rodent based processing

April 14, 2010 10:52 PM

Rats process musical information.

hamsters generate music, previously

posted by idiopath (24 comments total)

Victor stock down 20%
posted by floam at 11:13 PM on April 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yes, but their lyrics need work.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 11:21 PM on April 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

Awesome.
posted by delmoi at 11:51 PM on April 14, 2010

For those who are curious what this ambiguous post is about (hint: it's not music):
Holy shit, this guy takes stock graphs and turns them into music. The idea is that by listening for musical patterns, one could predict what will come next. Then he trains his rats to make the predictions. How well do they do? I'm glad you asked:

"...the training was almost finished; the performances of the top 4 rats had turned out to be comparable to those of the world' s best fund managers.

After extensive training, we wanted to find out if the talent in trading might be rooted genetically and crossed the top traders with each other... The results were astounding: the second generation of top traders had a much better performance than their parents, but undoubtably, further research will be necessary to confirm this finding of ours.

If you need me, I'll be at the pet store.
posted by battlebison at 12:14 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is superlative. Awesome, ridiculous and exceptional.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:17 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

If the performance is good, I will keep the experiment going and either setup an own hedge fund managed by my rats or train rats to work for hedge funds and banks...

Five years later, the web page is updated to show a rat sniffing coke off a gerbil's tail.
posted by pracowity at 12:17 AM on April 15, 2010 [6 favorites]

And I have no idea if it's a joke or not.

The components that make up the system, the 'sonification', training rats to 'choose', are plausible enough that I could see that... now the part where the rats are somehow better at predicting the future is pure silliness but I can totally see someone who thinks it will give him an edge looking past that.

And of course, the image of thousands and then millions of rats working as traders in the financial system, well, that's just too damn funny.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:36 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, they tend to buy more music who play wind instruments, specifically "pipes." This explains all of Zamfir's record sales.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:53 AM on April 15, 2010

And I have no idea if it's a joke or not.

It is.

And even if it isn't, it is.
posted by pracowity at 12:59 AM on April 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Also, they tend to buy more music who play wind instruments, specifically "pipes."

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:26 AM on April 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

I got my mind set on you...
posted by pracowity at 1:53 AM on April 15, 2010

But don't forget Project Pigeon.
posted by pracowity at 1:58 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

These ought to be real.
posted by chavenet at 2:55 AM on April 15, 2010

The interviews are absolutely hillarious, I don't know how they managed not to crack.
posted by Joe Chip at 3:04 AM on April 15, 2010

The Muppets knew this a long time ago. Rizzo needs to be featured more often.
posted by cmgonzalez at 5:22 AM on April 15, 2010

Note to self: acquire tarantulas for ETF management projections.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:36 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

the performances of the top 4 rats had turned out to be comparable to those of the world's best fund managers.

To rephrase in a less shocking manner (for those of us who were on planet Earth in 2008): the world's best hedge fund managers perform no better than trained rats.
posted by condour75 at 5:39 AM on April 15, 2010 [4 favorites]

condour75,

That's hardly fair to the rats.
posted by lukemeister at 5:41 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is pretty much a double.
posted by tybeet at 6:05 AM on April 15, 2010

Those hamsters make some fine music. I would buy their album!
posted by winna at 7:21 AM on April 15, 2010

Basically, the ideal stock strategy is more or less buying and holding a random and broad selection of stocks, so this makes sense.
posted by empath at 7:45 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Mouse Organ.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:01 AM on April 15, 2010

Ok, next step is to train cats to do credit default swaps, and train dogs to run the Federal Reserve. Then we feed the rats to the cats, and the cats to the dogs....
posted by InfidelZombie at 8:51 AM on April 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

The Muppets knew this a long time ago. Rizzo needs to be featured more often.

They can't afford his rates anymore, cmgonzalez. At this point, he's essentially working pro bono.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:52 AM on April 16, 2010