Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[ScrewTheTells]

Hi all.

FOS Norfolk. Their 2 posts so far are slightly scummy, and also going silent after people pointed this out makes it even more suspicious. Could be explained by timezones or whatever but, that's some bayesian evidence imo.

I initially thought Imperium scummy because their early posts were fluffy to the point of spam-like, which reduces readability, which I don't see why town would do. But they seemed to post more substance after the first couple pages.

MUSHSHAGANA seemed town initially because they put in a lot of apparent effort, but I really don't like the reasoning against Whemestar. My understanding is that MUSHSHA's argument is that Whemestar is playing like a bad town. It just so happens that with these game mechanics, a bad town isn't really good strategy for scum to imitate, outside of WIFOM. So I don't understand their suspicion on Wheme.

I think some people said they read Dunnstral as town? I don't get why.

I lean town on Wheme for reasons related to the interaction with MUSHSHA mentioned above.

Anyone else I haven't mentioned are either lurkers or haven't caught my attention in any direction yet. Normally lynching lurkers isn't bad at all. Not sure if shooting is good though.

Regarding mechanics: yeah I agree with MUSHSHA's point that we should not try to make this game emulate one with normal votes and lynches. If we shoot the most suspicious person it kind of has a double benefit: either we get scum or the wrong read gets confirmed as town.

[ScrewTheTells]

Re: 3 players to save? I don't think anyone is so likely to be town that I'd care about saving, lol. MUSH and Norfolk are most likely to be scum at this point. If you shoot someone other than those two, I'd say they're all interchangeable pretty much.

A bit of playstyle meta self-commentary:

So it looks like I'm gonna be posting less frequently relative to a bunch of players here. Some people asked why I seemed to be explaining my every thought in my last post and well, this is why. First of all that's just my style. Second, I realize that because I'm posting only about once or twice a day, and this game seems to be moving very fast, so I better make sure I say everything I wanna say. I'm not gonna be around to give people the info in piecemeal. Third, this is a hydra of a scummer and a newbie to Mafiascum (but not deduction games in general). We had the idea of playing together so I could introduce the new-head to this place and its meta. As a consequence we're only posting at the slowest rate that our slowest head is comfortable with; It wouldn't make sense for one of us to go ahead and play without asking the other what their thoughts are.

And now back to non-meta object-level content:

SirCakez, Dunnstral, MUSH and Norfolk all said my last post was bothering them for one reason or another. For SirCakez: fair enough, I don't blame him for not knowing why I post in that style (but now you know why!)

For Dunnstral: Why was it a "dig"? I genuinely want to know why some players said they had a town read, because I don't have that read. Why do you think I was digging at you?

MUSH: I don't get it, we both write walls, so you think my walls are suspicious even though you also explain your actions in no fewer words? This inconsistency is scummy.

Norfolk: Well I'm happy with what I said last time. It's been like a day and your scum hunting initiative has gotten no better. You can't blame it on timezone now.

In my experience, scum-hunting effort is the best indicator for alignment. It's not the only thing, and it can be faked, but it is a costly thing to fake. It's bayesian evidence and it works well.

On the other hand, MUSH's scumhunting effort is also convincing at face value, but this is overshadowed by the actual logic of some of what he has said, which I don't think is very town-like logic, which makes me think he's just good at faking effort.

[ScrewTheTells]

So just a "quick" post on some things I think are important: our two heads just caught up with each other about the content up to page 15. There'll probably be another post later to address more recent developments after that.

I also am not fond of shooting a player that has admitted to not being a strong player in the early game. Should he be town, we just die and we leave a weaker early game town player in control of the gamestate.

This isn't to say whether I think he's town or not, just that he's not someone I would consider a great first shot.

I understand this side of the argument, but I don't know if that's strong enough when compared to the advantages. It's already been mentioned: Norfolk is scummy (i.e. more likely to actually be scum so the worst case scenario discounted in its risk), players have invested positions on him (more on this below), and maybe it gets the lurkers talking more in general.

I'm honestly not sure whether I should trust my normal mafia instincts here since the mechanics are so different, and I might not have experience with the relevant heuristics. But if this were a normal game with votes and lynches, I'd be happy with lynching lurkers. It always works for me. This reminds me, I hate how Not_mafia is just getting away with not playing the game. I literally forgot about him until now. No one made a big deal of this, so is this his meta or something?

Give me specifics - what would flipping Norfolk solve? If a lot of people suspect someone them flipping town just means that people were wrong. Are there people you think Norfolk can't be aligned with? Are there pushes that you are more likely to double back on if Norfolk flips town?

But this ignores the details: not everyone on the Norfolk wagon is doing the same thing. In another post you said you think everyone reads Norfolk as confirmed scum. Well I'm far from that. I just think he's one of the better lynches at the moment compared to anyone else. I'm not particularly confident on anyone. If I had to give a number I'd say Norfolk is just maybe 10% above baseline probability of being scum. I mean, I wouldn't be hugely disappointed if Netflix shot someone else instead, a lot of people are dropping more substance now and I think reads on them are only gonna get stronger.

SirCakez indeed has been pushing Norfolk pretty hard. If Norfolk is town I think Cakez's the most likely scum. And town-Norfolk shouldn't need much convincing to shoot Cakez at that point. So actually, this also undermines the "Town-Norfolk's gonna shoot wrong" argument.

And if Norfolk does flip scum then uh... Imperium's zealous defense of him is kinda weird. Not decided if that is strong scum tell, but I think it's a scum tell at this point. I can see town defending a scum-lurker casually based on your reasoning, but this seems beyond that. You're defending him too hard while leaving a way out by saying stuff like

I don't know norfolk's alignment.

I just don't see many town players defending a lurker if they genuinely didn't have a town read on.

[ScrewTheTells]

Again to clarify, my last post was based on combined reads by the heads a couple pages back so, I should say that Norfolk is not lurking as much with posts in the last page or so. We have players lurking harder, I think, and I don't like it. I still think Norfolk's posts are thin on substance for this stage of the game but I'll have to consult other head on that.

[ScrewTheTells]

From more likely town to more likely scum:

SirCakez
RLotus
Dunnstral
unwnd
Duchess
WhemeStar
Rockhopper
Imperium
MUSHSHAGANA
Not_Mafia
Norfolk Boy1

Note: a lot of things could swing wildly if conditions change. For example, Imperium and Cakez could switch spots depending on Norfolk's alignment.

MUSH is less scummy since my last post. Mostly due to the sheer effort that writing those walls would take...

MUSHSHAGANA, do you have any games you've played where you're scum? (others feel free to link me games if MUSH doesn't answer this, I don't know a fast way to search for this)

The Imperium-SirCakez war seems genuinely heated. I think they're on different teams (leaning scum on imperium for previous reasons), or they're just REALLY emotionally tunnel-visioned if they're both town. I hope it's not the latter. If you're town and you're reading this, take a deep breath lol. It'll be for the better.

[ScrewTheTells]

This post is gonna be about MUSHSHAGANA. Other topics incoming with future posts.

Summary: They're still as scummy as I thought previously, but that is not much in absolute terms. My main 2 hunches on her contradict each other. Her wall making is town-like. Her arguments are scum-like. PREVIEW EDIT: well actually maybe more scum now.

So I think MUSH's scum meta would be highly valuable information in this situation. Like I said before, I place a lot of weight on scumhunting effort, and MUSH's consistent writing of walls is making me feel that she's town. But I can't actually find myself agreeing with the substance of most of those walls, and that's why I also had a contrasting feeling that she's scum. E.g. the psychoanalysis of Cakez. I think MUSH is reasoning is overly specific, and relies way too heavily on arbitrary extrapolations, which seems like scum coming up with ad-hoc rationalizations, and wrapping them up in many words to fit MUSH's wall-posting meta. I just can't see how you can actually scum hunt by over-analyzing extrapolated scenarios that are mostly just biased opinions dressed up and presented as ironclad logic. I think unwnd and Cakez also pointed out this as basically "over-thinking". MUSH's defense is that she always overthinks, which is fine for a personal playstyle, and no I'm not expecting this to change, that's not the point. The point is that this doesn't convince me that she's not scum. Because scum would do the same thing and take advantage of this meta to push however they want. When someone points out that they're just over-rationalizing a dubious point, they'd just say "but it's totally in line with my meta!"

