I'm not sure what my favorite animal is. Let's decide it by a market! This March Mammal Madness inspired game will play out in phases. Aside from the Setup phase, expect each phase to last about a day, but I reserve the right to speed up the clock as I deem fit.
Setup phase:
Traders add animals to the market. After the setup phase is complete, traders will no longer be able to add animals to the market. Expect this phase to end some point after this other market resolves. Traders can add as many eligible animals as they wish to the market. To be eligible, add a real, non-microscopic, non-Homo-genus animal by following the provided formatting:
[common name] - [scientific name]
Example: Goldfish - Carassius auratus
A subspecies can be specified, but new animals must have a unique genus + species compares to all other animals already listed.
Selection phase:
The animal with the highest probability (the “Frontrunner”) and the lowest probability (the “Underdog”) will be selected to do battle. I will declare when the approximate cutoff time for when this selection is.
Discussion phase:
Traders can convince me why an animal should win the match up. DO NOT paste an AI / LLM output in the comments. However, I might read an AI / LLM conversation if you paste a link to it.
Battle phase:
The selected animals will appear on “The Field of Battle” in my imagination, but the animals won't necessarily feel that they are supposed to fight each other. At the very least, one should notice the other one.
By default, “The Field of Battle” will be the native habitat of the “Underdog”, and the boundaries of "The Field of Battle" will vary at my discretion. If the probabilities were miraculously a tie, the default habitat would be decided by a coin toss. Other animals may also be present as part of the habitat.
An animal wins the battle if they are last to be incapacitated, or if they are last to be capable of moving (for approximately 10 seconds), or if the other contender flees “The Field of Battle”. I myself will be the sole judge of how this plays out.
If the result doesn't seem manifestly obvious to me, I will use these attributes to guide my decision: temperament, weaponry, armor, body mass, speed, fight style, physiology, and motivation, all relative to the battle's habitat.
I will not take kindly to bribes. Don't even try.
I expect many matches to end by asphyxiation or by an animal wandering off. They won't know where the boundaries are, and they won't know they are in a tournament. They just want to survive and thrive.
If an animal loses a battle, it will be marked as "defeated". If an animal wins a battle, that animal will continue on in the tournament, and that animal will have its memory wiped of the battle. We loop back to the Selection phase after a Battle phase if we're not at the last animal. The last animal on the market that isn't defeated and isn't ineligible resolves YES. All others, NO. "Other" will not resolve YES, but it may be a useful answer during the Setup phase. I cannot resolve market answers until the game is over.
I will award at least 100 mana to the person who adds the animal that wins this tournament. I guarantee no refund of your mana of you add an ineligible animal.
Medals:
🥉: Battles won as Underdog
🥈: Battles won as Frontrunner
🥇: Won the Grand Finals
There will be no AI clarifications added to this market's description.
I will not trade on this market.
The close date is a placeholder and has no bearing on this market.
This will be a very subjective market. Expect that something will be scuffed, and I will have to fix things on the fly.
1,000Battle phase #3!
@25112019 with the Frontrunner
Giant Pterosaur - Quetzalcoatlus northropi
Vs.
@solarflare with the Underdog
Ping-Pong Tree Sponge - Chondrocladia concrescens
Habitat: Kuril-Kamchatka Trench floor; 8660 m below sea level
For this battle and all future battles, I am going to assume that the Frontrunner appears like how I imagine an angel disguised as a human or a covert time traveler would appear in an environment: not there one moment, but there the next moment -- nobody notices it in the act of appearing because nobody was paying too much attention, or they were looking the other way. Other beings could certainly notice it there afterward if it's out of place, though! We'll also say that the animal forgets about warping to prevent it from being too surprised by this. If I am contradicting myself with this ruling, I would appreciate it being brought to my attention. That being said, I've spent 2 and a half hours researching how a dinosaur pterosaur would fight a sponge, so I'm making this call here and now.
The pterosaur warps to the cold environment that is the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench floor, 8660 m below sea level. It is a chilly near-freezing here, and the pressure change from where the pterosaur was previously is extreme.
The Ping-Pong Tree Sponge is rooted to the ocean floor, incapable of meaningfully moving. Its 10-second timer to lose begins.
