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Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

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Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#61

Post by Fricken »

sixothree wrote: post #32
throw__away7391 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Obviously this is not true. A ton of "science" taught to kids through seemingly legitimate channels is in fact just the off the cuff intuitions of some thoroughly average adult, and adults on average tend to be staggeringly uninformed on most topics. EDIT: And even more so for history.

It may have been true during the days of CRTs. I have had a lot of pets and don't remember any of them showing interest in the televisions whatsoever, other than a source of warmth. And that is definitely no longer true.

I worked for a TV production company, and we made a show called Kitten TV, in which each episode was 45 minutes of kittens playing in different custom built themed playsets.

On Instagram we received hundreds of pics submitted by viewers of their cats watching Kitten TV, it became a meme.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#62

Post by svara »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #12
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #2

When I was.a kid, I "learned" from some authority (TV? book?) that cats and dogs could not recognize process two dimensional images, and that a TV was therefore just visual noise to them.

When I was a kid I was taught by every adult that "humans cannot discern more than 24 fps". Except that we could all immediately tell if a Commodore Amiga demo was running at 25fps or 50fps and groups that'd have the frame rate drop from 50 to 25fps on some frames were "lame". So I knew it was obviously false that humans couldn't discern when something was running at more than 24 fps. Same when little Windows 95 util…

This is basically just a misunderstanding. There are multiple overlapping effects. Most of the 'hard' numbers for claims along those lines come from the flicker fusion frequency [0] around 50 Hz or so, which means that a video recorded at 25 fps and replayed by flashing every frame twice (like in old movie theaters) will not appear to flicker.

However, there's another important factor, which is that if you move an edge accross your visual field and sample at a certain frequency, depending on the speed of the edge, you might get a stroboscope-like effect and see multiple parallel edges. This is something a lot of people notice in 60 Hz computer rendered video, or when moving quickly under a lamp flickering at the mains frequency, because every frame is sharp without any motion blur. By contrast, you can run video filmed at an exposure time similar to the frame time at lower frame rates and it'll look fine, because the motion blur removes that stroboscope-like appearance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#63

Post by skydhash »

wegfawefgawefg wrote: post #59
kryptiskt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats and dogs need higher refresh rates to see TV as a movie rather than a slideshow of images: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/8921/why-can-cat...

Very interesting. Its like smaller brains have a higher clock speed. global oscillations?

Less processing to be done? Something like a fly has a much lower reaction time than a chicken.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#64

Post by lukeinator42 »

tokai wrote: post #11

The connection to selfies is really weak. Its just classical conditioning. The stimulus is the food not the selfie taking, and the continued pressing of the selfie button without food is conditioned response.

Very true, although this type of conditioning is operant conditioning since the rats are performing a voluntary behaviour as opposed to classical conditioning like Pavlov's dogs.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#65

Post by lainga »

wongarsu wrote: post #44
chmod775 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) it's not the first time that question has come up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput... Note that this also may have implications for AI-generated work. Here's how, ignoring the many legal theories, it's handled in practice in the US right now: > On 21 August 2014 the United States Copyright Office published an opinion [..] to clarify that "only works creat…

> Here's how, [...] it's handled in practice in the US right now: Forgive my ignorance of the nuances of US copyright enforcement, but in what form is the opinion of the US Copyright Office important? The US joined the Berne Convention in 1989, which includes automatic copyright protection without the need to register anything. And if you believe somebody violated your copyright you take them to court, which also doe…

In the very ultimate limit, because it falls under the same jurisdiction as the USS Nimitz.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#66

Post by ehwhwhwhahhwh »

moolcool wrote: post #19
tokai wrote: post #11

The connection to selfies is really weak. Its just classical conditioning. The stimulus is the food not the selfie taking, and the continued pressing of the selfie button without food is conditioned response.

