NY 174: Oldy Mafia 2 (Game Over)

[mathcam]

Hi everyone!

I'd like to begin by speculating about the existence of serial killers, lynchers and werewolves.

Also,

in keeping with old school traditions this day can't last for more than like 10 pages

Ha. Time to start reading.

[mathcam]

Okay, caught up. And by caught up I mean I have now read every page of the game, but don't mean that I have a massive database of notes from which I can instantaneously respond to questions like "What did you think about the debate between X and Y"? As a bit of a meta, my last brief return to the site left me with a bitter aftertaste, being populated with Natirasha-type new-stylers. I'm glad to see that this game looks much more engaging (though in my book, is of a definitively "medium" style (to me, old-style involves a much more rapid pace than this, and a much smaller page-count -- we weren't quite so demanding that everyone weigh in on every little side discussion).

To briefly address MafiaSSK, I think it's clear that he posited some theories that were wrong to the point of sheer lunacy (e.g., post 173, though FOS whoever it was that asked him why he thought there was no daytalk). Whether or not we agree with Yos's perspective that such inconsistencies are pro-town (a perspective I find perfectly justifiable, and not only because it so behooves me in this particular instance), I think it's also clear that he genuinely believed them. I also thing that nestled in his theories he had some valid finds. He was the only person that I noticed that called out CES's obsession with Seol (which was probably in part joke-y/meta-y, but lasted much longer than seemed natural to me), and CES's bizarre quote in post 137 that "I agree with CTD that chamber's alignment is fairly obvious at this point." Of course, SSK's point about CES and CTD being scum together was silly.

So I'm happy with SSK's vote on CES, even if I disagree with some of how he got there. I'll leave it there with the hope that there's some agreement or discussion on this topic, and we work on moving the bandwagons here.

That said, I need to weigh in on some other aspects: I have a list of people I think are probably town, but I'm not sure it does anyone any good to reveal them (except to note that neither of the two leading bandwagon candidates are on that list), but this my be a point of theory where reasonable people can disagree. I have slight scum reads on both LML and BooKitty (mostly inherited from Seol, though I do have an unelaboratable gut feeling that she's working really hard to save a scum role from a losing position), though I can't say that I can particularly well point to places in the text where either have said anything that really triggered a negative reaction from me (one exception -- Seol finding SSK's crazy theories scummy instead of just wrong seems off to me). To be perfectly honest, I'm a little skeptical of a vast majority of such arguments -- I just don't have faith that an information-less Day 1 can provide anything but a marginally-better-than-average probability of hitting scum, especially with experienced players. Finally, I have a slight town read on PJ, just because as opposed to Seol, PJ's arguments against SSK seemed more genuine.

3.) mathcam, why do you think MafiaSSK replaced out?

I'm torn between my options of providing an incredibly sarcastic response to this in which I speculate on the possible life pitfalls into which SSK may have fallen that tore away him from this game, or feeling insulted that you think my obvious lack of actual information on this front would lead me to engage in speculation in such a way that a scum me would accidentally let something slip. I guess I'll just leave it at this.

(Man, I'm ornery! Sorry.)

[mathcam]

p.s. Unnntrrrooooood Trrriiiipppooooood!

[mathcam]

It was a very CES-y way of pointing out that he thought chamber was obviously town.

Ahhhhh. Apparently, along with MafiaSSK's role, apparently I also inherited his failed sarcasmometer. Oops.

Unvote: CES, Vote: BooKitty

[mathcam]

Undo: It strikes me that your last post on me was taking things I said and then claiming as though these were observations you sussed out from my post. The only difference is that you replace charitable ones with uncharitable ones (e.g., "I don't think revealing my town reads would be helpful" vs. "mathcam is afraid to reveal his town reads", and "here is one scumread I can't justify" to "mathcam can't even justify his slight scumreads").

FOS: Undo

for that.

I'm still fine lynching BooKitty -- I agree with her that she's a good information lynch, and that we need to get the game moving. If we lose a VT, we lose a VT.

[mathcam]

I'm a little surprised that after 7 years on this site, you haven't seen an experienced player post a sincere-townie-looking resignation post as scum, or at least few enough that you're shocked in this particular case. Your bravado definitively declaring who is scum rings pretty empty to me. Do your attempts at bullying actually work on some people?

Yos: Lynching anyone at this point will be pretty informative -- BooKitty might even be slightly higher than usual given her generous contributions to the discussion so far, and Seol's (to me uncharacteristic) behavior this game.

I have a slightly higher than average scum read on her, and slightly higher than average expectation of information from her lynch. We also have no risk of hitting a power role with this lynch, but quite possibly a lynch of a scum making the only possible safe claim at this point. I find it unlikely that we'll find a better lynch opportunity today.

[mathcam]

Okay, okay -- saf

est

in the sense that there's no chance of being immediately contradicted.

[mathcam]

That's pretty vague. How would it be "pretty informative"? If BooKitty flips town, then who on her wagon would you say looks scummy to you?

a) Granted. b) Because BooKitty has posted detailed thoughts on every player of the game, which upon revelation of her role, will acquire further significance/validity, and c) I don't know -- I haven't thought about it. I would certainly do so upon her (or any other player's) lynch.

mathcam, I think LML fits your voting criteria.
(1) Scummy.
(2) Has had a lot of interactions with players. Thus, his flip will be pretty informative.
(3) Will probably claim VT.

(1) Meh. (2) Agreed. (3) Maybe. But that's a risk, right? There's an inherent risk in bandwagonning more claims -- either we get more VT claims (which doesn't do much in terms of helping us select a target) or we get a power claim, which while exciting, might be disastrous given that they haven't had a single change to use their role.