The pterosaur momentarily notices the sponge as its wing brushes up against it! The sponge might also "notice" the pterosaur by feel at the same time, depending on how you define "notice".
The pterosaur knocks half of the sponge out of its rooting with a momentary struggle as it experiences implosive compression, killing the pterosaur near instantly before the 10 seconds are up. The pterosaur is experiencing a change in pressure from about 1 atm to 867 atm!
The half of the sponge that is still rooted, likely capable of full-body regeneration, lives to see another day as the pterosaur floats limply upward.
The Ping-Pong Tree Sponge somehow wins the encounter! (I didn't realize this thing could live in such an extreme environment before researching it!) This felt like a manifestly obvious resolution to me. This was written by a human, and not an AI, but AI was referenced for finding research links.
---Places I went for research---
AI was referenced to show me where to look for research:
(Lives at depths of 200 - 8660 m below sea level. This is about 867 atm of pressure.)
https://www.sealifebase.se/summary/Chondrocladia-concrescens
https://www.sealifebase.se/references/FBRefSummary.php?ID=116516
https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/ProfPaper19.pdf
(More corroboration that the depth is correct.)
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/ocean-fact/temp-vary/
(I'm approximating the temperature is about 4 degrees C, more or less, at that depth. This is not the same place, but close enough.)
https://hal.science/hal-03184699/file/Ereskovsky%20et%20al_2021%20WBR.pdf
(We can assume the sponge has regenerative properties.)
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @vi
Discussion phase #3!
@25112019 with the Frontrunner
Giant Pterosaur - Quetzalcoatlus northropi
Vs.
@solarflare with the Underdog
Ping-Pong Tree Sponge - Chondrocladia concrescens
Discuss! I may not be immediately available after posting this.
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen
@Quroe so ping pong tree sponges can’t move (unless they’re in their larval stage before they anchor to a spot). I’m not sure if that outright disqualifies them.
However, if we are relying on the 10 second immobility timer to disqualify such creatures, the sponge will win. Ping pong tree sponges live in the deep sea so the pterosaur will be crushed in far less than 10 seconds.
The giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus northropi could easily catch and swallow ping-pong–sized tree sponges as a snack.
Clear win
@moobunny It would be very funny if the sponge was formally ineligible on account of being sessile but kept winning anyway just because nothing else could survive ten seconds in its habitat.
@moobunny https://www.sealifebase.se/summary/Chondrocladia-concrescens
This is listing its range as 200-8660 m of depth, so while it can live in the deep sea, it doesn’t need to.
@moobunny ok , they live in completely different areals. Such as if sponge appeared in the air, the solar radiation can dry it out vert fast
@moobunny they’re commonly referred to as deep sea creatures, and I haven’t seen any other source that says they live at such shallow depths. Maybe it’s referring to the entire chondrocladia family?
@solarflare That page references this NOAA publication which is very brief but specific about giving that range for that species in particular: https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/ProfPaper19.pdf
@moobunny yeah I think you’re right. I believe I used the wrong species of ping pong tree sponge. Chondrocladia concrescens lives at shallower depths while chrondrocladia lampadiglobus is exclusively deep sea.
Battle phase #3!
@25112019 with the Frontrunner
Giant Pterosaur - Quetzalcoatlus northropi
Vs.
@solarflare with the Underdog
Ping-Pong Tree Sponge - Chondrocladia concrescens
Habitat: Kuril-Kamchatka Trench floor; 8660 m below sea level
For this battle and all future battles, I am going to assume that the Frontrunner appears like how I imagine an angel disguised as a human or a covert time traveler would appear in an environment: not there one moment, but there the next moment -- nobody notices it in the act of appearing because nobody was paying too much attention, or they were looking the other way. Other beings could certainly notice it there afterward if it's out of place, though! We'll also say that the animal forgets about warping to prevent it from being too surprised by this. If I am contradicting myself with this ruling, I would appreciate it being brought to my attention. That being said, I've spent 2 and a half hours researching how a dinosaur pterosaur would fight a sponge, so I'm making this call here and now.