It's an artistic remix of the classic Skinner Box experiment. The creator is an artist, not a scientist, and his point is being artistically rather than scientifically. As a sidenote: Social media has been described as a skinner box a million times before, but expressing it literally like this is, IMO, clever, interesting, and also cute. The idea using scientific experiments as metaphor to make art is cool, and I hop…

Chase truth. Not coolness. Don't fool yourself.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#67

Post by somedude895 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #12
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #2

When I was.a kid, I "learned" from some authority (TV? book?) that cats and dogs could not recognize process two dimensional images, and that a TV was therefore just visual noise to them.

When I was a kid I was taught by every adult that "humans cannot discern more than 24 fps". Except that we could all immediately tell if a Commodore Amiga demo was running at 25fps or 50fps and groups that'd have the frame rate drop from 50 to 25fps on some frames were "lame". So I knew it was obviously false that humans couldn't discern when something was running at more than 24 fps. Same when little Windows 95 util…

What's really crazy to me is that when you watch any film in >24(30?) fps, it looks like trash. I suppose it's because we're used to higher fps being home video? I wonder if films will ever be accepted or made in higher fps. Maybe if VR films actually become a real thing.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#68

Post by moolcool »

lukan wrote: post #46
moolcool wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an artistic remix of the classic Skinner Box experiment. The creator is an artist, not a scientist, and his point is being artistically rather than scientifically. As a sidenote: Social media has been described as a skinner box a million times before, but expressing it literally like this is, IMO, clever, interesting, and also cute. The idea using scientific experiments as metaphor to make art is cool, and I hop…

I don't know, it seems a bit dishonest to imply that the rats wanted the selfies(I got that impression), when all they wanted was pressing the button, because they learned, it would produce treats reliable, and later at least sometimes. If at some point, there never would be treats coming anymore, that would uncondition themself and at some further point, they would not care about that stupid button anymore. Unless o…

I don't see how it's dishonest. The artist is transparent in his methodology, and the metaphor (engagement = treats) is clear. Either way, this is an art piece so it isn't subject to the same kinds of rigor or scrutiny of a scientific experiment.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#69

Post by araes »

wegfawefgawefg wrote: post #58
TacticalCoder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid I was taught by every adult that "humans cannot discern more than 24 fps". Except that we could all immediately tell if a Commodore Amiga demo was running at 25fps or 50fps and groups that'd have the frame rate drop from 50 to 25fps on some frames were "lame". So I knew it was obviously false that humans couldn't discern when something was running at more than 24 fps. Same when little Windows 95 util…

i can feel 144-200hz. above that i cant tell anymore, but probably pixel response times arent good enough yet on consumer hardware to provide a real test to me. 60hz feels awful to me. side note, i can discern stutters at 144hz + when i take a deep breathe.

Do you actively practice being able to discern high frame rates, or is it a "born with skill?" I often wonder if FPS gamers self select for those who can discern high frame rates, which then drives screen sales. Do you attempt to increase your frame rate perception?

Do you find normal movies in the theater difficult to watch because of your "high frame rate?" If I could see gaps in 144 Hz, then it seems (totally imagining with math), like it would be the equivalent of a 4 Hz frame rate for "normal" eyesight. 24 Hz / 144 Hz ( 24 Hz normal movie) = 4 Hz. 4 Hz looks super choppy bad. Seems like it would turn into the Flash trying to watch a human movie.

Course, I asked colorblind people about colorblindness, and it was totally crazy all the different colorblindness types they talked about. So could be bad mental picture.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#70

Post by moolcool »

ehwhwhwhahhwh wrote: post #66
moolcool wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an artistic remix of the classic Skinner Box experiment. The creator is an artist, not a scientist, and his point is being artistically rather than scientifically. As a sidenote: Social media has been described as a skinner box a million times before, but expressing it literally like this is, IMO, clever, interesting, and also cute. The idea using scientific experiments as metaphor to make art is cool, and I hop…

Chase truth. Not coolness. Don't fool yourself.

How am I fooling myself by appreciating a well executed metaphor? I see a lot of comments interrogating an art piece as if it were a scientific experiment, and to me that misses the point. You wouldn't look at Van Gogh's Starry Night and say "Well actually..."
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