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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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[a] https://web.archive.org/web/20150111121618/http://www.rattra...

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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!

Humans can consent.

Consent or starve

We can choose what jobs we work and find new ones unlike these pigeons.

I think you're missing the point about needing to work in order to survive.

Yes, but a person can still choose which job to work in order to optimize their happiness, trading off compensation with the work's enjoyment. A person can also invest in themselves and develop new skills to unlock additional types of jobs, etc.

This is geographically variable: the more rural you are, the less choice you have. And between comparable geography, there's a lot of variation. It's not just job, it's profession. To get an OK nursing or teaching job, you may need to move across counties or even states. You can invest in yourself if you have capital.

You can invest in yourself if you have a library card. You can invest in yourself if you have internet.

Yes, some people might have to move to get a job, but living somewhere isn’t a right, at least in my mind. There’s emotional and sentimental reasons to live where one currently does and it would be “painful” to live somewhere else, but is doable.

Sure. Optimizing for happiness doesn't mean you end up happy.

Are you suggesting that everybody has the choice to study through library books and get a more fulfilling job? Everyone has the aptitude for book learning? So all those people stuck in dead end jobs in a factory (that could be done by a pigeon) are choosing not to learn CS and earn $mega at FAANG? That rather undermines the meritocracy cult of SV doesn't it, if anyone could do it?

The merit concept - true or not - is that it takes extra work to both survive and study enough to earn $mega at FAANG. The work is what earns the merit.

You're arguing that it's not hard work that gets people good jobs; that the people stuck in dead end factory jobs could never work hard enough to earn $mega. Right?

I usually hear this argument being presented as one where factory worker was not given equal opportunities and/or that FAANG worker didn't earn their position. I'm not sure if you're saying that, or that the people doing pigeon jobs are naturally incapable of doing anything else, but both of those ideas sure take all the agency away from individuals.

It rings especially hollow to me as someone who didn't go to college, and taught myself to code, and makes $x per hour, and knows a lot of people (including my partner and her friends) who did go to college, who work in a factory and make 0.2*$x. While the sour grapes element and the jealousy (or covetousness mixed with some bafflement) is always there under the surface, I find it so petty. I have a hard time understanding it. If you want my job, go download a free IDE and start spending all night making stuff for 10 years while doing your day job. I did it while driving a taxi and waiting tables for minimum wage.

I think a lot of people could do it. The fact that they could, and don't, is exactly the basis for the sense of earned merit for those who do. Hot tip: Skip the marriage and kids till you get where you want to be financially. But if you do want to prioritize having a family, don't then be jealous of those who prioritized their career.

Don't pigeons have to work to eat also? Unless food is just dropped into their nest each day there is no escaping the rat race, no creature is excluded.

People don’t always seem to be happy that humans created money to facilitate this process

There's an alternative to making money, which is stealing it. Just like some birds steal other birds' nests (presumably because they're unhappy that someone has amassed a larger collection of twigs).

Let’s rob a bank together

I find many in the tech space and especially in the business space struggle (with disturbing difficulty) with the idea of meaningful truely freely given consent. GDPR uses a mostly adequate definition[0]; with examples added:

1. Freely-given without penalty: Services cannot force you to accept by refusing or degrading service. Consent must be truly voluntary, a streaming platform that won’t let you sign up or only allows you to watch up to 1080p unless you share your data with ad partners, is illegal.

2. Allowed to change your mind after you've previously consented: Withdrawing consent must be as easy as giving it. If one click gave consent, a single click must remove it. Bullying by requiring you to mail a letter, call a phone number, or navigate endless menus is illegal under GDPR.

3. The company must show clear evidence that you were informed and knowingly agreed: For example, they can’t rely on a tiny pre-checked box hidden under layers of ToS or on vague "by using this service, you agree" language. Doing so is illegal. Even pre-ticking the agree box is illegal, the user must make an active choice.

4. Consent requests must use plain language and stand apart from the rest of the text: A single, prominent and clearly labeled statement "Do you agree to share your data with these marketing partners?" suffices. Burying it in 5 pages of legalese does not and is illegal.