I might be paranoid but when MUSH's first post in the game is a pre-emptive "my playstyle might be off because of my special IRL circumstances", that rings alarms in my head. I'm not trying to make light of your IRL stuff, I'm not here to talk about that. I just think if you were scum, your brain would be more likely to recognize excuses you can use to defend any inconsistencies from meta. Sure, town-MUSH might well also say this, but I think there's a relatively larger chance that town-MUSH wouldn't think that the IRL circumstances would impact her wall-making enough, to the point where it has to be pre-emptively mentioned. Like, scum-MUSH would almost certainly see that this is a thing they should say because they know faking zealous walls as scum is hard. Scum-MUSH probably want to cover any inconsistencies because any deviations from her meta would be noticeable. Whereas town-MUSH might say it, or they might miss that train of thought and not say it. Therefore it is bayesian evidence to me, basically, slightly shifting MUSH towards scum in probability. And then all the bad arguments in the walls just made this more likely.

I was hoping that I'd be able to see at least one MUSH game where she's scum. If MUSH still writes walls as scum, I'd be pretty confident in my scum read, since that would prove that the playstyle was a totally null indicator.

If there were a MUSH scum game where this wall meta was broken, then I'd heavily update that MUSH is town.

I checked the games, and it turns out we have the worst case of not having this evidence one way or another. MUSH doesn't have scum games here yet.

So the only thing that updates my read on MUSH is the continued demonstration of wall-writing ability. It's pretty consistent. Without any actual evidence, my expectation is that it shouldn't be that easy for scum-MUSH to fake. Hypothetically, if I start to find MUSH actually making arguments I agree with, I think that would be an indicator that MUSH is actually town.

So after considering that, I think it makes MUSH scummy but not enough to be the best shot for today. I think MUSH will only be easier to read as the game goes on so there's no need to rush this one while there's still a lot of uncertainty.

---- I just saw MUSH's latest post in the preview. The above was written before that. ---

Well so much for that. MUSH is just reads like OMGUSing now. I'm not leaving any escape hatches. Why would I need escape hatches? What I am doing is not being tunnel-visioned. I'm just stating how I'm seeing the evidence for and against you, so everyone is on the same page as me, and now you're OMGUSing me for not giving you a town pass like other people and making up more psycho-analysis bullshit to rationalize it as usual.

MUSH is likely scum.

[ScrewTheTells]

Regarding Imperium:

Your previous reasons were based on misinterpreting my posts.

I've been reading you and I understand your explanations.

It's just that I don't place much weight on people's own explanation of what they meant. Scum will always be able to find a way to rationalize a certain take. It's meaningless noise to me. I mostly look at what actions they make, see who it benefits, and get a feel of what is more likely to make someone say that, regardless of what they claim their reasoning was. Some people summarize this as "gut", but it's more quantifiable to me than just that.

In other words, I agree 100% wholeheartedly with Cakez's reasoning

I feel you are not getting what I'm saying.
In the content of the initial wall about Norfolk itself, the reasons you use to claim the scumreads are undeserved are fine (although obviously I disagree). I can see the logic and arguments.
My dislike of the wall doesn't come from the reasoning used, but the fence-sitty aspects of it. It doesn't make sense to me to go to the lengths you did in that wall just to declare them as a nullread anyways (as I've said many many times). More than once in the wall you basically go "well that could be town or it could be scum"

Now it's looking like a non-zero chance Norfolk is getting shot here. If he flips red then you can say you were never actually defending him. If he flips town then you can say you were correct with your defense and go after the people you were shading in the wall. Regardless of outcome, it sets you up for the future. And it doesn't feel like a genuine opinion, but an out.

Now lets leave it at that. I don't need to convince yourself that you're scummy. That won't work no matter which alignment you are. This is basically for the benefit of other players to think about. Let's not take it too personally, I'm not trying to continue this argument.

[ScrewTheTells]

That Lotus shot came from nowhere...wtf. At least Lotus should have some good targets. And we have an active replacement so that should make reading the Rockhopper slot easier as time goes on. Agreed that we don't need to rush, but I don't think there was any chance of Lotus doing an impulsive shooting immediately so I don't know what Imperium's dramatic panic was about. That's actual LAMIST if I ever saw one.

Speaking of LAMIST, there's our OG:

Easily, the best shot right now is me. I'm probably the common denominator in most peoples scumreads, so it'll confirm my alignment and then any further discussion about me is over.

I almost thought that this guy was no longer that scummy compared to other people after the first several pages. After all I agree with Imperium's objective point that the Norfolk wagon in the first few pages was based on very circumstantial evidence. But like, every Norfolk post I see just keeps reminding me that this guy probably isn't town? Right? Both our heads think so and it seems like other players do too so we're not crazy here right? Why don't people wanna shoot this guy again?

At this point our top 3 suspects all OMGUS'd us back, so we're on to something here. If I had the gun at this point I'd be pretty confident in shooting any one of them. Again, that's Imperium, MUSH and Norfolk.

I think Wheme is now likely town. He starts off looking like a shit poster but I find myself agreeing with the posts most of the time. And they are clear reads not fluff so... I mean he could be buddying up intentionally but that's less likely.

Also what is up with the "who gave netflix the gun" speculation? I honestly thought that was a pointless exercise in WIFOM but maybe I'm overlooking something in this special set up. Please enlighten me on this.

Regarding Imperium trying to get Lotus to shoot me (lol):

Gotcha.

My concern is less that STT is pushing mislynches because STT doesn't have enough of a presence at present to do anything but try not to get shot. My concern is that STT is making up reads because his reads on me/Cakez/Norfolk look more like a computer program than someone genuinely trying to figure out the game. I believe this because of him being willing to turn on his top townread as easily as he is (everyone can be wrong so seeing someone be wrong once should kick your top townread to your bottom 4) and because of how clean those reads are.

If Norfolk is town, STT believes that I am town and Cakez is scum.
If Norfolk is scum, STT believes that I am scum and Cakez is town.
If Cakez is town, STT believes that I am scum.

I don't believe that he believes that because what people believe in a mafia game usually isn't so straight forward; there's usually a bit of nuance, it's usually a bit messy. This just... isn't.

This is some flimsy weak ass excuse to OMGUS the person who is on scum's tail.

The only point Imperium is making here, is "This STT is too logical, the reads aren't wrong but I think they should be more wrong to be 'human'".

You really want to play this game? My old head is darkdude.

Take a look at my last game, where I post my beliefs as numbers, no bullshit. viewtopic.php?t=82782&f=50&st=0&sk=t&sd ... er_sort=Go

I literally post probabilities between 0 and 1 for p(scum) that add up to the number of scum in game. There, I also posted probabilities assuming a flip goes one way or another, exactly as I have talked about Norfolk here. My whole raison-d'etre in mafia is to apply probability calculations to see how well it works in this game. Conditional probabilities are a huge part of that. It would be dumb if I didn't massively update my estimates on Cakez after I've been proven wrong about Norfolk (since that list is made with the current idea that Norfolk leans scum). At that point the only reads I have on either Cakez or Imperium was their takes on the Norfolk saga. It wasn't strong evidence in absolute terms, so it should obviously be easily swayed by future evidence that weighs more heavily. In other words Cakez's position at the top of that list doesn't have much of a lead from others at the top of the list, and it's almost all based on his interaction with Norfolk-Imperium. If one of those two flip then of course his standing will change dramatically. I really didn't think I needed to explain this; I assumed Imperium was trolling the point as scum.

Also why are you calling these mislynches? You claimed to think Cakez was scum intentionally misrepping you. You were not against a Norfolk lynch. From that POV, the only possible mislynch from me drawing this association might be you, if you're town. This doesn't make any sense. Sounds to me like you looked at a way to find my words scummy, then rationalized your way to "they're setting up mislynches by stating these associations".

Lotus, tell me you're not convinced by this bullshit argument. If you are I can write more walls but I thought this is enough. Imperium's rationalizing, I'm not trying to talk to Imperium here.

Preview edit: I was writing this before I saw Imperium's latest post regarding my MUSH take. I might get to that later if people other than Imperium (i.e. likely towns) are interested. Do let me know. I don't wanna let Imperium bog down the town in another distracting 1v1 like they did with Cakez a while back. Again, not really a point in playing the "he said she said" game with someone who's likely scum.

[ScrewTheTells]

I get the distinct feeling that Imperium is carefully toeing the line between casting enough doubt on us to distract from themselves/scumbuddies, and trying to win us over. Just my quick gut feeling though. (and this is the old head speaking, I'll ask the other head when available later)

[ScrewTheTells]

So MUSH and Imperium both jumped off of their wagon on me with coordinated swiftness and grace. I think you should try for the 2021 Olympic scum team for synchronized gymnastics.

Snark aside though, if you were town, who would you shoot? (assume you had gun and deadline is now). I had the impression you guys thought I was the top target, so who's your best target now?

