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Brilliant. The artist's website[a] described the program perfectly using the soul-crushing jargon of corporate bureaucracy: > Our program is a professional se

• notahacker 2y ago
  Feels positively factual and hype-free compared with your average AI recommendation startup...
  • conductr 2y ago
    It’s a rat race out there…
• andrewmutz 2y ago
  > 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?
  • sodcyzf 2y ago
    Its a statement on how to deal with the limited intelligence of a rat and give it a sense of dignity and purpose.
  • fmbb 2y ago
    ”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.
    • InitialLastName 2y ago
      The owner class treats their hackers of the financial system far better than they treat the truckers and warehouse stockers of the logistics system.
      • lacy_tinpot 2y ago
        And it's hilarious that those people seldom talk about "class". The working class is almost entirely outside that kind of politics.
    • lacy_tinpot 2y ago
      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.
      • passivegains 2y ago
        I'll never forget how James Mickens describes hackers in This World Of Ours: "vaguely Marxist but comfortably bourgeoisie."
• adamgordonbell 2y ago
  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.
  • graemep 2y ago
    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!
    • FartyMcFarter 2y ago
      Humans can consent.
      • jimnotgym 2y ago
        Consent or starve
        • cooljacob204 2y ago
          We can choose what jobs we work and find new ones unlike these pigeons.
          • scp3125 2y ago
            I think you're missing the point about needing to work in order to survive.
            • Pyxl101 2y ago
              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.
• gosub100 2y ago
  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.
  • xp84 2y ago
    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.
  • multjoy 2y ago
    Those investors would be buying shares in the company in all but name.
  • dumah 2y ago
    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.
    • gosub100 2y ago
      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.
• xbryanx 2y ago
  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/Intelligence-Surveillance-and-Reconnaissance/Marine-Mammal-Program/ https://www.niwcpacific.navy.mil/About/Departments/Intellige...
• asdfman123 2y ago
  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.
• cbsmith 2y ago
  > 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. ;-)
• doctorpangloss 2y ago
  > 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.