What is the lower bound for finding the third largest in a set of $n$ distinct elements?
Answer my own question:

At the end of "Lecture 28: Adversary Arguments" by Jeff Erickson, I found


  A similar argument implies that at least $n - k + \lceil \lg {n \choose k-1} \rceil = \Omega \big( (n - k) + k \log (n / k) \big)$ comparisons are required to find the $k$-th largest element in an $n$-element set. This bound is tight up to constant factors for all $k \le n/2$; there is an algorithm that uses at most $O \big( n+k \log(n/k) \big)$ comparisons. Moreover, this lower bound is exactly tight when $k = 1$ or $k = 2$. In fact, these are the only values of $k \le n/2$ for which the exact complexity of the selection problem is known. Even the case $k = 3$ is still open!


Therefore, the current answer to the question is that it is still unknown.