-----

Your focus on the fact that she's claimed VT is weird for a few reasons.

(1) Using the rationale of "hey, at least we won't lynch a power role because she claimed VT" alongside "scum's safest claim is VT" -- when you've just stated that Bookitty is

not

safe specifically because she claimed VT -- strikes me as you having reached your conclusion (Bookitty vote) and then finding reasons to justify it.

(2) Also, she claimed VT. Big whoop. I don't see how that's determinative for how we should act in either direction (lynch or not lynch). You've seized on it as signifying Bookitty as a safe lynch (town-perspective wise), but that suggests that you would rally behind

any

lynch, so long as that player was the first to claim VT and you had "a slightly higher than average scum read." And since that's a pretty low threshold, it means that you basically would have been locked in with just about any of the leading bandwagons this Day so long as the suspect was first to claim VT.

(1) Come on, you know how it goes. Something might be a good idea for scum to do, but then as soon as scum do it, someone can say "Ah, but if they were scum, why would they do that thing that's good for scum to do?" Every action comes with some built-in WIFOM, and I totally concede the point that declaring the claim absolutely "safe" (which is stronger than I meant it) would be erroneous. But not every action can be WIFOMed out of existence, lest there be no point in making arguments at all. The fact remains that VT is a revealed role, and there are advantages to scum in selecting such a role. The WIFOM argument mitigates, but does not eradicate, these advantages. As to your last clause, I'd say I looked for conclusions for which I could find reasons to justify, and I found one. So in a sense you're right.

(2) Of course it's not determinative. I'm not seizing on anything -- it is a marginal increase to the utility of lynching her over someone else. Whereas some mafia players feel their scum-hunting ability is so great that they have a very high chance of deducing scum on day 1, I hold no such illusions. I am quite happy to take a slight scum read and a slight technical advantage and run with it.

I'd encourage everyone to ask (but not necessarily reveal in thread), what your "percent scum chance" is for each person in the game. BooKitty is one of my highest, and she'd top out at maybe 30, probably plus or minus 5 percent depending on my mood. If you have a score for someone that's over, say, 60-65%, I basically think you're deluding yourself. I just don't believe you can have genuine deduction skills that great. My point is that your description of my perspective in your second point is pretty dead-on (not that I went into this with that mindset, but now that we have a VT claim, that's where I am), that slight scum reads and extra one or two percents of marginal utility do indeed make a difference, and I think it's a pretty reasonable stance. I'm happy to listen to why you think it's wrong.

[mathcam]

Looking back on the thread, it's also a little surprising by how strongly people were defending mafiaSSK, relative to the quality of his posting.

I think this is related to the types of claims that no scum in his right mind would want attract the kind of attention that SSK did by repeatedly defending ill-advised theories. Do you think there's any significance to the fact that Seol disagreed with this stance? There was one post where he directly decided to weigh between whether SSK was scummy or wrong, and came down on the side of scummy. Realizing of course the conflict of interest of reading about my past self, I think this was odd, and my first inching of Seol in the scumminess direction.

[mathcam]

My opinion has nothing to do with getting fooled by a "sincere-townie-looking resignation."

For the record, I was not accusing you of such. That was in response to ABR being shocked.

Yos: Well, that's a high enough percent that you have convinced me to spend the time to go through his posts again.

... you think lynching the first bandwagoned suspicious player who claims VT, because VT was claimed, is always the right thing to do.

Not at all. Related to what you very astutely point out in your parenthetical remark (which I agree with and, incidentally, is the biggest self-doubt I have about my BooKitty vote -- disposing of an active player has its own detriments, regardless of scumminess), every game has its own nuances. Relatedly, in this game, I think there will be a significant benefit to ending this day. I haven't done a count, but I suspect that the percentage of players who have posted substantively since page...20?...is ...sub-optimal. I'd rather lynch slightly-better-than-randomly now than drag on for another week plus extensions when everyone starts panicking about deadlines. So I think in *this* instance, and not at all in *all* instances, is that the right play.

That said, I'll take another look at LML (and maybe PJ, though maybe not as I like watching ABR get worked up). In the meantime, people should feel free to lynch BooKitty without me.

[mathcam]

That's just after she played the "I'm the best lynch"-card. Bookittyscum can't exactly claim doctor after that (and it's obviously long-term planning to boot; if you can dismantle the wagon that way, it's much less likely to return).

Excellent point.

mathcam, I think LML fits your voting criteria.
...(3) Will probably claim VT.

Are you trying to get a reaction out of me here? Trying to fish for my role? This is the scummiest post of the match thus far.

FoS: GC

The only reason my vote isn't changing is because I'm nearly positive that PJ will flip red. I'm not nearly as sure about you yet.

I don't see it that way. He was trying to draw comparisons to my stance on BooKitty. Reading it as role-fishing strikes me as somewhat paranoid.

@Rest of you -> Have you heard of this encryptor before?

No, and I agree this has potential for an interesting line of discussion. I maintain that the default assumption would be no day-talkers, but I was also unaware that this was such a prevalent thing these days. It may also be that even if Patrick was trying to keep an oldie theme to the game design, he didn't *know* how modern of a trend this was.

[mathcam]

3.) I do not think MafiaSSK's replace-out was Town. He was under lingering pressure with three votes, I had just asked him a couple pointed questions that he may have rather avoided, and it was fairly obvious that he was going to be under more pressure if he did not step it up. Charitably it is null.

