FACT CANNON: Interesting stuff to distract your colleagues with.

Paul’s Story

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Paul The Octopus was a Common Octopus who reportedly had the power to predict the future, specifically in relation to the Euro 2008 and 2010 World Cup soccer matches. He was hatched in Weymouth in England in 2008, and at an early age ex-patriated to the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany. It was here that something about the way he looked at visitors alerted Sea Life staff to the fact that he may harbor prophetic capabilities.

As we know, every prophet has a favourite method of divination. Crystal ball gazing is pretty standard, although some, like Nostradamus, prefer to enter a deep trance state; but for Paul it was simply a case of choosing a mussel from one of two clear plastic boxes, which featured the flags of the two nations involved in the football match. 

There has subsequently been debate over whether Paul was influenced by the designs of the flags involved, or possibly by the differing ‘smells’ of the mussels within each of the boxes. Nevertheless, the fact remains that he successfully predicted match results 12 out of 14 times, which is no mean feat. If you consider his World Cup predictions alone, where he made a sequence of 8 correct predictions, this is at odds of 256:1. Impressive!

Soccer is hugely popular in Germany, and consequently, during the World Cup, Paul was only presented with choices over matches featuring the German team; however his predictions were transmitted live on television, which resulted in him becoming an international celebrity. Given Germany’s initial run of success in the tournament he also quickly became something of a national hero, coming to be known as ‘Das Krakenorakel’. On this basis, in an atmosphere of enormous national excitement and football fervor, it must have been with great trepidation that he had to announce the team’s impending defeat at the hands of Spain in the semi-final. Despite the huge national disappointment, he went on to correctly predict Germany’s victory in the 3rd place play off, and the Netherlands ultimate victory over Spain in the final.

The Weepy Bit

So, all well and good, but why is this a sad tale? There are three reasons:

• Death Threats
  Firstly, if you are a prophet, it’s best to try to focus on the good news, particularly when it’s in relation to something people care deeply about. (There is an exception to this rule… It’s ok, and in fact very popular, for prophets to predict the end of the world – but that’s because there will be noone left to complain if it actually happens). As far as predicting unfavourable national football results is concerned though, you would be well advised to hire a body guard first. In Paul’s case, initially he was subjected to a barrage of internet trolling. This escalated into a huge number of death threats from both German and Argentine fans when their respective team’s exits were predicted, many of whom also expressed the desire to murder and eat him.
  
  One notable example, Argentine chef, Nicolas Bedorrou, posted the following on Facebook: “We will chase him and put him on some paper. We will then beat him (but correctly!) in order to keep his meat tender, and then put him in boiling water.” One can imagine this must have caused Paul considerable distress, and so it is to his great credit that he didn’t throw in the towel at this point, but carried on with consummate professionalism.
  
  Interestingly, one unlikely savior did offer him a safe haven in his hour of need. A Spanish businessman offered €30,000 to buy Paul and rehouse him in Galicia. Sadly, this ray of light in Paul's darkness in fact turned out to be an invite to a macabre horror show, when it transpired that his would-be Spanish liberator was actually hoping to grant him a celebrity appearance at the Carballino Fiesta del Pulpo, albeit alive and in a tank. Quite why anyone would want to be guest of honour at a feast where thousands of members of their extended family are boiled, dismembered, sprinkled with paprika and scattered on a 5 metre plate before being eaten remains unclear. 

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• Missed Opportunity
  Secondly, this was a lamentable missed opportunity for humanity to communicate with another intelligent species inhabiting the Earth. Even Common Octopi of average intelligence are incredibly smart animals, able to use tools in the wild and perform complex tasks such as unscrewing a jar to get to the food inside. If you believe that Paul’s choices were prescient, and clearly many people did, then you must concede that not only was he a member of an intelligent species, but he was also an incredibly gifted individual who had made an astonishing breakthrough in his ability to communicate with humanity, albeit only in a rudimentary way. And what did we do with this breakthrough? We made him predict football results for us! This is sort of akin to giving Einstein a jester’s hat and making him do a silly little jig.
  
