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Just how Psychic is a Magic Octopus?

Analogue Boy

Bar 6
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
13,448
The results shall soon be in and up till now it's a better than usual hit rate for Paul the Psychic Octopus. You reckon Randi will give him a million? You can't really ask for better fiddleproof conditions than an observed aquarium where the subject is a different species.
 
Better than usual for what? Does he usually do badly in the UEFA Cup? Or do you mean for octopodes in general, since most of them have no interest in football?

It would be quite simple to do a series of experiments to test Paul's abilities, but if he's limited to the World Cup, it might be tricky. How long do octopodes live?

All you have to do is run a series of tests in which the teams are represented by their names printed in black instead of the flags, to see if the colours involved have any influence. Some controls in which there is nothing representing the teams on the containers. And also make sure that the identifications when they are present are not always on the same container.

Then you do a bunch of tests for each game, to see if he always picks the same team, regardless of how it's represented, which container it's in, and what time of day it is, etc etc...

Then, once we've determined if he's successful in controlled trials, we can try and work out if he's actually psychic, or if he's actually just an enthusiastic follower of the beautiful game.
 
The odds against Paul's recent run of hits was 256/1.

This is quite high (I certainly wouldn't like to face those odds) but we should remember that Paul was just one of many animal 'oracles' predicting this tournament, and if there are a number of people flipping coins the chances of a run of hits is improved considerably.
 
Well, you know what they say - Million to One events happen 8 times a day in New York City... (The figures may have changed as the population goes up.)

No matter how impressive a coincidence is, it's still a coincidence. Now, if Paul is actually predicting the outcome of football matches, we ought to be able to test him in a manner such as I described above.

Given what I know about octopus, I personally think it more likely he's actually been following the World Cup by reading the papers than exhibiting any psychic powers.
 
The problem with using the scientific method on Paul is that if he is psychic and predicting the winning team somehow then removing the team names and any identifiers means that he will pick each container 50% of the time and if he is not psychic then he will pick each container 50% of the time as well, thus proving nothing.
In order for such tests to work you would need some theory as to how it occurs (including fraud) and then test for that theory.
You would also need a control element to see the results of chance.
 
That's not going to sell any T-shirts now, is it?
 
Anome_ said:
Better than usual for what? Does he usually do badly in the UEFA Cup? Or do you mean for octopodes in general, since most of them have no interest in football?

It would be quite simple to do a series of experiments to test Paul's abilities, but if he's limited to the World Cup, it might be tricky. How long do octopodes live?

His record on World Cup predictions was 100% accurate, beating his best previous run of 4/6 Euro 2008 Germany results. Impressive, especially when you consider his selection of flags is hampered by colour blindness. Looking into this on wiki, there's analysis of odds, statistics and theories on whether he picked certain boxes because of flag design shape, smell or position on his right or left tentacles. Nevertheless, his performance outclassed other famous and no doubt registered professional animal psychics like Mani the Parakeet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus

Sadly, he will not be around for the next World Cup, but I confidently predict that the search for psychic animals will be part of the next World Cup. We may even see Kate Humble joining Hansen and Lineker in the commentary box.
 
They had a crocodile predicting the Oz election yesterday. Must find it online.
 
The joks's on him though. No-one actually won. And it looks like we've all lost.
 
I'm waiting for the stories of a cephlapod ghost...as Paul tries to contact us from beyond the grave...
 
Well exactly, the question about how Paul's successor performs is whether they are psychic or a medium.
 
Heard on the radio this morning that Paul actually died some months ago, but was replaced by a temporary ringer (probably because of all the Paul merchandise that was in preparation)...

That's the latest conspiracy theory, anyhow! 8)
 
Having seen footage of the wonder cephalopod on You Tube I think it might be worth taking a look as to exactly what bait was being put into the different, transparent, psychic choice, boxes it had the choice of climbing into. Might explain much.

I'm sure everything was being done properly and above board, of course. ;)
 
Of course the conspiracy is now obvious.

Gary Lineker had him killed so he couldn't ruin Walkers Crisps' 'Predict when it'll rain and win a tenner' promotion.
 
I hadn't heard of the psychic octopus before so I just googled it and wikipedia says:

"The prediction process was designed so that Paul was presented with two boxes containing food in the form of a mussel, each box marked on the outside with the flag of a national football team in an upcoming match. His choice of which mussel to eat first was interpreted as indicating his prediction of a win for the country whose flag was on that box."

Now my question is how did they discover it was psychic in the first place? Did they just give the two boxes thinking I wonder if this octopus is psychic? Sounds like a big publicity stunt to me.
 
Maybe all octopuses are psychic? Or maybe it was a bit of betting fun that got out of hand (or out of tentacle)?
 
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