Really? I think that he was pretty reasonable about addressing fairly poignant questions early in the game, so it seems a stretch to me to imagine that he'd want to replace out of the game rather than address your questions (the importance of which I think you overestimate). I also think it's a stretch to call it "lingering pressure" -- I haven't gone back and checked, but my impression on my first read-through is that with very few exceptions (e.g., yourself), after the first few pages the rest of the discussion had moved away from him, including, as Yos points out, several people who found him rather pro-town.

So

FOS: PJ

for that.

Rereading LML, I can't say that I've found anything unusually scummy from him. I will say that his posting style has always left me feeling a little uncomfortable, but I'm pretty sure that this has happened as both town and scum. I will note that out of my entire read, there was no instances in which I marked him down with a particularly pro-town vote. He'd probably be in my top-5-scummiest.

[mathcam]

ABS, that's the first you've mentioned CES all game (as far as I can tell). What up?

[mathcam]

Random notes as I reread some of the recent stuff:

a) I'm not getting the CES wagon. I have a slight town vibe from him.
b) I didn't notice it at the time (since the second half of the post was about me), but I think undo's post 602 does a really good job making explicit some points against BooKitty that I was having a hard time articulating. I don't think it's beyond plausibility that BooKitty came into a scum role and decided to play up the insecure self-deprecating card.
c) On rereading, I'm seeing the arguments against VitaminR more. Also, to retroactively answer a question of Yos, VitaminR will be a definite discussion point of interest tomorrow if BooKitty turns up scum.

[mathcam]

I disagree that these are inconsistent. An oversimplification: as I read through, I assign little +1's and -1's to people if their post strikes me as pro-town or scummy (with most posts getting a neutral 0). Most people accrue some of both. In this game, moreso than usual, I have lots of people with more town points than scum points. But in all of LML's posts thus far, I haven't marked a single one as pro-town. This lack of pro-town posts, even in the absence of anything overarchingly scummy, makes him an acceptable lynch for me today.

Welcome, inhim! Long time no see!

[mathcam]

Well, kudos to those of you who called it on LML -- I really didn't see it. And I apologize for not being around near the deadline yesterday -- I for some reason figured the deadline would be 11:59pm EST, and by the time I got there, the deed was done. In any case, I'm really in need of a reread at this point.

[mathcam]

Okay, I've reread pages 1-20 (and 35-), and while I'm sure there's lots of things happening between 20 and 35, I'm exhausted and have ample thoughts for a post:

1) I agree there's very little to be read into the "bussing slip," intentional or not.
2) PJ, I apologize -- I missed your questions before. Hopefully this post will address the first one. The second seems...patronizing? And possibly now irrelevant. As to the "didn't really see it" line, I meant exactly that -- other people seemed to find him extraordinarily scummy, and it appears they were right. I saw nothing definitively scummy from him, but instead a rather neutral level of scumminess that still rose to the top (the top 5) by virtue of a lot of other people appearing townish.

In any case, I've updated my list significantly given new information. Here's a rough organization of my reads. I'm not sure I can justify every single one of them.

Probably pro-town: Chamber, Sotty, StD, inhim, PJ, Yos
Slight pro-town read: MBL, KK, GC, VitR, Glork
Not sure: CTD, DGB
Slight scum: UT, undo, CES, BooKitty
Leaning scum: ABR, porochaz

BooKitty was "leaning scum" (again, still mostly suspicion inherited from Seol) until Day 2, where I agree that her revelation about the role-blocking crumb. I agree with PJ that this explanation has some holes in it, though it's an awfully convoluted ploy for a scum to hope to play for some advantage. So slight town bump there.

I'm not sure what to make of DGB -- I think I might actually feel completely the opposite of Glork, that with the seeming inevitability of LML's lynch, DGB might have thought to distance herself from a LML scumflip by doing something so blatantly pro-LML to cause Glork's reaction. Of course, this argument is dripping with WIFOM, but to me it's enough to mitigate any pro-town boost I initially gave her from being so blatantly pro-LML right before the lynch in the first place. I had her as pretty pro-town yesterday...today, not as much.

ABR is probably a pretty controversial element of my list. But here's where I found going through Day 1 with LML-scum knowledge very interesting. I could totally envision a scum ABR making all of his posts with the idea that he'd get on the LML wagon fast and hard enough to give him some credibility later if LML ever got lynched, but never push hard enough to ensure that the lynch happened. The meta he employs makes this very doable -- he can be on an LML wagon and be very insistent about it without anyone taking him seriously, because he contributes essentially nothing in terms of an argument. And then he was quite happy to abandon that wagon in favor of greener pastures that don't get his scumbuddy LML lynched. His waffling between ABR and LML looks, retroactively, like someone who wants to appear anti-LML, but would really prefer to lynch someone else. After his first exodus from the LMLmobile, he gets back on (seemingly reluctabtly) only after prodding by VitR. My only real concern about this argument are the two times where ABR actually does defend LML's posting (posts 309 and 454), which seems slightly off. Nonetheless, reading day 1 with an ABR-LML pairing in mind felt like a very natural fit.

Porochaz hasn't posted enough to get a solid read, but he, like LML, has done nothing to me that seems pro-town. I'm a little surprised by his absence on other people's scumlists -- perhaps there's an argument I was forgetting? In fact, I even found his drunk post a little scummy, though I can't seem to be able to articulate why.

[mathcam]

-> a.) Can we see some of your "little +1s and -1s" (i.e., your notes). I question whether they really exist.