  In the event that we ever get another opportunity, maybe we should be ready with questions such as:
  ‘Are you an intelligent being?’
  ‘Are you happy about being kept in a fish tank?
  ‘Have you got a message for us?’
  
  Agreed maybe it would be better to give these questions some further thought, and it’s difficult to frame truly illuminating questions with a simple binary yes / no response, so perhaps we should also consider things like:
  ‘Would you like us to use an alphabet board instead so you can spell out non-binary answers?’, followed by ‘Are you more comfortable conversing in English or German?’
  
  But even if our new Paul proves to be uncomfortable with an alphabet board we could still tackle such thorny topics as:
  ‘Does your apparent precognitive ability explicitly imply that we are living in a deterministic universe?’
  ‘Does this mean that our perception of free will is only illusory?’
  
  
• Personal Tragedy
  At this point I suggest you dig out Barber’s Adagio for strings (you know - the music at the end of Platoon when Sergeant Elias is gunned down as he runs for the helicopter). And have some Kleenex ready.
  
  Perhaps saddest of all, maybe Paul blamed himself for this failure. He obviously had a deep understanding of human behavior, aware that he would have to resort to sensationalist tactics to get any initial attention in the human world. So perhaps showing off his precognitive abilities for entertainment was just a ruse to allow him to flag his intent to open up wider cephalopod-humanoid communication. Maybe he was full of anticipation at the rich discourse and knowledge sharing that would inevitably follow as he explored means for deeper inter-species dialogue with the hoardes of scientists who would no doubt descend upon the Sea Life centre at the end of the World Cup. Sadly though, he had overestimated human intelligence, and underestimated humanity’s deeply fickle nature. The spotlight was promptly turned off after the World Cup, and the scientists stayed at home, instead devoting their attention to how they could prove that his predictions were down to blind luck all along. How he must have berated himself! What a fool he had been! He should have anticipated this all along and modified his strategy to cater for these eventualities!
  
  Coming as close to a world changing breakthrough as he had, it is perhaps no surprise that Paul’s ultimate failure left him a broken octopus, and, although apparently healthy the night before, he was found dead in his tank on the morning of 26 October 2010, just three months after the end of the World Cup.

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The Beautifully Optimistic Ending

Tragically, we will never now know what Paul’s message for humanity was, but that doesn’t mean that this heart-breaking tale cannot have a hopeful ending. 

As well as the obvious inter-species barrier, Paul faced 3 other barriers to successful communication: 

• He didn’t have an appropriate forum to share his message; 
• As a newcomer to global communication he had to rely on Sea Life, a better connected sponsor, to promote his message; 
• He faced the fact that most times people are only interested in topics that are the flavour of the month, preferring to avoid stuff that makes them think.

Well, switch off the Barber and put on something altogether more uplifting. The first barrier is already down, and now we have that very forum - you’re currently reading from it! What's more, with ongoing tweaks the developers will I hope soon remove the second barrier. With the third barrier though, it is down to each and every one of us to resolve it, by actually reading stuff through, voting for the best content and not just any old thing we think will trend - someone might very well be trying to tell you something important!

Let’s make Steemit the platform of choice should any of Paul’s octopus descendants decide they want to have another crack at breaking the communication barrier. Assuming the lazy buggers can be bothered to learn to type, that is!

Inspiration:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_octopus

Previous editions of FACT CANNON:

FACT CANNON 1: Romanesco Broccoli - A Reality Bending Vegetable
FACT CANNON 2: How Frankenstein Was Born in the Heart of a Fiery Volcano

Footnote:

As you might have guessed I’m quite interested in the topic of intelligence in other terrestrial species. I’m fascinated with whether we could learn to communicate effectively with any of them as a precursor to addressing the communication barriers we would face should we encounter an alien intelligence in the near future. I also struggle with the issue of whether eating intelligent creatures is really something we ought to be doing in this day and age. Perhaps more on these subjects in future post!

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