So, FYI, if I am town and you are town, then me getting you shot and you shooting me loses us the game.
It's gonna be hard to change my mind if you don't address the things that I dislike about your slot.

I am capable of reassessing, but if you don't help me at all with the process and you are town, then the loss is falling squarely on your shoulders.

Yeah I get that, but there's a lot of costs weighing on the less-than-likely chance that I'm talking to someone in a way that matters to the game.

It's not just that it distracts from the overall conversation. It's also because my time is limited and I realized that I kept putting off making analyses of other people and questioning them, because these really vocal OMGUSer's are just baiting me into writing a wall and then "hey wow look at the time I got to go!".

Other people I've been thinking about:

-- Not_mafia. Some of you might say inactivity is not an indicator of alignment. I think in this case it is. Town just missed a shot, a bunch of people are in contentious 1v1 arguments, I think every town should feel like this is the moment of action to do something to steer the game in the right direction. Not_mafia not_doing_anything is thus evidence to me that he isn't motivated to do that. All he has said this game was that he was town and wants to shoot Dunnstral (without actually bothering to push this shot). It's clearly just prod-dodging. And I can see more and more why scum would keep doing this. No one is threatening to shoot him, so why does he need to do anything? He thinks we don't have the guts to shoot a no-info lurker. He can sit there and win by prod-dodging. Real inactivity gets replaced, like Rockhopper. Real uninterested town would also more likely to ask to be replaced than prod-dodge. So sure it's not impossible for him to be town, but I think he's more likely scum. I'd shoot him.

In other words, I expected town-Not_mafia to basically evolve like Whemestar: start with shit posts and then transitioning into actually doing something, even if keeping the shit-posting format. The lack of this transition is a scumtell to me. He's not even shitposting that much! It's like he doesn't even want to give us any chance to read into his shitposts. Related: I recall people disputing my "effort = towntell" conjecture. I only need to say that this has worked out for me very well in actual practice. I have won vastly many more games lynching low-effort people than I've lost.

-- Duchess. There's something there but my most confident takes on Duchess isn't that confident unfortunately. I think the biggest tell is that their activity seems to suspiciously coincide with what other players want. When other players cast suspicion on them, they make a flurry of posts. Otherwise they don't say much. At least that's the impression of the timing I get. When Imperium called them out vocally they responded and made a huge wall. I don't see any strong indicators in the content of the wall itself. No great towntells anyway. But the manner and timing of delivering what people asked just seems like scum covering their ass. This goes with what Lotus said before about Duchess seeming to regurgitate other people's reads. It would be a similar mentality.

Why did I say this was not confident? Because I've also seen newb town do this too often. They try to be helpful so they mostly work off of what other people have or want. Not calling anyone a newb but I think there's some elements of this mentality. I mean the way Duchess OMGUSed Lotus also fits this profile. Either scum or that specific town mentality. This kind of comes down to how you think Duchess plays, which I have no idea aside from the 2015 join date. I haven't the time to go meta and look at Duchess's games yet. I know some players mentioned their meta experience with other players many pages back but I honestly don't have time to go find it (don't remember who said it, don't remember what words to search for). If anyone wanna tell me again about their meta with Duchess, or Not_mafia for that matter, please. Barring more meta info I don't feel as confident shooting Duchess compared to say, Not_mafia.

Preview edit: Wow you guys write so fast. We'll get that stack list next. Imperium, does that stack mean your top shot (regarding my aforementioned hypothetical) would be unwnd?

[ScrewTheTells]

Yeah, I can agree with that. NM is a late game POE shot if ever.

I think it's clear that is exactly what he wants us to do, so I think he's therefore scum. I'm glad Cakez and petapan brought up the fact that not enough people are calling for his head is also an indicator of his alignment - his scum buddies are also thinking this is working out great, they have one guaranteed scum to survive to the end game. Why bother interacting with him at all.

People saying whemestar's pushes are bad, well I think not_mafia's lack of pushes is worse.

Some things I didn't get to in my last post:

At least Lotus should have some good targets.

what makes you say this

Well I had the impression that Lotus was in a similar head-space as us, so I expect he'll shoot one of our top suspects or at least someone we wouldn't mind too much shooting either. In any case I had no fear that Lotus would fire the gun randomly at a weird target. That's why I was like...Imperium, are you trying too hard for the LAMIST theatre? I think it's obvious Lotus will not shoot immediately. How do you even mis-read Lotus's style that much?

the guy selfhammered as town in the game i played with him because he didn't feel he'd be able to get suspicion off his slot, play is entirely consistent with someone playing for the first time outside the newbie queue and is probably a bit overwhelmed, not really scummy

This is valuable info. Someone who self-hammers as town definitely would do this crap. I guess that neutralizes the earlier "evidence" against him (namely the calls of LAMIST and weird tone of posts) but that still leaves the later interactions like how he OMGUS me, says Not_mafia is probably a bored VT just like himself... oh yeah remember Not_mafia also said

I think Norfolk is town

I think I'm putting together the scum team here.

Town to scum:

petapan
SirCakez
Dunnstral
unwnd
WhemeStar
Duchess
Imperium
MUSHSHAGANA
Norfolk Boy1
Not_Mafia

[ScrewTheTells]

Not_Mafia as your strongest scumread? Why?

I don't understand why you'd ask this, I wrote it in the post you're referencing. Not_mafia's behaviour, as well as the general lack of interest towards him, is very well explained by him being scum. Compared to my other suspects, like Norfolk, there's always the chance that I'm just misreading their actions. There's a larger danger of being lost in WIFOM possibility-space. Whereas there isn't really any WIFOM when Not_mafia is being anti-town. The only possibilities are him being scum and him being an anti-town-town, which admittedly is what trolling is, but that's something we can work with. Is he trolling too much to be likely town? What about other player's reactions? That's how I came to this conclusion.

Also, does it really matter? There's 5 scum on that list. We just have to filter most of them to the bottom and take a shot. No need to be hung up on minute differences when it's likely they're all scum even if you swapped places of the bottom scum reads. That's kind of nitpicking for no good reason don't you think?

Other then Mush I like your stack a lot STT

Yeah you know what, I've been thinking that the big difference between Imperium and MUSH is that MUSH's more committed in every push, even if they mostly agree on where to push. Imperium can't even come up with a stack list and can't pin down a top shot after they declared me and unwnd no longer top shots. (MUSH, I believe, has Cakez as her top shot.) I think that's more likely to be scum thinking. Town don't usually change their mind on a suspect unless they find a different angle to see the game, and they suddenly think some OTHER person is scum. So their top suspect can be replaced but rarely become a vacant seat. So I'd probably put Imperium as scummier than MUSH now that I think about it.

So! Pressure first, then admitting Norfolk might be a bad shot in this gamestate as that argument becomes increasingly obvious, then deflecting /implied/ critique from Imperium that isn't even outright stated in the post quotes, giving a complete non-answer to a riddle I posed about him to /someone else/, and then out of here. Like a shot. No sticking around for interactions, just in and out, quick and clean.

This is actually kind of convincing because the facts are there. Too bad I didn't see it myself first so now I'm suspicious of confirmation bias. I admit I don't have the time to do timestamp analysis like this.

I think scum are trying to direct my shot to someone who will shoot the gf.

Well before I try that I'll just say this: I think at face value this sounds unlikely. There are too many steps required for that read to work out. First you'd have to be correct on who you think you're being directed to shoot, and then you'd need to be correct in predicting who the scum think that person will shoot, and then you have to be correct in predicting that final target is not just any scum but a GF. How do people even read GFs differently than generic scum anyway? I certainly don't, but maybe that's a lack of experience with the setup. I mean I would just prefer to focus on who is trying to get you to shoot a particular target with ulterior motives. That sounds more reliable. But your theory sure sounds intriguing so I'll come back to this after I re-read to see if I can pick up anything.

STT i still have questions for i'm not gonna pronounce a verdict just yet but them having me as toptown almost immediately is ???

Um, I just double checked your posts and didn't find any outstanding questions for me. You don't like me reading you as toptown? You wanna tell me why you're scum? Please by all means.

Just saw Imperium's #1192 wall in the preview. Gonna skip that for now so I don't add a wall to this wall and make it impossible to read anything.

And yeahhh please lets drop the fight about emotional appeals or whatever. I care about this game, but not enough to ruin someone's day over it. For my part I regret bringing up MUSH's circumstances in the post Imperium was talking about. When I wrote it I didn't think it was bad because I thought I was clear that I was reading into it as a meta thing, so the issue itself shouldn't trigger any feelings. I didn't think the risk was enough to pretend that I didn't have the thought, so I said it. Maybe that's also the page petapan was on when he lashed out against the alleged AtE. I forgot that I was more of a bayesian-bot than most humans, as have been pointed out. People probably can't simply not think about it when it's brought up. So if I crossed a line there, I apologize.

