Joan of Arc is low for someone who has miraculously won battles before. Ye of little faith.

@Wott new question: If Joan of Arc wins everything-except-book review, how many souls will be saved?

I'm kind of surprised that Dating Men In The Bay Area is as high as it is; it must be doing something right to spark this much discussion and be rated so highly, but I am still surprised just how far it's gone. Does anyone who thinks it has more than a 15% chance of winning want to explain what I'm missing?

@Aevylmar A large fraction of the voters are men in the Bay Area, and they probably don't often read anything that's intended to affirm and support them.

@Aevylmar It also has the second most number of likes out of all the reviews, at 537 to Alpha School's 583. I think is evidence that there's a large demographic who really agrees with the message contained within the Dating Men review. Hence, there is a large voting block that will vote for this review.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 I'm a man in the Bay Area! This is why I'm so surprised that I did a poor job of predicting my fellows.

@Aevylmar Ah, well, I'm not in the Bay Area, so perhaps you know better than I do.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 I clearly don't know better than you do, is the thing. I wasn't expecting it to be nearly this highly rated.

@Aevylmar i think this is high too. The author calling herself a feminist is going to automatically attract hostility from the commentariat.

@Aevylmar Agree with this being too high. I’m a man in the Bay Area and I thought the author displayed a very inaccurate theory of the mind for men and ultimately wrote something patronizing and not terribly insightful, even if she tried to be sympathetic to her subject.

@ookina_inu Oh, I think there's good odds she'll win. (I've bought her up.) I just don't intuit why.

I've seen Joan of Arc get bet up quite a bit on a few occasions, but I lost interest in that review partway though the "why did France need saving" part. It felt like it was dumping a bunch of history without really reviewing anything or getting to a point.

For those who enjoyed it, what made it good/worthwhile/interesting?

@UnconditionalProbability So there is an argument to be made that it was not really a review. Also I guess it did lose a bit of steam towards the end, but I enjoyed reading it more than the other candidates so far.

@UnconditionalProbability This is understated since it's not in the title and there is some background loredump before we get there, but at its core this is:
> an agnostic’s review of the evidence for Joan of Arc - artillerist, fraudbuster, confirmed saint, and Extremely Documented Person.
If reviewing the evidence for a historical miracle is something you would be interested in, it's worth giving it a read.
Plus, it's replicating Scott's style very well. Even more so than last year's Nine Lives.

@UnconditionalProbability I enjoyed it because I knew nothing about that history and the writing was engaging. I didn't find the "review" part of it too interesting though - it was about whether Joan of Arc really had divine help or not and I found the author too credulous

@traders since there has been a lot of questions about adding currently known finalists I made a poll to decide whether I should include them all at once. Poll becomes binding after a quorum of 50% + 1 current traders (currently 39) is reached

@BayesianTom I wouldn't add them now. The current dynamics where a new post is released and then you have to rush to read it to bet is quite fun. By keeping everything clustered by other we are limiting incentives for people to go in and read all the articles ahead of time.

Also betting based off of the title alone is pretty dumb. (yes i know we can read them all ahead of time)

@WillJevons the great thing about prediction markets is that if someone is making dumb bets you get to take their money!

Since the roster may change, I will add an option each friday whenever a new contestant is posted

you could add them all now and keep the Other entry for the unannounced finalists. In the unlikely event that one of the listed finalists doesn't make it you can resolve them as no.

There will be around 13 reviews posted overall, so "average" should be something like 7%.

From this post, the expected finalists are:

• Alpha School

• School (Review 1 by DK) (promoted from "honorable mention")

• Dementia

• Islamic Geometric Patterns

• Joan of Arc

• Mashed Potatoes

• Men

• Ollantay

• Phase I Research

• Synaptic Plasticity

• The ACX Commentariat

• The Internet That Might Have Been

• The Russo-Ukrainian War

Honorable Mentions (some of which might get promoted) are at least

• Bishop's Castle

• Bukele

• Elon Musk's Algorithm

• JFK Conspiracies

• Martial Arts

• Miniatur Wunderland

• Watergate

All the reviews are linked here.

What's the point in bidding up the price of "other?" It's the most likely outcome right now, but that's just because most of the entries haven't been posted yet.

@AndrewMaxwell Shares of Other get split into to shares of all future answers added to the market.