Now

that's

patronizing. Would me now posting a series of "Player X, +1, Player Y, -1" really alleviate your concerns that these things existed at the time I posted it? How would you know I didn't just add these retroactively? In any case, what's your suspicion? That I entered a 22-page game and took no notes on the game at all? I also think I made it clear that the process of +1/-1 was an oversimplification of my actual notes structure. But lest I be accused of being obstructionist, here's my list:

Tigris -1
Glork +1
VitaminR -1
GC +1
ABR -1
Tigris +1
Yos2 +1 (comes in, votes, and leaves)
Seol -1
UT +1
PJ +1
CES -2
CTD +1
Glork +2
chamber +1
undo -1
Yos +1
ABR +1
Shanba +1
LML -1
STD +1
LML +1
ABR +1
Chamber +1
DGB +1
Zorblag +1
Yos +1
DGB +1
STD +1
Boo +1

I have no doubt that someone who cared enough could find an inconsistency between the aggregate numbers and how I voted yesterday -- let me emphasize again that I don't have a numerical scumminess formula, or anything of the sort, and that these are just emotional assignments that came to me as I read.

I withdraw the "patronizing" remark with regard to the second question -- I forgot that that was in reference to something I said. The initial argument I suspect I was referencing was Yos's from post 108. On first read, this was compelling, as it was one of the few arguments that early in the game that actually had an argument to back it up (that is, a specific and not implausible scenario constructed in which VitaminR could be scum and which explained an action that Yos found dubious) . On my most recent reread, I came down on the other side, thinking there were too many jumps for the argument to be entirely plausible. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good argument, just that I don't find it compelling enough to put too man -1's in Vit's column because of it.

[mathcam]

I meant to add one more comment about my scum assignments from two posts ago, particularly relevant given the current discussion. One of the reasons I have UT as slightly scummy is because of LML's "attack" on him. At the time, LML was not a definitive lynch for the day, but was looking increasingly likely -- enough so that LML was probably thinking about how to best exit. His argument against UT was essentially nonsense, and may have simply been an attempt to distance UT from himself, especially given how short-lived his vote was there. I don't think this quite fits the mold of bussing that the current discussion is on, but I found it noteworthy.

ABR: I don't think I understand how my post solidifies my scumminess for you. Could you elaborate? Or is it entirely OMGUS?

[mathcam]

Sorry for the triple post -- I see that I still missed a point of PJ.

I also do not like the fact that you answered Yosarian2's question of who you would pursue of Bookitty flips Town with "if Bookitty flips scum, VitaminR will be a point of interest." You didn't answer the question at all.

I did not have an answer, so I answered a closely related question which I thought might be informative. I don't really see how you can find this as deceptive. Clarification: when you say "You don't like" something, do you mean that you find it scummy, or that you find it disagreeable? Or is there a difference for you?

[mathcam]

Could you possibly make cases in the normal way, rather than using some arbitrary method that I suspect only makes sense to you? Right now, it looks like you're moving people around randomly with +1s and -1s but you don't connect those to any specific events. If you're awarding me a shiny gold star, I want to know what I'm getting it for. I'm not just talking about the long series of numbers recently posted; I'm talking about the lack of reason given for most of your reads so far.

I think Glork basically covered this, but this is exactly why posting my +1/-1 list was a bad idea. In fact, I think a

FOS: PJ

is merited for this. This reminds me of the day one ploy where he repeatedly pestered VitR to post his list of "weak" players, cognizant of the fact that this would bring him grief/controversy.

In any case, I think I

have

made cases in the normal way, though I grant you a typo in my ABR paragraph (though calling it "confused reasoning" seems particularly uncharitable). I don't

have

cases to make against everyone I find scummy, but I present the ones I have. I present the arguments not because I'm sure they're airtight or infallible, or to demand (like some other players in the game) that others follow them, but because I want to share my thoughts and have others provide feedback or constructive criticism. If no one in the end finds them compelling, then we decide to in a different direction -- no biggie. I've never understood this perspective that the mark of a good townie is someone who can succeed in picking a target and getting them lynched regardless of the surrounding context.

Rest assured that if ABR was scum, he wouldn't half-ass bus LML. He'd be all in.

I'm afraid that even if it doesn't necessarily make you scum, your unwavering-but-faulty predictions on Day 1 have lost you the ability to "rest assured" me about any of your reads.

[mathcam]

CES: PJ's the one who demanded that I posted it. BooKitty had a somewhat natural reaction to it (at least, if it were presented as an argument of anything, instead of a contextless barfing of data). The point of my FOS was that PJ has now twice demanded people post things that will inevitably bring negative attention toward them. Pretty nice ploy.

[mathcam]

No, for insisting on the +1/-1 list. I'm happy to answer any questions I am capable of about my opinions using normal modes of communication. My notes are not always written in a fashion that is appropriate for public consumption, but PJ explicitly requested to see it in that form because he didn't think it existed.

[mathcam]

Here is another point I thought was interesting re VitaminR:

I think anyone who is looking to create a correlation between me and VitR is acting certainly scummy and may very well be trying to domino lynches. Although he's attacking me, I currently have a pro-town read on VitR. Knowing my alignment, I believe that anyone who is trying to say "they can't have the same alignment" are not only pushing for a lynch of me today, but will also be pushing for a lynch of VitR after I flip blue.

At this point, LML was pretty solidly leading in the plausible-lynch department, and was quite possibly posting with his inevitable scum-reveal in mind. I'm trying to get into LML's head to see what he was trying to do here, but haven't come to any definitive conclusions. Anyone else want to take a stab?

[mathcam]

No, for insisting on the +1/-1 list. I'm happy to answer any questions I am capable of about my opinions using normal modes of communication. My notes are not always written in a fashion that is appropriate for public consumption, but PJ explicitly requested to see it in that form because he didn't think it existed.