5. Any part of a consent request that violates GDPR is itself automatically void: If part of the contract claims the company can ignore any future withdrawal, that part is invalid and illegal.

[0] https://gdpr.eu/article-7-how-to-get-consent-to-collect-pers...

Thank you.

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)

> James "Jumper" Wide had been known for jumping between railcars until an accident where he fell and lost both of his legs at the knee

Incredible

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

The Navy's Marine Mammal Program advertises quite an interesting array of mine detection techniques using Dophins. If this is what they publicly share, who knows what they're training animals to do in secret.

https://www.niwcpacific.navy.mil/About/Departments/Intellige...

Feels positively factual and hype-free compared with your average AI recommendation startup...

It’s a rat race out there…

> 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.

”Society” does not treat financial ”services” in any particular way.

The owner class just treats their hackers of the financial system just as bad as they treat any other workers.

The owner class treats their hackers of the financial system far better than they treat the truckers and warehouse stockers of the logistics system.

And it's hilarious that those people seldom talk about "class". The working class is almost entirely outside that kind of politics.

The hackers are really the poor and oppressed underclass of our age is something I didn't think I'd ever hear.

Delusions of revolution are really an upper-middle class/failed elite phenomenon.

I'll never forget how James Mickens describes hackers in This World Of Ours: "vaguely Marxist but comfortably bourgeoisie."

Nah, that description is readable. It's not soul crushing if you can read it and walk away with a clear understanding what the project does.

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.

I think what you don't see is that the shareholders are in large part pension funds and people saving for retirement. In the absence of a wildly higher-tax government pension system, which as many other countries have demonstrated, come with just as much risk, there isn't a plausible way that I can save for retirement without holding stocks. Plus I get to pick stocks instead of just hoping the government knows what it's doing with my pension dollars.

Those investors would be buying shares in the company in all but name.

FOREX volume is almost 10% of annual global GDP _per day_.

This trading is overwhelmingly unrelated to trade in goods or services, or the movement of wealth with much permanence.

thats fine, I dont think the amount should be regulated to match the good it provides. I just claim that it provides some good for the world, whereas equities does not.

Cool, so speculators are just providing shitloads of liquidity to people trading in goods and services. As an importer/exporter, I love that FX is so liquid, cheap, and easy today.

> at least it could be argued that FOREX traders actually provide something of value because they provide liquidity [...] I struggle to see the value of publicly traded companies

Seeing this A>B comparison made me stop and re-check whether it was the introduction to a satirical post.

Many of those companies are actually doing something transformative in the world like growing food or inventing better mousetraps. That's way more "value" than "providing liquidity", regardless of whatever debates we might have about who ends up with the rewards.

> Even capital intensive industries could just borrow money from investors

Does that mean using shares as collateral for a cash-loan, versus selling shares outright?

I believe the op wasn't arguing that companies themselves aren't valuable, just the public speculation markets.

I never said the companies shouldn't exist. Try reading what I said more carefully since you also misclassified it as satire.

Mate, what on Earth are you talking about? "Even capital intensive industries could just borrow money from investors" > What do you think publicly traded companies are?

The most-charitable interpretation I can think of is that the company never sells shares outright (preventing speculation on their value) but only uses them as collateral when borrowing cash from a lender... But that raises questions about why the lender would agree:

* If there's no competitive market to sell them on, how does the lender recoup its losses by selling the shares?

* If the company is in such a bad place that it can't repay the cash loan, why would the shares retain any value?

* Even if the shares entitle you to some portion of the capital that was purchased with the missing cash (e.g. a mine and mining machines) then getting your cash back means you have to work fighting against other shareholders who might not want to liquidate anything.

> 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.

I think it's pretty clear from subtext that that is the core thrust of the work. ;-)

> Brilliant.

Is it though?

Doing unconventional shit with animals: it's obscenity. People have been litigating the difference between ordinary obscenity and shock art forever. This is an easy call for me.

You can slap a "message" on obscene things and it's a perfectly valid way of making art, but I don't think it's brilliant.

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