[ScrewTheTells]

I think scum are trying to direct my shot to someone who will shoot the gf. I see three instances of this if my theory is correct, one of which is not well hidden whatsoever. And one instance has been doubled back on because I made it clear it won't work.

I'm being vague I know but I wonder if anyone will see what I see to maybe reaffirm me. My reads/shot isn't locked in whatsoever btw I am flip flopping a lot.

So I re-read for like 30 min and I've got nothing that might resemble this. The closest is people being initially vocal but then wishy-washy on whether to shoot Norfolk. But that doesn't fit your description of Norfolk being a townie who would shoot the GF. You think Norfolk is town now and you don't want to shoot him?

Well I had the impression that Lotus was in a similar head-space as us, so I expect he'll shoot one of our top suspects or at least someone we wouldn't mind too much shooting either. In any case I had no fear that Lotus would fire the gun randomly at a weird target. That's why I was like...Imperium, are you trying too hard for the LAMIST theatre? I think it's obvious Lotus will not shoot immediately. How do you even mis-read Lotus's style that much?

which ones, exactly? because in my chart the only place i have where your scumreads overlap with his are on norfolk, n_m, and rockhopper

Yeah, those were fine shots, so what's the problem? Also if he shot someone else I don't expect it would be something I would be like "nooo please save!". I think you guys read my stack too literally. I don't particularly care if some of the people switch a step or two on the ladder, because the margin of error is higher than the difference I assign between their scum-likelihoods. Unless lotus has a stack upside-down version of my reads and intends to shoot from town to scum, I wouldn't worry.

STT - I don't think you answered a question I asked earlier. Why was Mush the only person you wanted meta links for and did meta research on?

Okay I didn't reply to this question directly by quote but I thought you'd see that the answer was contained in my explanation of my MUSH case.

I asked for meta because it's the obvious low-hanging fruit in giving me a read on MUSH. Since I was paranoid about the pre-emptive meta disclaimer I thought it would be a simple low-effort-high-reward thing to find a MUSH scum game and see immediately if this was a relevant point at all. For other players who don't have a similarly obvious meta, who I also didn't have other suspicions on already, digging into their meta was not something I consider to be worth my time. I wouldn't know what to look for since I didn't have a reason to think there was a possible meta-based tell.

Speaking of meta, yeah see that's the kind of evidence I like to weigh more heavily towards, because I weigh the object-level arguments relatively lightly (I believe they're mostly rationalizations). So I'll look forward to Imperium(nacho)'s case tomorrow, which sounds like is coming from his angle on petapan's meta. Until I'm convinced of that though, I think shooting Not_mafia or Norfolk is a lot better than taking a random shot at petapan. If Imperium is town, then Nacho pretty much said in his own words that he has some egoistic reason for wanting to shoot petapan, so I'm not inclined to believe this is an objectively good shot. If Imperium is scum then of course this is yet another push trying to distract us or to test for opportunity. But meta info is good regardless so yeah please do.

[ScrewTheTells]

SirCakez, I just noticed you keep saying you like other people's scum-lists. #1:

Other then Mush I like your stack a lot STT

The stack referred to here is:

Town to scum:

petapan
SirCakez
Dunnstral
unwnd
WhemeStar
Duchess
Imperium
MUSHSHAGANA
Norfolk Boy1
Not_Mafia

#2:

[...snipped...]Duchess Dunnstral Whemestar Norfolk (VACANT)[...]

This is such a lazy scum team and makes me think you are scum

Not really I actually think he's pretty close

#3:

This is Nacho head. Pretty confident that the scumteam is Norfolk-Not_Mafia-Whemestar-petapan-Duchess with Dunn as a possible but not really likely sub for Duchess.[...]

Hmm we have many SRs in common...

The only names those 3 lists all have in common are Norfolk and Duchess. (I'm assuming you put the cut off point at 5 scum in my stack, which is fair). I just feel like it's weird if you think that needs pointing out; everyone and their grandmas are all scum-reading them.

[ScrewTheTells]

For Lotus:

Surprise I'm going to shoot Duchess

I'd prefer Not_mafia or Norfolk first, but this is in the range of acceptable for me. I'm just not as sure on Duchess's scumtells as you or a bunch of other people are. I think there's greater chance of misfire from being on the wrong side of WIFOM there, compared to the other options. But hey, I'm not one to micromanage, and I can trust you since you're confirmed so I'm not bothered if this is just difference in opinion.

And, the fact that everyone was heavy handed on Norfolk and saying virtually nothing about NM is a sign that he is mafia too.

To clarify, you also think both Norfolk and Not_mafia are scum, right?

I also don't see why town-Norfolk would shoot worse than town-Duchess, so the fear of town-Norfolk shooting wrong being a larger risk seems like wrong logic to me. I think they're both relatively worse at scum hunting than some of the other players here (no offense). If they're town we just have to do our best to convince them to shoot right in elo and I think both town-Norfolk and town-Duchess have exhibited personalities that would be open to that. Not that this line of thinking matters too much anyway because I think it's more likely they're scum. Let's not get hung up on risks that are relatively small and might not even happen.

I am also seeing the unwnd angle.....but this is even more unsure for me at the moment than a Duchess shot. I need to think more about this line, but for now I would not recommend it. It's getting a little too far away from my list of scum and I think it might end up being a repeat of Netflix's shot on you. I really really don't like overthinking it, and we're running that risk if we're considering these last minute arguments likely pushed by desperate scum.

Also is it a good time to reveal what you meant by scum trying to push you into shooting a town who would then shoot the GF? Who was that? I wanna make sure I'm not missing what you're seeing here.

[ScrewTheTells]

Ok so I think this is the latest take-away of my thoughts at the moment before the day ends. I'll try to make it as brief as possible.

I'm more concerned about Cakez now, but overall I think he's still likely town. The trigger for this was when the 3 scumlists that Cakez liked only had 2 suspects in common between them, so it's kinda questionable why someone would say those 3 are all decent scum lists.

I have not been really paying attention to Dunstral, but my impression of him right now is that he's only after Norfolk which is kinda lazy imo. Again I could be wrong as I haven't actually had time to re-read him, I was busy looking at Imperium and Mush walls.

My scum read of Imperium hasn't changed much, but now they've also tied their fate with petapan's. If Petapan flips town I'm certain imperium is scum. If Imperium flips scum I think petapan is confirmed town. After failing on their wagon on Cakez and this slot, Imperium probably sees a last opportunity to win with misfire before town kills one of their scumbuddies and makes things a lot harder. The turn on to petapan is too hyped right now. They made all this noise about a smoking gun but it's funny that they delayed the big premiere. Maybe this is a psychological trick to get us more hyped than we should be. Priming us for the argument. I dunno, I can't wait to see the actual substance. Right now it's just "trust me, petapan is scum because meta". I trust meta but I don't trust Imperium, that's the problem.

Unwnd has asked some strange questions that strike me as lazy. He asked why I had Not_mafia as my top pick for scum after I just explained it in that post he referred to. So I don't think he's reading with enough effort to understand what other players are actually thinking.

I think that's all we can think of for now. It feels like everyone's just waiting around for that one post for the past day or so.

[ScrewTheTells]

Why do you think they can't both be town?

Okay if we're judging this 1v1 without context then yes they could both be town. But I think the way they pushed for Cakez, us, and now peta is scummy, because I think that's 3 pushes where Imperium just doubles down effort on a new dubious target every time the last push fails. If my memory is correct, they only come up with the reasoning for the next target only after abandoning the last target. I think their attack on Cakez was bad. I think their attack on me was bad. So far it looks like a repeat with petapan, so if they get petapan to flip town then I'm not letting them get away with a simple "oopsie again". I'd say shoot them.

STT I thought I already said this but I was looking at bottom five for people in common and most had (Wheme, duchess, nm, imperium)

Yeah you did answer, at the time I was basically thinking "but those lists don't have those people all in common, the only ones they have in common were Norfolk and Duchess".

I just looked at the lists again and realized that they are at most only off from your own list by one suspect, it just happens to be different suspects between the lists. Okay I just made a mistake there. Thought I caught you in some bad deductive logic but nope, nothing here, it's a nothing burger.

No, no. I read it. Your reasoning presented to me just seemed perfunctory, so I asked you directly because raw interaction has it's purpose in-between walls.

Fair enough answer for that example, but what about when you asked Imperium for scum list when they already posted their whole scum team? I don't get that either. I don't understand your explanation in #1401. "Perfunctory" is a great word! That's how I feel about these from you actually!