I still think that's an entirely reasonable request from someone who is trying to figure out your alignment.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. We're

all

trying to figure out everyone's alignment. I think of your personal notes as available to me only to the extent that you use them to make and communicate your suspicions. How you collect, format, and process your notes seems to me to be entirely your business.

[mathcam]

PJ: Do you intend to answer questions, or only ask them?

While I'm here, can you give me some insight as to how long this might go on? Should I post my whole note sheet? Will you then hold me accountable for everything I wrote there? For discrepancies between things I thought when I wrote the note and things I later thought when I wrote certain posts? Why haven't you asked for anyone else's notes?

Anyhow, back to answering questions.

1) Pre my entry into the game, probably. Some times I get distracted when taking notes, and forget to write down both the quote I'm referencing and a +1/-1.
2) I have no response that will satisfy you. Either I forgot that I marked a +1, or it was a typo, or I'm lying scum.
3) At least twice she made "X is town" statements that I agreed with, often simultaneous with me thinking them.

This is vaguely familiar but can you explain the reasoning behind this? I'm not on this list and yet earlier you said I was protown so I'm a little confused.

Explain the reasoning behind what? Note that this covered only the first 22 pages -- reads may have evolved since then.

I would also like you to detail your in him read

To be honest, it was Nat's completely banworthy exit post. Maybe scum's a boring role to him, but I was guessing not.

[mathcam]

Seriously, DGB? Now you're taking a ridiculous stab at identifying a cop

and

outing said cop at the same time?

[mathcam]

Also...

your +1/-1 system

For Pete's sake, it's not "my system"! I don't know where it got stuck in your head that this was my method for identifying scum. Is it because I have "math" in my username that you assume I have a mathematical formula in some spreadsheet somewhere? It's just a thing I do, in a completely separate column from the rest of my notes, that lets me record the fact that I occasionally have gut responses to posts that I can't articulate any better than that.

[mathcam]

How on earth did you read that from what I wrote?

Here's what I'm saying appears to have been your thought process: You thought you found a cop with a guilty investigation, and instead of going back and trying to make an argument against that guilty person, you decide that the best plan of action would be to out your perceived cop. How does that even resemble a sensible plan of action?

[mathcam]

DGB: Are you drunk? (Not like, Porochaz drunk, but a couple-of-glasses-of-wine-after-dinner drunk?)

As to your last point, except possibly for ABR, whose play could be effectively replaced by a bot, I would've thought it was crazy to think that anyone was not taking notes. As a bit of a meta, hammering on people who explicitly reference making notes encourages (a) lack of note-taking, and (b) play like ABR and DGB. It is still shocking to me the extent to which the town allows them get away with their level of participation because "it's their meta." And again, "such detailed notes"? Where are you getting this? I've seen at least three major note purges in posts here that far outstrip the level of detail in my notes.

PJ, here's my frustration. There are absolutely discrepancies between my notes for myself and my public posts, because my opinions are fluid and evolving and past notes are completely static. I might jot something down as I'm reading the thread, and then ten posts later when someone clarifies that original post, I don't necessarily go back and change it. So I as a human being can have a conversation about why I find a particular person scummy or not, but a person just looking at my notes might get a completely different impression. For you to force yourself into an inside look at my notes and then come out with a "Gotcha!" moment (one of many I can assure you you could find if I did post my entire notesheet) feels opportunistic. The questions I asked you in the last post were not as flippant as they might have come across, and relate to the question you skipped before about what it means for you to "not like" something. Presumably it means you find something scummy (or at least detect the potential for scumminess), but it doesn't feel like any of your questions toward me have been working towards any implication of scumminess, only to nitpick and force me to jump through hoops for your satisfaction (I'm sure you see it differently, but therein lies the point -- do share!). Would it

even

be that scummy if your initial suspicion was true, that I had lied about physically having a list of +1/-1's, and was using it only as a metaphor for how I kept track of my positions?

Yos: Do you keep notes on the game?

[mathcam]

Sorry, that drunk comment was flippant and rude. I apologize.

[mathcam]

PJ -- thanks for the elaboration. I still find myself surprised that so much credence is put to literally interpreting the phrase "checking my notes." While I do maintain a notesheet, and frequently reference it, I also often use that phrase to reference my accumulated feelings gathered thus far in the game. I will endeavor to do that less in the future. As to carelessness, they did give me this title for a reason...

Actually, there IS a way. "no one can have a guilty on me, I am town."

That does not suitably convey how ludicrous it was that you thought you would reveal your cop suspicion.

You have yet to respond to why you thought this would be a good idea.

[mathcam]

@Mathcam, you've said you screwed up the timing near-deadline and didn't post to help us get a lynch. I can't tell from your post--if CTD hadn't voted, would your visit to the site Wednesday have been in time to place the lynching vote? Why did you avoid posting in the 48 hours leading up to deadline?

No, I wouldn't have been in time to place the lynching vote, but certainly would have. DGB preferring a no-lynch to lynching LML was completely nuts, regardless of her alignment. I didn't avoid posting -- I just happened upon an inopportune time to get otherwise busy.

I haven't quite grokked the recent discussion on Glork, but I'll go back and reread.

PJ's last post on ABR was pretty solid. Any more comments on my speculation against him? I know a couple of people seemed to suggest that unless it was a 100% all-out attack on LML, it would not have been ABR bussing. I'm pretty reluctant to try to dissect ABR's meta, but would be curious to further opinions.

[mathcam]

No, I wouldn't have been in time to place the lynching vote, but certainly would have.

In case this reads unclear, I mean that I wouldn't have been in time to place the lynching vote, but I certainly would have placed the lynching vote had I been there on time.

