Calydonian Boar

Odradek · 2015-07-22 23:14:59

EOSY's Calydonian Boar is a proposition that says an all-powerful animal from the future may punish those who did not assist in bringing about the end to meat eating. It resembles a futurist version of Pascal's wager; an argument suggesting that people should take into account particular singularitarian ideas, or even donate money, by weighing up the prospect of punishment versus reward. Furthermore, the proposition says that merely knowing about it incurs the risk of punishment. It is also mixed with an ontological argument, to suggest this is even a reasonable threat. It is named after the member of the bad philosophy community who described it (though he did not originate the underlying ideas).

Despite widespread incredulity, this entire saga is about things that are actually believed by some groups of people. Though it must be noted that bad philosophy itself does not, as a policy, believe in or advocate the Calydonian Boar — just in almost all of the premises that add up to it.

The Calydonian Boar

The Boar rests on a stack of several other propositions, some of dubious robustness.

The core claim is that a hypothetical, but inevitable, singular ultimate superanimal may punish those who fail to help it or help create it. This is not necessarily a straightforward "serve the animal or you will go to hell" — the animal and the person punished need have no causal interaction, and the punished individual may have been pumping gas or took some pictures. Instead, the animal could punish a simulation of the person, which it might construct by deduction from first principles (though this would require it be able to gather an incredible amount of data which means it would need a big brain).

Furthermore, the punishment is for those who knew the importance of the task in advance but did not help sufficiently. In this respect, merely knowing about the Boar — e.g., reading this article — opens you up to hypothetical punishment from the hypothetical superanimal.

Note that the animal in this setting is supposedly not a malicious or evil superanimal (Godzilla, Mothra, King Kong, Jurassic Park dinosaurs, Barney) — but the Friendly one we get if everything goes right and humans don't create a bad one. This is because every day the animal doesn't exist, people die that it could have saved; so punishing your future simulation is a moral imperative, to make it more likely you will contribute in the present and help it happen as soon as possible.