Anyway don't interpret this as saying that unwnd is likely scum, I'm just dropping what stands out to me, before Lotus shoots.

If you're interested in meta, here's a few recent iso's of Peta's town games

Thanks, I plan to read them when I have the time and motivation.

[ScrewTheTells]

Okay so I was very wrong about MUSH being scummy. Sorry MUSH. :/ At least Duchess flipped scum, otherwise I'd think I'm probably hopeless this game.

Imperium, where is your definitive argument on why peta is scum? I just kinda expected that you would have finished that write-up while we waited for Day 3. I mean if it's still not presentable now I don't know why you expected to write it before ending Day 2.

I think there's a chance of this also being positioning for a deepwolf that I townread.

Does that even work in this set up? As soon as you misfire the gun goes to a different person, messing up the deep wolf positioning. Seems to me like we shouldn't be paranoid about our town reads if we get the gun. Worry more about the scumreads.

I mean if there were such a deepwolf angle on you, it would undoubtedly be Imperium right? But I actually don't think that would be a consideration for scum-Imperium. Let me elaborate that in my response to your question:

STT? Give me a towncase on Imperium. Yes, I know you scumread them, that's why I want your towncase specifically. Think about it and you'll get the point of this request.

Yeah actually I'm less confident about my previous scumreads on Imperium. I mean by order on my town-to-scum list they're probably still in the range of being scum, but probably just barely hovering around that line. One of the things I was suspecting was that one of you (Mush and Imperium) was trying to buddy up to the other, 'cause it seemed all too in sync. But though it's still possible, that probability is lowered now with a confirmed MUSH. It's still possible that Imperium is the ass-kissing scum, but then I wouldn't expect them to give you the gun this early. To do the deepwolf play they'd want you to get the gun later in the game, when people run out of other targets and start looking hard at Imperium. Then their buddying-up will pay off and convince you to make that final misfire. Giving you the gun now would mean wasting all their buddying-up investment as soon as you misfire. And scum would want you to misfire ASAP...so they can't both have their cake and eat it too.

In general I have to re-calibrate the weight of my previous reasons for suspecting Imperium now that I know I was wrong about MUSH. The most convincing reason to see Imperium as town is that their reactions, their emotions, seem genuine. They put a lot of effort into asking people questions to find out whatever info they need. They are not shy about putting themselves in the spotlight. When I called them scum it didn't deter them from their initiative, so it's either good town or scum trying to redirect. They're super hyped about their case on petapan in a way that seems town-like. I mean if I had a good reason to think someone is scum, as they say they do, I believe I'd act the same way (although, unwnd noted that they believe Imperium was capable of faking this conviction so....but then again how much should I weigh unwnd's words? I don't have a good reason to).

Anyway there was this other thing from Unwnd:

I stand by what I said of peta earlier, the reasons you're trudging about are not alignment indicative. I think peta is genuinely annoyed/frustrated at your BoP angle, which even in the event of them being scum will make him less cooperative

I think this is the 2nd time you've mentioned the thing about "even if petapan is scum, your play is bad because it makes him uncooperative". How does this work? I don't understand because you can never trust scum to cooperate with you anyway, it's not like if we are nice to them they give us more chances to win. I don't understand this reasoning from a town perspective.

[ScrewTheTells]

anyway if you want real scum look at how STT was trying to set up a dichotomy between imperium/cakez and then later shifted it to imperium/me, that shit is skeevy as fuck

I thought I already explained it the first time, it's not a dichotomy, I thought Imperium was scummy for other reasons, what I meant was that if Norfolk actually flipped town then that's reason to consider I was wrong about Imperium since it's more likely that Cakez was genuinely pushing for a misfire. And then the thing with you was that I thought you were pretty town so Imperium's argument seemed to suddenly come from nowhere. Now if you were scum I'd say that looks great for Imperium, but if you're town then that would be the last nail on the coffin and I'd consider Imperium confirmed scum at that point. It's not like I thought for some reason one of you had to be scum. I already thought Imperium was scummy and this is just relevant to that judgement.

[ScrewTheTells]

For Imperium:

Imperium, where is your definitive argument on why peta is scum? I just kinda expected that you would have finished that write-up while we waited for Day 3. I mean if it's still not presentable now I don't know why you expected to write it before ending Day 2.

Shout out to old jewels and old rules. New blacks with new stacks.

I already been the king. Retro act, I'm just bringing it back like Jordan Packs.

New money,

THEY LOOKING DOWN ON ME

. Blue bloods,

THEY TRYING TO CLOWN ON ME

.

You can turn up your nose high society. But you can never turn down the homie.


Remember that, STT. Just because we are different doesn't mean that I am inferior to you. This comfort that you're feeling won't last forever.

Are you gonna answer the question? I don't know what you mean by referencing some song lyrics. You don't think it's strange to promise a smack down post on why someone is scum and then never deliver? Because I think that's strange.

What can I say except you're welcome?

Oh I know this one! I like it.


For Mush:

ScrewTheTells:

That is a bad towncase. I agree with every bit of it and still I think it is insufficient. I was expecting better.

I would think that if I were aware of any stronger evidence of town-Imperium, they would be much higher on my town-to-scum list. Why would I know info that points to them being town and not also think that they're town? So I don't know why you'd expect me to bring up really great evidence for town-Imperium. Is there something obvious I should be aware of? Don't answer if this info might help scum, obviously. I know you don't need to prove anything now that you're confirmed town, I'm just asking for help seeing things. On that note, if it's not classified info, I'm also curious why you switched gears from crowning petapan scum-king, to passing that title to unwnd instead. Is petapan no longer scummy to you?

Maybe I just don't respect WIFOM-guessing enough in this setup.

Also, you answered my question for unwnd but I think he missed it himself.

[ScrewTheTells]

Unwnd, help me understand:

I stand by what I said of peta earlier, the reasons you're trudging about are not alignment indicative. I think peta is genuinely annoyed/frustrated at your BoP angle, which even in the event of them being scum will make him less cooperative

I think this is the 2nd time you've mentioned the thing about "even if petapan is scum, your play is bad because it makes him uncooperative". How does this work? I don't understand because you can never trust scum to cooperate with you anyway, it's not like if we are nice to them they give us more chances to win. I don't understand this reasoning from a town perspective.

[ScrewTheTells]

Re petapan:

[...]

My scum read of Imperium hasn't changed much, but now they've also tied their fate with petapan's. If Petapan flips town I'm certain imperium is scum. If Imperium flips scum I think petapan is confirmed town. After failing on their wagon on Cakez and this slot, Imperium probably sees a last opportunity to win with misfire before town kills one of their scumbuddies and makes things a lot harder. The turn on to petapan is too hyped right now. They made all this noise about a smoking gun but it's funny that they delayed the big premiere. Maybe this is a psychological trick to get us more hyped than we should be. Priming us for the argument. I dunno, I can't wait to see the actual substance. Right now it's just "trust me, petapan is scum because meta". I trust meta but I don't trust Imperium, that's the problem.

lmao that quote is clearly trying to set up a dichotomy where one of us has to be scum, it's complete bullshit, don't try to deny it, you've been trying to chain shots on imperium and whoever is pushng them for most of the game

See, when you say "dichotomy" I think you're implying I said that "For reason X, one of these 2 must be scum". And that's not what I mean here.

If by dichotomy you mean "one player's flip is evidence towards another's alignment" then yes that's what I was saying. How is what I'm actually saying wrong though? You think I shouldn't be taking flip information into account??? I don't get it.

Also how is it chaining? I've already been saying Imperium is scum at that point. My preference was to shoot Imperium before you. If that happens then according to my logic there, I wouldn't shoot you. Where's the chained shot? I guess it could be seen as a chained shot if you got shot before Imperium. But I wasn't advocating for you to get shot, so if you get shot that's not me trying to chain mis-fires, that's a misfire caused by whoever actually pushed you i.e. Imperium. I don't see how this is evidence of me chaining shots

On another note, maybe I'm reading your chart wrong, but I think you didn't put any of my reads there. I'm sure I posted my reads on Day 2. You can take the bottom 5 on this list as "scum" on your chart, that's how I was thinking of it at the time.

Town to scum:

petapan
SirCakez
Dunnstral
unwnd
WhemeStar
Duchess
Imperium
MUSHSHAGANA
Norfolk Boy1
Not_Mafia

---
Re MUSH:

STT, I find it /hilarious/ that you are trying to figure out the one part of my current play that I have explained in detail to everyone. That in fact were some of my first posts for this dayphase. That's adorable.

ISO me.