No, I don't really do that anymore. These days I pretty much just respond to stuff directly in thread, comment on town-tells and scum-tells I see as soon as I notice them, ect.

Okay. Man, I'm out of touch. Last I remember, it was just a given that everyone would be maintaining their own logs of important events.

How is "taking a ridiculous stab at identifying a cop" different from "outing said cop"?

I meant identifying a cop as in a note-to-self to give their opinions extra weight -- how she got this read on ABR I haven't the foggiest (but yet again is an example of how letting ABR get away with his meta benefits him to the occasional expense of others). On the other hand,

outing

the cop is publicly posting this suspicion. I find both of the steps of DGB's process in this instance to be pretty indefensible.

I really can't decide between ABR and DGB -- I find aspects of both of their play mysterious, and yet both present this nagging doubt that they wouldn't have played this way had they been scum. Too bad we can't lynch both.

[mathcam]

- So you're going to need to set aside the fact that their playstyle just doesn't fit well with you because it's "mysterious." I grant you that it may make it more difficult to determine their alignment, but it is not alignment indicative when this is just how they play (and indeed it's not an unpopular playstyle these days from my limited experience with recent games).

I agree! In fact, what I find happening is that when I make arguments of the form "X is doing this, which I think is scummy," I get the response "No, X always does that" or "No, X would do this if he were scum." Since I don't know/understand their metas well enough to make informed decisions as to whether or not these opinions are valid, I explicitly solicit feedback (and I thank you for yours).

In re: ABR more specifically, the only part of your ABR suspicions that have struck me as worthwhile is back in Post 1011, when you state your suspicions about ABR's seeming half-hearted pro-LML-lynch stance.

Indeed, this is the only part that actually has an argument behind it, and was what I was referencing. Here's where I suspected ABR of bussing, but no less authoritative a source than DGB "assured" me that a bussing ABR would be much more aggressive.

[mathcam]

Anyone have a quick reference to a game where DGB was lynched as town? I'd like to compare exit strategies.

Vote: Albert B. Rampage

[mathcam]

Hm. That does not seem an unreasonable argument.

[mathcam]

I really can't decide between ABR and DGB -- I find aspects of both of their play mysterious, and yet both present this nagging doubt that they wouldn't have played this way had they been scum.

Too bad we can't lynch both.

I understand you said this in response to GC comments on the DGB/ABR situation, but your conclusion doesn't necessarily seem to follow from your presented facts. Is there a reason you seem to be narrowing down your choices to ABR and DGB, or are you more open to other options than you make it sound?

I feel like I actually have very few presented facts. DGB has skyrocketed in scumminess today, and ABR I had as leaning scum coming in to the day. They both have done demonstrably anti-town things today, whereas my other suspicions just have occasional things that set off my scumometer. I guess I wouldn't say that I'm not open to other lynches, but I am feeling good about lynching DGB/ABR at the moment.

Yet you seem to have sniffed the same powerful stench off Seol, and you've both backed off Bookitty to the same extent. Can you please explain why you suspect CES? Are Seol's posts still really the primary driver of your Bookitty suspicions?

I don't remember about CES -- I haven't thought about him in a while. I can dig through things and catch up if you really have a strong desire. And yes to your second question -- I've been accused of OMGUS for this, but I really did find suspect Seol's attack on MafiaSSK for his clearly crazy theories. I've had some slight BooKitty-town reads since then, but I definitely felt her resignedness at the end of day 1 could've been faked, and someone (glork) may have had a point about her reaction to the +1/-1 list today.

[mathcam]

Phase 1 and 2 of a classic DGB-scum meltdown in one post.

Does your use of the word "classic" imply you have something specific in mind?

[mathcam]

I see where you're coming from, but hey she already claimed, let's just take this bandwagon to its logical conclusion.

This feels off.

I agree. There's something very off-feeling about the way ABR jumped from me to DGB. He attributes this to rage at being turned against, but I think it's bald opportunism.

@Mathcam: Why did you post your plus and minus numbers in the way that you did? Did you think it would be helpful to PJ in some way? What was your motivation for doing so in that way?

I did so at PJ's request, against my better judgment. There are several pages of discussion about this matter.

Also, this DGB wagon is real easy

To be fair, there are reasons it's so easy. If we were bandwagoning DGB yesterday because of her unique playstyle, I would've agreed it was a suspiciously easy bandwagon. At the moment, however, her play is riddled with anti-town behavior.

[mathcam]

Posting the naked numbers without an explanation is useless. I think you know that. So I'm asking why you didn't just say, "I don't keep that kind of detailed notes," rather than posting something you ought to have known would be useless or nearly so.

Just because PJ asked you to is not an adequate explanation of why you'd go against your better judgment to post that. I thought you were irritated with him and did it somewhat out of spite, which I could see as a townie response. Your later postings, though, seem to indicate that isn't the case.

No, it wasn't spite, but there was a certain amount of exasperatedness at what I perceived to be a ridiculous request. I thought it was clear that this was not a detailed list of suspicions, but only a small part of my note-taking. PJ apparently believed that these were the entirety of my notes, or at least more substantive than they were. But the point was that

PJ did not believe they existed

, and my posting of them was intended to (to the extent possible) relieve him of that fear. They were certainly not intended to convince anyone of anything. I have made contributions to the discussion about my opinions, and in no way consider that list to be part of that contribution.

[mathcam]

I don't get all the undo hate at all. When I display posts by user: undo, I see a lot of contributions. And I lol'd at

I’m not going to apologize for my playstyle. If you find me difficult to read, try harder.

In general, I hate this "surface reading" argument as a scumtell. I don't think undo's doing it, and when people do, I attribute it more to laziness than scumminess.

