The Great Vote Count Analysis (Pre-Discussion)

[Blair]

I hope you can finish this, I was looking forward to seeing your findings.

[Blair]

Forgive me if this sounds naïve, but is it possible to design something to gather all the information from a mafia forum thread, identify as many variables as possible (for a machine, not AI-intensive things like recognizing when someone is identified as suspicious but not voted for), compare all these variables to final alignment flips, and find its

own

patterns? Rather than trying to test a bunch of our hypotheses?

Who knows, there could be some town correlation we never would have thought of.

[Blair]

I don't doubt that it's possible to build an algorithm to detect posting patterns that indicate scum, I'm surprised someone would do it though because it would take all of the fun out of a game that exists solely for the purpose of having fun.

What is the functional difference between "using an algorithm to detect posting patterns that indicate scum" and "using [your brain] to detect posting patterns that indicate scum?"

Which part of the process would an algorithm "take all the fun out of?" Would it still be fun if you used the algorithm to learn what patterns to look for, but applied those learned principles in live games without the algorithm? If not, why not?

Lots of players apply "tells" that they learned from other players, rather than discovering entirely on their own. Is this functionally different from learning a "tell" (which is what it would functionally be) from an algorithm? Is the difference the fear that it might be more accurate?

[Blair]

You're comparing it to your Boggle program (which you say sucked all the fun out of the game for you) but you also keep suggesting it should only be applied to completed games (which suggests you think a tool like this would suck the fun out of the game

for everyone playing).

I can definitely see how the Boggle program could ruin that game for everyone, not just the player using it, because you would pretty much always win. A similar program for Mafia would not be an auto-win for many reasons, however.

The main one being: It's all subjective. There are no 100% accurate tells. Even if an algorithm could somehow track fake claims, lies, counterwagons, and

scum claims,

it would still yield false positives all the time.

The benefit of a tool like this isn't some sort of magical, 100% accurate scum hunting voodoo - the benefit is in automating some of the more tedious parts of the game (vote count analysis, detecting time/day posting patterns, etc.)

[Blair]

A side-benefit would be finally being able to rigorously test some of our long-held assumptions ("I used to think scum did X more often than town, but after running 2,000 games through this program, I discovered there was no correlation").

[Blair]

I wouldn't compare it to sports teams using unfair equipment, I'd compare it to statistical analysis being introduced to baseball (it was). Did it ruin baseball? (It didn't)