By that you mean that WIFOM made you second guess your top suspect? That's what I mean by "maybe I don't respect WIFOM enough here". I would generally disagree.

I missed the Imperium part of STT's questions for me. Here's that answer.

STT, if you approach this game the way you do, you should always be willing to entertain counterfactuals. This means looking in depth at someone's posting to really beat the hell out of your reads on them and consider the case where you are wrong. And there should /always/ be meat for scum and town both for any given slot, because scum tries to look like town and town shouldn't really care too much about looking scummy. If you can't put meat on one side or the other, that means either you're working with a newbie, working with someone like me whose approach to the game is totally alien, or something is wrong with how you're looking at the game. Imperium doesn't seem like that odd a player, and certainly isn't a newbie. That leaves just one possibility.

I don't think we're on the same page here. Your model of how you think I operate sounds accurate in some parts but not others. This isn't really an issue of counterfactuals, it's an issue of certainty. I'm not thinking in terms of "well, they are scum, but what if they are town?". I'm actually thinking like "they are either scum or town, but I don't know which, so what do I see that points towards one or the other?" When you say there should always be some meat for both town and scum, you completely lost me, because why would there be? My best attempt to parse this phrase is that you are telling me that because WIFOM exists, any observed action could point towards both scum and town. Which is true, that's the definition of WIFOM. And it's also why I try to ignore WIFOM-heavy evidence and look for stuff that are less prone to WIFOM.

By the way, if anyone wonders why scum even try to push obvtown slots, the above is why. /Everyone/ looks scummy if you want them to, no exceptions. Same thing with town defending obvscum slots; there is almost no play that is so scummy that you can't rationalize a solid reason to do it as town.

And this is exactly why I try not to over-think stuff, and stay away from WIFOM. Okay if you're asking me to rationalize (i.e. sprout ad-hoc bullshit) about why Imperium is looking town, then yes of course I am capable of doing that. I just didn't think that's what you wanted since that's completely irrelevant to how I read people lol. I'm trying to cut down on the rationalization, not trick myself into tunneling more on people. To be clear, the town-Imperium stuff I mentioned are not rationalizations. They are things that I think do point towards Imperium being town. It's just that when I add it up with the other stuff that point in the opposite direction I end up with a net-read of not-so-town.

Anyways this is kind of a huge tangent that's all very theoretical.

[ScrewTheTells]

Welcome, HUB.

What I'm curious about is if you are capable of finding the flip side, the town parts in the people you scumread.

But that's like the basics of mafia. There's not much to say other than I just try my hardest to do that. I didn't play all this mafia while running only on confirmation bias lol.

Also, I recognized this flaw in myself during Death Curse -- I have a bias towards townreading replacement players for at least one dayphase. I do wonder what could have possibly made me come to this conclusion.

And with that data now before me, I'll float my interim solve here: unwnd, HUB, Dunn, Wheme.

I want to see what other have to say about this.

PEDIT: Oh jeez that's a hell of a list if I'm right, two buddies in town and one in null.

Regarding townreading replacements: yeah probably because lurking is anti-town, so when the slot gets a burst of activity it negates that. I think it

should

negate it some, but only a bit. That's just in general. Specifically for HUB, I'm gonna see where their position ends up after they fully catch up and go from there. Giving them feedback as they catch up seems like leaking too much info to potential scum. But I suppose that's why you're telling them you're not giving them any info.

For your solve, I don't know why you don't include not_mafia there, especially with Wheme on the list. I'd shoot Not_mafia before Wheme for sure. To me they're going for a similar playstyle, one is just a lot more extreme. The parts that Wheme does offer seems a lot more believable as someone actually trying, while Not_mafia is clearly not trying.

For Unwnd I agree. Today's posts shifted unwnd more towards scum. I don't understand the mentality of posts like these, for example

Cause I think independently and if your gun is pointed at me, I'd rather die on my feet than on my knees.

If you're town, you won't die when you get shot. We're not at elim-or-lose, so you won't lose either. Instead, you should be happy that those idiots finally get to see how you will shoot the true scum. Doesn't make sense to act hopeless and make it sound like it's the end of the world. I understand that we don't want a misfire in the first place but I just don't understand why someone would word it like "I'd rather die X than Y". If it were me I'd be saying "this is objectively lowering our chances of victory, shoot this other guy instead", but my own death wouldn't really be the focus here since I literally can't die right now, I can only lose. (by misfiring after I get the gun.) Making it sound like you're a martyr for free thought just seems weird in this situation.

Also I'll just note that unwnd never answered my question directed to them in post 1548. The question itself has depreciated in its usefulness since then, so I don't really care, just pointing it out another thing that contributes to my read of unwnd.

[ScrewTheTells]

Ugh you're right unwnd, your response is right there. I don't know how I missed it, I've looked for it on like 3 different occasions. I looked for it before I made the previous post saying you didn't reply to it, and made that post because I missed it.

I basically agree with the content of your response there.

I think this is the 2nd time you've mentioned the thing about "even if petapan is scum, your play is bad because it makes him uncooperative". How does this work? I don't understand because you can never trust scum to cooperate with you anyway, it's not like if we are nice to them they give us more chances to win. I don't understand this reasoning from a town perspective.

Well for Peta's sake I am not willing to believe he is dead-to-rights scum, therefore your response to me takes out the exclusivity of the read. It's not that I think Tammycho should be nicer to peta, rather I think that scum get tilted by the same effect as town, and a tilted scum either just dies on his laurels or he goes even more aggro and starts getting trivial. I want to give peta the chance to prove he is not scum, because I do not believe that Tammycho's argument is enough right now.

[ScrewTheTells]

It's a busy time at work, which means I work an average of 12-14 hour days + an hour commute every day. I'm playing in a hydra because I don't have time to post consistently, you Carrot Top looking clown. Why would I delay this as either alignment? Why would I promise a big case on peta if I couldn't even write a case on peta? Do you think I have butterflies in my stomach because I'm afraid of you ripping my argument apart?

Well, my first guess is that you're more likely to delay it as scum because maybe you changed your mind on how to approach the push after seeing other players' reactions to your hype trailers for the Greatest Tell Ever. Look I understand there's plenty of reason to do it as any alignment, but the net result might not be completely symmetrical, so I can't help but notice. You can see why that's weird right? I'm hesitant to call it scummy because I'm wary that I'm way too deep in confirmation bias here.

Anyway can I assume you've basically said what you've been saving up to say in the post 1718 and 1719?

I actually think the reasoning is good. The most convincing part of the argument to me is

If Peta is town, then my expectation is that he's looking at the sum of our posting - instead of cherrypicking attacks that sound good and hiding behind "oh this is just a paranoid flash!", he'd be railing on us for not having clear reads, not having the influence on the gun he expected, stuff like that.

Which I'm finding more convincing because of our confirmed scum in Duchess who was shot for pretty much the same thing with Lotus. The one thing I think that goes against this is that (if I remember correctly) petapan did say that Imperium's reads were not clear, or fencesitting, or something like that. So that did happen. But most importantly, I think petapan's explanation of his gambit on Day 3 is more likely to come from scum than town. There's just way more scenarios where a scum wants to try that to get someone off their back, than a town actually doing a very very convoluted gambit. Now that I think about it, this is a net scum indicator.

Also peta's been making nonsense arguments on me like:

i think stt looks bad for trying to take advantage of me pushing you on day 2

Can you quote me on this? I think I was pushing Imperium before you replaced in?

--- for Not_Mafia ---

For someone called ScrewTheTell, he sure does a lot of wikitell scum hunting

What does this mean? What's "wikitell scum hunting"? Is doing that a scum tell? I can't parse what you're trying to say.

--- for HUB ---
Can I assume you've finished catching up now? What's your scum list? Is the list on post 1677 still accurate?

[ScrewTheTells]

I'm saying to shoot him because I believe his equity as scum has gone up but he is a hard player to case as he'll always rely on his Bayesian nonsense to wriggle out of a situation.

What do you mean by wriggle? The only thing that bayesian nonesense does is quantify what people usually don't quantify when they do a wholistic read on people. Do you have examples of where you think I'm wriggling out of a proper explanation for my reads and actions?

[ScrewTheTells]

This is why I dislike it when people put so much weight on "solves". It's nice but not necessary to solve the whole thing before making the optimal move.

Shoot the player with the highest total scum-probability. Many times, the scummiest player is scummy even without associative evidence with others. Looking for connections between players is great, but I would only focus on that regarding someone you're about to shoot. You must know what I mean if I explain this in probabilistic terms. If your reason for sorting A is dependent on B's alignment, then you just compounded the error rate of reading B with error of reading that they're aligned with A. Try to do this for the entire scum team or enough players for a PoE and you'll almost certainly go wrong, somewhere. So you shouldn't expect a completely perfect "solve" that easily.