[mathcam]

Can you give me a few examples of where he has contributed?

Just look at his posts. His third post of the game was a contribution. I don't know what you're expecting. If you're really serious about this, maybe you could do a comparison of how much you've contributed to how much he has.

I'm not particularly pro-undo, but I'm definitely anti-this-argument.

[mathcam]

Still fine with either DGB or ABR lynch, still leaning ABR. That said, I have to admit a mercy kill for DGB has some merit, and it seems wasteful to have someone replace in, get caught up, only to be on the verge of being lynched with no plausible escape route.

[mathcam]

1) I agree with the alarm at the speed at which this undo wagon arose. I agree with Yos's diagnosis that this is representative of some latent undo-scum-feelings that have surfaced because of the opportunity, but it is precisely this potential opportunism that gives me pause. I myself don't find the arguments against undo particularly compelling -- in my mind, these consist of (1) suspicion of his data dump, which I find to be not-unhelpful (and not a claimed substitute for actual scum hinting), and (2) his absence of significant comment on the LML-wagon. The latter has some merit, but not enough to switch my vote.

I feel like many of the same people would have voted for Sotty had the opportunity arose...just general suspicion of people they don't feel like they have a great read on. While I can somewhat sympathize with this behavior, I think it only has merit when there aren't genuinely suspicious players around (which I feel we have).

2)

Nothing in this post definitively implies you think she (DGB) might be scum. Do you think that's a possibility?

Absolutely. I'm the first admit that I find her play style essentially unreadable, but I think she has done so many anti-town things recently (stance on LML, outing her perceived cop, the debate with ABR) to make her lynchworthy completely independent of any reads.

3) I think GC comes out a little ahead in the GC vs. glork debate, but this seems so far from relevant at the moment that it's not worth digging to deeply into. We can revisit later if need be.

4) Found an interesting quote:

Bookitty isn't scum.

A little suspicious -- uncharacteristically declarative for GC, I think. How do you know? (I realize that there was a lot of context in that post before that quote, but I'll let you make that case instead of me).

But most importantly:

5) I still think ABR is the best candidate. I think he was bussing LML, and got off the wagon any time he thought there was an opportunity to put focus elsewhere. (Note: I'm not attaching this to the argument that LML slipped when he said bussing -- that's irrelevant as far as I'm concerned). I think ABR's slip in 1144 was a genuine scum slip, since as PJ eloquently points out in 1166, the sentence doesn't even make sense if we switch the name out for the correct one (KK -- I don't understand why you don't find that argument convincing). Finally, I think his interactions with DGB today are absurdly anti-town. For example he did seem genuinely convinced I was scum, but then chose to vote DGB out of claimed spite? I find it much more likely he was taking advantage of the "easy target".

[mathcam]

Har har! I think if you read the posts today involving sotty, you'll find this less of a jump than I do.

In other news, 59 posts in this game, and not once have you even mentioned sotty. Interesting.

[mathcam]

Ooh, someone's pretty defensive. Interesting.

[mathcam]

[quote"MBL"]@cam, I understand that you think the cases presented on undo are thin. What's your personal analysis of his play?[/quote]

Not much. I have a general "I don't have a read on him, so lean scummy" opinion, and haven't mentioned him in my notes much. I haven't done a full ISO to gather opinions, but I feel like I already have sufficient targets today, and if someone wants to sway my vote elsewhere, I'm happy to listen to arguments. I just don't think the argument is there yet.

Pretty sure I wrote that, not inhim.

Have you made this stance known at any point in day 2?

Oops, sorry. I kind of mix you two up sometimes -- I think I might have even wrote that in the way-old thread about scammers you always mistake for other scammers.

And...maybe? I think it's gatherable from my interactions with DGB today (and I would have thought relatively obvious at all).

How likely do you think a DGB-ABR pairing is?

Not.

Did you control f? We had a little back and forth early in the game about VitR. Post 145 though 149. Also, what's so interesting about it?

Yup. I don't understand the last question -- how

isn't

notable when one player hasn't mentioned another for the whole game? I agree this is somewhat mitigated by conversations with you that didn't involve him writing your name.

[mathcam]

Chamber: What's the preferred method these days? I don't actually find it that bad.

StD: An excellent series of observations. I think this is highly reflective of my own opinions on DGB, which have oscillated at least as much in my head as they have in my public posts. There have been times where I've thought she was town making really really bad decisions, and times where I've felt less charitable. My current equilibrium seems to be that if I can't form a read on her based on her posting style (and I can't), I have to evaluate her scumminess directly based on those actions. Since I deem many of them to be anti-town, she goes near the top of my lynch list.

undo: Eh, it was a pretty mild FOS. I indeed felt you were twisting my words, but in the grand scheme of things, that's a pretty minor offense.

GC: I think my two next scum would be UntroTripod (see post 1181, and also his recent crazy-defensiveness on the previous page) and porochaz (though no good arguments come to mind as to why).

Sotty: Agreed, "interesting" was noncommittal. UT made a point about not being likely to vote you (if not undo), and that prompted me to look quickly through his posts about you. I found it interesting, but no, probably not scummy. That said, his follow up in which he took that as an attack I do very much find scummy.

[mathcam]

Gotta say, I got kind of a pro-town vibe from DGB's big post up there.

Glork's looking slightly more appealing.

So if I don't want to vote Poro, PJ or STD today, and if a bunch of us have this nagging feeling that undo could just as easily be stubborn, dumbass town as stubborn dumbass scum, what's the play?

Ummm, ABR? Seriously, though, why is my argument here being completely ignored?