The pterosaur warps to the cold environment that is the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench floor, 8660 m below sea level. It is a chilly near-freezing here, and the pressure change from where the pterosaur was previously is extreme.
The Ping-Pong Tree Sponge is rooted to the ocean floor, incapable of meaningfully moving. Its 10-second timer to lose begins.
The pterosaur momentarily notices the sponge as its wing brushes up against it! The sponge might also "notice" the pterosaur by feel at the same time, depending on how you define "notice".
The pterosaur knocks half of the sponge out of its rooting with a momentary struggle as it experiences implosive compression, killing the pterosaur near instantly before the 10 seconds are up. The pterosaur is experiencing a change in pressure from about 1 atm to 867 atm!
The half of the sponge that is still rooted, likely capable of full-body regeneration, lives to see another day as the pterosaur floats limply upward.
The Ping-Pong Tree Sponge somehow wins the encounter! (I didn't realize this thing could live in such an extreme environment before researching it!) This felt like a manifestly obvious resolution to me. This was written by a human, and not an AI, but AI was referenced for finding research links.
---Places I went for research---
AI was referenced to show me where to look for research:
(Lives at depths of 200 - 8660 m below sea level. This is about 867 atm of pressure.)
https://www.sealifebase.se/summary/Chondrocladia-concrescens
https://www.sealifebase.se/references/FBRefSummary.php?ID=116516
https://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/ProfPaper19.pdf
(More corroboration that the depth is correct.)
https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/ocean-fact/temp-vary/
(I'm approximating the temperature is about 4 degrees C, more or less, at that depth. This is not the same place, but close enough.)
https://hal.science/hal-03184699/file/Ereskovsky%20et%20al_2021%20WBR.pdf
(We can assume the sponge has regenerative properties.)
---Subscription pings---
@wolf @Bayesian @GazDownright @digory @moobunny @TheAllMemeingEye @Gen @vi
For this battle and all future battles, I am going to assume that the Frontrunner appears like how I imagine an angel disguised as a human or a covert time traveler would appear in an environment: not there one moment, but there the next moment -- nobody notices it in the act of appearing because nobody was paying too much attention, or they were looking the other way.
incredible. the last thing I expected to read in this market.
@moobunny Do we think it's fair? I think that saying, "the pterosaur was always there / was there the whole time on the ocean floor", would be an even worse setup for it.
@Quroe It seems like a reasonable way of handling something which is fundamentally an absurd counterfactual. Putting as little emphasis as possible on the specific mechanisms of the teleportation is appropriate, because all the possible detailed complications of the teleportation - does it displace water, is there a shockwave, does it take a meaningful amount of time, what about the energetics of displacing water under 867 atm of pressure - are distractions.
@moobunny Those physics issues were also considered, but I had to embrace Star Trek teleporter logic to make it make sense. The emphasis is on how the animals interact with each other and their habitat, not how they enter the scene. However, it was hard to not consider how the physics would work in this case.
Do note that atmospheric pressure, oxygen content, and asphyxiation risks are one of the first things I check in each of these encounters. If an animal is chronoshifted into an out-of-time environment, it very well might suffocate if there's not enough oxygen in the air, which is a trick I potentially had up my sleeve for the pterosaur here if it fought literally any other land-based creature in our day and age.
That being said, I've spent 2 and a half hours researching how a
dinosaurpterosaur would fight a sponge, so I'm making this call here and now.
superb quote XD
@SimonWestlake I'll make sure to ping you each time, then! I just didn't want to drag everybody else along for the ride if they didn't subscribe to that.
Anybody else want to be on the ping list too?
@traders Please respond positively if you would like me to subscribe you to a list of people who want to be pinged whenever I advance this market to the next step.
@Quroe I have notifications enabled for every market I follow, so I already see them. I recommend other users enable more notifications! The site feels much more lively when you get dozens of notifications a day lol
@SimonWestlake Friendly reminder to cycle out your API key, now that you put it there for us to see.
@SimonWestlake I think this menu could probably make more sense, I'll discuss it with the team tomorrow..
The API key should hopefully be much longer than what we can see, but safer to recycle anyway
@GazDownright I just add your handle to updates whenever I advance this market so you get a notification.