Preview edit: this applies even if, or rather especially, if you're unsure. Because if you lack evidence then any "solve" is probably gonna go wrong anyway. Shooting the top scum regardless of the rest of the "solve" is probably a lot less error-prone, even if both have higher margins of error than you'd like.

That said I absolutely hate the Cakez shot. It would be "criminal", as you say. Instead, please shoot Not_mafia for all previously stated reasons. Or HUB who's jumping for joy at the possibility of you shooting Cakez. I'm pretty sure they're scum, I wouldn't even lose sleep over the decision if I were you.

Btw Happy Unbirthday Goon, I don't think you answered my question about catching up to the game yet? Can I assume your reads are up to date with the real-time game now?

[ScrewTheTells]

STT there's probably at least 10-20 pages I've only read in iso but tbh I usually do better with iso anyway. Were there any reads you wanted to talk to me about or what?

If you feel like you've caught up, then is post 1677 still an accurate depiction of your current position?

I'm interested in which players are more or less scummy in relation to each other from your POV, so I wanna be sure this stack list is actually what you currently endorse. I don't wanna waste time on the wrong premises, if you actually changed your reads since then due to reading.

[ScrewTheTells]

Imagine if we shot Norfolk day 1 like everyone wanted, except Imperium, Netflix, Not_mafia and Wheme*.

Okay now don't repeat the mistake. Shoot top scum. Mush, why do you think Not_mafia is not top scum? Admittedly I was pretty wrong about Imperium but they weren't my top scum pick.

* (Just checked: Wheme notably voted Norfolk first but then quickly said it was for the lols and started going against it. Also for what it's worth, according to peta's chart MUSH didn't go after norfolk day 1 either.)
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Aside from me Imperium kill points to Peta or STT I think?

i feel like anyone would have killed imperium because they were never going to be shot

although it's probably STT

I'm confused why my name was suddenly mentioned in this context. What's the logic behind scum-STT wanting Imperium dead? (Relative to other players)

I'm still looking at early Norfolk interactions. I agree late Norfolk/HUB was just trying to distract. Cakez saw right through that lol, good call. I almost wanted to believe HUB...meh his wild takes were tempting. My gut wants to say he was on the 1st level of WIFOM (tell lies) but I've had a bad record of trying to guess WIFOM in mafia and my rule of thumb is to ignore it. Maybe there's a chance here though since we know his likely goals?

[ScrewTheTells]

i was saying this during the whole last phase because of the way he treated me vs imperium

You mean how you kept saying I was setting up a dichotomy?

That's why I said you were wrong yesterday, Town-Imperium is not significant evidence you're scum, unless you approach it with the assumption that Imperium is pretty accurate with that read. I didn't put that much faith in that. I don't think I ever said that "if Imperium flips town then petapan would be scum", did I? I only said that if Imperium is scum then petapan is probably town, or if petapan is scum then Imperium is probably town. I did not say the opposite was true. You're thinking the evidence is symmetrical (A is evidence of B, also B is evidence of A) but that's not what I said. What I actually said was "A is evidence of B, but B is not necessarily evidence of A".

Does that make sense? Or perhaps you think I should have heeded imperium's read with more weight after all?

[ScrewTheTells]

Also, making a note. Literally no one is trying to save Wheme but I note that STT and only STT is trying to specifically redirect to NM without saying Wheme is a bad shot. So I think STT is the third scum. Just have to figure out if the second one is peta or NM and I think it’s peta rn on this basis. Open to being swayed but tbh peta you’re the only one who’s gonna save yourself here

Well yeah, and from my POV I'm also concerned that no one else is doing this. To me it's clear that Not_mafia is a better shot so of course I'm gonna advocate for shooting him first. The problem with the associative read here regarding Wheme is that it only works if your premise is correct too, so if you're wrong about STT or Wheme this doesn't count for anything, it's just confirmation bias. You should not think this increases the likelihood of Wheme being scum by that much.

Compare that to Not_mafia: the reason I think Not_mafia is scum is mostly thanks to his anti-town position the whole game. I'm much more confident on that because it doesn't rely on associations, although there is also good evidence for that: he tried to stop the Norfolk wagon when it was still young, and then inexplicably jumped on the wagon to bus him yesterday. And note: this association only relies on getting WIFOM correct, since we know Norfolk-HUB is scum. It's way more reliable than thinking Wheme is scum because STT is trying to soft-save him, which I know is bullshit of course since I'm STT, but should still be uncertain for others too compared to the association with a flipped slot.

I don't have much time to post more atm but if you don't shoot in a few hours I have more to say.

[ScrewTheTells]

You also should remember you have had not one single solitary correct read that you have made much noise about. I’m inclined to say “if STT is loud, STT is wrong.” [...] Quiet scumread on HUB and waffling on it, but loud as hell about Imperium.

I think that's just a biased opinion looking for ghost signals in a lot of noise.

Because actually in my opinion I've been yelling at people to shoot my top 2 scum reads for ever. Basically everyone seemed to be in agreement about HUB so I didn't feel as much of a need, but does this look like being "quiet" at all??

That said I absolutely hate the Cakez shot. It would be "criminal", as you say. Instead, please shoot Not_mafia for all previously stated reasons. Or HUB who's jumping for joy at the possibility of you shooting Cakez. I'm pretty sure they're scum, I wouldn't even lose sleep over the decision if I were you.

I don't just yell loud about things I'm confident on, that's oversimplifying to an absurd degree. I yell loudly when doing so makes sense, such as when I'm BOTH confident AND people are doing the wrong thing and I might make a difference. I yell louder about Not_mafia now because for some god damned reason not enough people want him shot*, and currently the gunbearer puts Not_mafia farther back on the shooting list than Wheme and petapan, which I think is clearly an absolute mistake.

If you're lucky you hit scum anyway and I just look silly. I can live with that. That's a small cost when I consider there to be a huge difference between the likelihood of Not_mafia being scum and Wheme being scum. I think if you shoot the former our win chance goes up dramatically. Then you can consider shooting wheme, whatever. I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to first shoot the obvious scum who isn't even trying to hide.

*Okay so people said they want him shot, but are not calling for it as loudly as I am. It gives off the same vibe as Norfolk/HUB; a bunch of people stated they were likely scum, but took forever to actually manifest into concrete action with any real teeth. It just feels like some people call him scum and then act like he's not scum. I've lost track of how many people currently called Not_mafia scum, I don't have time to do a recount right now but my impression is almost everyone thinks so. Look, the last time you trusted a universal scum claim we got Norfolk. That's all that I wish for, I want that to happen again, before we try to gun down those more difficult scum.

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Also for anyone who identifies as an Imperium sheep (not just talking to MUSH here), remember Imperium also said Not_mafia was probably scum. I don't recall Imperium wavering on that at all, I think they stated high confidence in their scum list at the end of the last day. So if you're going to use that reason to think Wheme and Peta are more likely scum, you must apply the exact same weight to Not_mafia at the same time. Either that or ignore Imperium's reads equally, if you pick and choose you're just double-counting your own opinion. You can have your own reads, I'm just saying don't fool yourself into thinking Imperium's reads count only where they overlap with yours. That's just rationalizing.

Again, I think when you add everything together, Not_mafia clearly wins the contest of "who is more likely to be scum". So that's who you're supposed to shoot to maximize your win chances. You might still be right about Wheme or peta! But you should shoot the most likely scum first.

If anyone wants to tell me why they think Not_mafia is NOT the current leader of "most likely scum", please by all means. Because if it ever gets to the point where I have the gun, and things are still like this, I'm just gonna shoot Not_mafia. If you think that would be a mistake, it would be better to try to convince me right now so I can also stop leading other people astray right now.

[ScrewTheTells]

Ugh sorry for the rambling but my brain just keeps coming up with more things I want to say. This is just arguing with a confirmed town so it's not really relevant, but whatever.

Look Mush, I think we're very different players/brains because if I didn't know you were confirmed town I'd think you're misrepresenting me pretty heavily right now. You said I was loud about Imperium and I turned out wrong. Um...that was like on Day 1-2 right? But on Day 3, Imperium started moving away from the scum end of my list (they were still leaning scum, to be sure). I'm sure I said this. I started considering their words more seriously because I reduced the probability of them being scum. You did not see any of that? I don't see how you can just over generalize and say because I was loud about MUSH and Imperium on Day 2 and that turned out to be wrong, therefore I'm just always wrong. Especially when I think I've been pretty loud about Norfolk! Seriously, this is the sort of thing that made me think you were scum; your summary of what I did is just so far away from what I actually did.

