows could be a game changer. Avian arbitrage.
If we did it with male cows, it would be quite literally a “bull-market”.
pulling punches? not sure you’re using that idiom correctly
2014. They've probably all been replaced by algorathmic trading by now.
Manhattan-Project styled Big Science megaproject to fully simulate a rat brain by 2050 so that it can be trained to trade the cable ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(foreign_exchange) ).
Reminds me of Mr. Goxx https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59432659
https://archive.is/1WYkr
https://www.vice.com/en/article/rattraders-0000519-v21n12/
-- article by the artist in title
Ms.Kleinworth3 had a real gift for stock picking.
It's about the time of the year for the chimps to throw darts at the wall and try their luck against wall street https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/12/20/any-monkey...
Rats can drive little cars if you give them the right brain computer interface. Rats are gangster.
Brain/computer interface? You can just give them a lever. Rats absolutely love driving: https://theconversation.com/im-a-neuroscientist-who-taught-r...
So do orangutans, actually, who can easily operate human vehicles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ_0ImDYrPY
Levers are brain computer interfaces.
It's been a good year on hackernews, this is I believe my 3rd occasion where i get to show off Shadow the Rat's best tricks compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
Is this your vid / your rat? This is insane. Makes me want a rat!
Nah that's shadow, the lady who trained her is known in the rat world as one of the best trainers. Mine will come when they're called, go to their cage when I tell them to, pee and poo where they are supposed to, respond to their names and some basic spin stuff, but I never bothered to get that intense with them (not enough time!)
imo rats are by far the best pet, the only annoying part I would say is, as soon as you both start to fall deeply in love with each other: they die.
rattraders.com is now a Yoga website with Lorem Ipsum text.
Found it in the Wayback machine, had to go back a few years: https://web.archive.org/web/20150111121618/http://www.rattra...
Yeah the problem is that the average rat lives for less than four years, which doesn't let them see multiple market cycles. We must selectively breed or biologically engineer longer lived rats or else we will be curve fitting for a single market regime.
Yeah, all we need is a bunch of smarter rats!8-(
It's a famous Henry Ford quote actually. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said smarter rats."
related: Michael Reeves' I Gave My Goldfish $50,000 to Trade Stocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USKD3vPD6ZA
The rat race literally :)
Is this really any different than what brokerages have been doing for years?
Oh, sorry, actual rats.
I mean, imagine the savings in cocaine alone!
Adderrall these days:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/young-banker-finance-adh...
Tsk. No respect for tradition.
(2014)
We can add this to my meth fueled cyberneticly outfitted cutlass chimpanzees
[dead]