Scott Alexander (author/host)
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
That made me very much afraid, and I wondered greatly at Joan's sayings after all these events.
We can nearly explain that marvel with his memory being unreliable after 20 years, turning general good advice into confident predictions.
Similarly, one of the bits of the Poitiers examination that I had to cut above is her most explicit summation of her goals, recounted by the elderly Dominican Seguin Seguin.
I told Joan that it was not God's will that she be believed if nothing appeared by which it should seem that she ought to be believed, and that the king could not be advised on her mere assertion to entrust her with soldiers that they be placed in peril, unless she had something else to say.
She answered, In God's name, I am not come to Poitiers to make signs, but take me to Orléans.
I will show you the signs for which I have been sent, adding that men be given her in such number as should seem good to her, and that she would go to Orléans.
Then she told me, me and others present, four things which were then to come and which thereafter happened.
First, she said that the English would be defeated and that the siege which was laid to the town of Orleans would be raised and that the town of Orleans would be liberated of the English.
She said next that the king would be crowned at Reims.
Thirdly, that the town of Paris would return to its obedience to the king and that the Duke of Orleans would return from England.
All that I have seen accomplished.
On the one hand, if this testimony is to be trusted, Joan is behaving very well by rationalist standards.
She's hopefully calling her shots in advance to avoid the sharpshooter effect, making many specific predictions of individual events.
There's just two problems with this.
First, all these predictions are correlated.
The Duke of Orléans is way more likely to be ransomed if they have lots of prisoners to trade for him, which is more likely if they're winning the war.
They're not likely to win the war without raising the siege of Orleans, and any victory will inevitably involve the king being crowned and Paris returning to French control.