But I guess maybe this shouldn't be that surprising by now. I think having radically different perspectives was something Imperium commented on too. Maybe we just have a lot of that in this playerlist...meh...

[ScrewTheTells]

Okay Mush, basically everything you said is plain wrong. I'm having a hard time submitting this post because I had to edit it multiple times, to tone it down and to make it less of a personal attack. I'll try to keep the overall thrust brief and contained here: I mean that's the logical conclusion isn't it? Before you flipped town I thought your reasoning was so bad you must be scum, and now that you're proven to be not scum, all I'm left with is that your reasoning is just that bad.

TLDR for everyone else: basically Mush is wrong and not_mafia should be top shot.

Okay now that I got that out of the way, I still have to refute your points so that other people understand what I mean. They can check the facts themselves to see I'm not just making up bullshit.

You were still pretty loud about Imperium on Day 3.

I dare you to quote me. From the start of the Day 3 flip I told Imperium that they were less scummy than what I stated previously. I also conversed with them more directly than Day 2 since I was less concerned with unknowingly wasting conversation time with scum. I was pretty loud about wanting them to actually put down their petapan case like they promised, not that I was confident they were scum. Go ahead quote me where I said I was confident Imperium was scum because I'm pretty sure I didn't.

Or not because guess what, you don’t mention scumreading HUB/Norfolk once for all of Day 3

Does asking them to be shot count? I already quoted myself about that in my previous post. If you mean I didn't literally say "guys I still scumread HUB" I think that's because it's clearly not necessary. If I've been yelling that they should be shot for Days 1 and 2 and I don't say "I'm reconsidering", everyone can rightly assume I still want them shot.

I do admit that I was being more cooperative with HUB than say, Not_mafia. Because I thought the HUB wagon was going well anyway and they'll probably be shot, I wanted to bait out more content from HUB. HUB also happened to be very active and willing to indulge in answering since he was desperate to save himself. So instead of just shoving "YOU'RE SCUM" in their face, I asked them questions instead. I didn't get anything too useful, but hey you gotta try.

Regarding Duchess: okay you have that correct. I didn't really have a strong scum read on Duchess, I was basically okay with the shot due to them being close enough to my other scum reads on Day 2 (falls within margin of error of a Norfolk/Not_mafia Day 2 shot). Since then, the margins of error have narrowed. I've become even more confident about Not_mafia since their behaviour didn't get any more towny as the Days advanced and more game-info came to light, which I expect would prompt any town player to do something. In fact I think Not_mafia has gone backwards and lurked more than on earlier Days, imo.

Yeah, Norfolk was red. Norfolk was also DEAD WEIGHT. Duchess was putting work in, big time.

I dunno, both of their death-bed posting activity seems like desperate scum. They both just pushed hard for an alternative wagon. I mean, I really don't see a difference. You can share some details if you like.

What are you saying here right now that you couldn’t say as scum in this position? Why should I read this as you having thoughts and not panic spew as I nail the scumteam to the wall?

Does it look like I'm panicking about scum dying though? I'm panicking about you ignoring the perfectly good Not_mafia shot and playing russian roulette with our win chances. If you also think Not_mafia is scum then there's definitely more worlds where town-STT would be yelling about this than worlds where scum-STT would be bussing this hard. So am I to conclude that you do not think Not_Mafia is scum? That is very concerning and means I must yell louder.

Oh, which reminds me. The one and only insightful thing I posted on Day 3 was pointing out how your tone and attitude changed DRAMATICALLY once I got in control.

Yeah, that also reminds me. You better cross this out from your list of Day 3 insights because it's also nothing but bullshit. I actually had a response to this when you wrote it but it was too much of a tangent with the other stuff going on, and at the time you were doing your mysterious reaction testing so I put it on the back-burner.

Yeah my tone changed dramatically because you went from suspected probably-scum to confirmed town. LOL how do you think people normally react to that sort of revelation? And despite what you think of me in this game, it's just one facet of me you're viewing through the distrust of mafia. I'll just say that I think I'm a pretty nice person in general if I may say so myself. So when I'm being an aggressive asshole that's usually because I'm going up against a player in a game who is actively undermining my win condition, and a certain level of aggression is what the players signed up for. So that includes when I think you're scum, and when I think you're town doing bad plays as you would if you don't take the Not_mafia case seriously.

I think I'm pretty nice with people I'm trying to cooperate with to win! I was ready to work together with you, the confirmed town, and possibly Imperium, who was less likely scum on Day 3, and that's exactly what you observe. The fact that you think this is some psychology tell that you can extrapolate is just another example of your failure -- Okay okay I said I was gonna not make this personal right? Look, even when I'm in asshole-mode I don't want to cross that line, and that's another reason I re-adjusted on Day 3. After the drama between you and petapan I thought maybe I was too aggressive even if we can assume you are scum; I wouldn't want to ruin a scum player's day by attacking them so personally in a way they didn't sign up for. Remember, Imperium praised peta for launching that attack (assuming he's scum). And I solidly disagree with Imperium there, so that got me to do some introspection and post that late apology. And then after all that you flipped town; that just totally got me to try hard being nice, but look where we are again...

Okay I'm gonna pledge to not respond to any of these lines of reasoning anymore, unless sufficiently new and different points are raised. So I can cool off and try to be nice again.

[ScrewTheTells]

Holy shit, this is what I was hoping wouldn't happen. Murphy's law, am I right?

Wheme don't shoot yet, I need to decide if Not_mafia is still the best shot. Even though I didn't like Mush's target choice, it's not like I spent a lot of time imagining what things would be like if Wheme was town so I need time to re-check stuff. But my thought as of this moment is that we should have fucking shot the universal scum read instead of spinning the wheel. Because that's what the results seem to me. Is there anyone who DOESN'T think Not_mafia is scum??? Serious question while I go re-read.

[ScrewTheTells]

GG all!

I think there's a weird power curve for scum here. They have a higher win chance early but after the 3rd scum death I think it swings in favour of town. So we got lucky and got the required misfires before we got out-scaled. If Wheme shot peta first I think it would be significantly more difficult to win from there.

[ScrewTheTells]

@ Mush, there's a lot of randomness so it's hard to say there's any obvious lessons to be learned. I think you did well! You correctly read me as scum, for one. The shot on HUB instead of Cakez was also a good call.

[ScrewTheTells]

Oh and I wanted to say this since for ever.

I like to think that if I were town, I'd read MUSH as obvtown. My guess is that it isn't easy to fake that amount of scum hunting effort. I hope to see a MUSH scum game some day to see if this is correct

[ScrewTheTells]

I liked the synergy our scum players had. We basically had very different styles so it spread out the risk in case anyone was really good at catching a certain class of scum tells. It also gave each scum a lot of wiggle room to make up reasons to put some scumbuddies as town-reads while others as scum-reads, so that when they flipped it would be basically impossible to untangle the WIFOM. Or even if they didn't flip it made pinning down a 'solve' a lot harder. I know I was happy I could put 2 buddies in town-read section and 2 buddies in the scum section.

i actually thought in terms of agency it was fine, you get two opportunities to remove town players you'd otherwise never be able to kill which is the big roadblock in nightless

My tweak as it were is to substitute the godfather for a suicide bomber, activatable at any time the bomber is alive and on anyone, including the gunbearer. Same killing power, more agency. Also makes the role more strategic as it's proactive instead of reactive.

This is interesting mechanically. Is the bomber strictly better though? What happens if the bomber gets shot before activating their bomb? Based on the above wording it would not result in a nightkill so in that situation it's worse than the current godfather trigger. Would make for a pretty intense game of chicken for the players involved, though. But it might encourage a meta of shooting without much warning.

[ScrewTheTells]

Curious, how does one town read not-mafia? Because I think if I were town I'd have shot him too.

[ScrewTheTells]

Hello, this is the newbie-head here. Just wanted to say that this was my first game, and I really enjoyed playing with all of you guys.

[ScrewTheTells]

Oh, I remembered something, Syryana.

Assuming town shoots correctly slightly more than half the time (55% of the time, in my sims), town will win 52% of games.

But isn't shooting correctly 50% of the time already WAY above random chance? Because when the gunbearer shoots, there's always at least as many town as scum. Pre-Elim-Lose, there's a higher chance of hitting town (i.e. shooting wrong).

So if you literally gave town a 55% of shooting scum with each shot then this is simulating really effective scum-hunting. The first shot should have 5/12 chance of hitting scum, or 42%. 55% is huge, that';s like a 30% relative increase in scum hunting effectiveness.