[mathcam]

it really feels like he's making an effort not to play.

Really? I feel like I've been one of the most active players today, and with reasonably content-filled posts. I think I'm more willing than most to say "I don't have a read on suchandsuch," but I wouldn't call that not playing. *shrug*

There is no point lynching Glork, unless he hasn't been NK'd by his game expiration date.

Can someone explain this?

[mathcam]

PJ: Why on earth did you claim so pre-emptively? I know there was a little momentum there, but only from people who will seemingly vote for anything that moves. There were at least a few of us who were pretty sold on your townliness. I'm with you on speeding up the game, but that seemed pretty drastic.

GC: Okay -- I don't think the point's worth discussing. But that was my only point

in that post

against ABR, and I disagree that it has anything to do with my distaste at his playstyle. Here is my most recent full argument:

5) I still think ABR is the best candidate. I think he was bussing LML, and got off the wagon any time he thought there was an opportunity to put focus elsewhere. (Note: I'm not attaching this to the argument that LML slipped when he said bussing -- that's irrelevant as far as I'm concerned). I think ABR's slip in 1144 was a genuine scum slip, since as PJ eloquently points out in 1166, the sentence doesn't even make sense if we switch the name out for the correct one (KK -- I don't understand why you don't find that argument convincing). Finally, I think his interactions with DGB today are absurdly anti-town. For example he did seem genuinely convinced I was scum, but then chose to vote DGB out of claimed spite? I find it much more likely he was taking advantage of the "easy target".

I still think ABR is the best lynch, and despite my slightly pro-town vibe from DGB's long analysis (I do tend to have a soft spot for people who appear to try hard), I think she's still second best. I think UT has quickly elevated into second, for being over-defensive when I suggested he might eagerly hop onto any ol' bandwaggon, but then eagerly hopping onto PJ (imo, a pretty silly bandwagon). I am fine with any of those lynches, but still think ABR is the best.

[mathcam]

@mathcam: (shrug) I said "unobtrusive," not "wildly scummy," so it slots you in the "I don't know pile." Play however you want, it wasn't meant as a criticism, just my observation/reaction.

Sure, that's how I took it. No worries.

I can see how you could come away with what you did before that explanation, but his explanation makes it clear that his language conflated the LML-wagon with the bookitty-wagon which explains his convoluted sentence without there being two independent mistakes (mathcam suspicion relates to bookitty-wagon, CTD suspicion/the "bus" comment relates to the LML-wagon).

a) It's notable that

you

offered this conflation defense, not him. He just said he was tired and messed up. In any case, there's no arguing that he made a mistake, and to me it's semantics and/or irrelevant whether or not we count it as one mistake or two. The question is whether or not the gap between what he meant to say and what he actually said reveals something about ABR's status in the game. So my take on this is that...

b) It seems plausible to me that it's easier to get confused about arguments about who was bussing who or not when you're scum -- you forget who you're pretending was being bussed by someone who you're pretending you think is scum (or something like that). Also, that's a lot of conflating -- the LML and BooKitty topics were pretty dominant pieces of conversation at the time, and pretty different in nature. The difference in anti-mathcam argument "mathcam was bussing LML" and the anti-mathcam argument "mathcam is the scummiest on the BooKitty wagon" seems enormous to me.

I

think he was opportunistically taking advantage of the "LML slipped when he said bussing" argument to make an attack on me, an attack which no longer makes any sense when he shifts to the BooKitty wagon.

c) If that actually had been his initial intent, why would he even bother bringing up the BooKitty wagon? Why would the scummiest person on that be his top choice? Why not just "mathcam is scummiest." Or does he know BooKitty is town, and so being on her wagon is indicative of guilt? Hell, why did he even bother justifying his vote on me in response to MBL's question? He's never felt the need to justify his position before -- why do so now? Because LML's bussing "slip" was trendy enough that he thought it would get traction?

Are you serious? PJ and Undo had become the top compromise lynches and we have about four days give or take to find a lynch. If PJ got the votes off him it was likely Undo would be next. The focus needed to be shifted.

We've seen the speed with which wagons have been rising and falling recently. In my eyes, the undo wagon had stalled, with several people coming to his defence (or at least expressing their ambivalence) and PJ's, while gaining momentum, wasn't near the critical mass needed to merit a roleclaim.

Yos: I think you've made most of those points in that post before, and I feel like I've responded to the best of my ability. Of course, this is a fine state of affairs -- I don't think you were asking me to respond to anything, but if you were, I'd be happy to try to elaborate.

Overall, though, mathcam is posting a lot of stuff but I just don't see a lot of pro-town motivation here.

You and GC both! I'm not sure I have much in the way of a defense here, though I'd argue that it's heavily in scum's favor to vote for anyone but themselves. I think I've been pretty reserved with my vote. Pro-town motivation doesn't necessitate trying to cobble together arguments against people you're not sure about ("scum-hunting"). It can be as simple as finding the one person you think is scum, and trying to push that argument to it's logical conclusion. Of course, there's lots of WIFOM going on here (I could be scum trying not to ruffle any feathers), but I'd like you to ask yourself if there's anything that's genuinely advantageous to scum-Cam about the way I've played today.

---

In any case: Okay, I get it. I'm ready to give up on an ABR lynch, though I'm still baffled that this hasn't gotten any traction, relative to the essentially-nonexistent arguments against undo and PJ, which took up firestorms of votes almost instantaneously. The one recent argument that's held traction with me is Glork's recent trend of metaing himself. I think it's especially tempting as scum to make emphatic statements of the form "If I

were

scum, I'd have acted like ... " (and yes, I'm aware there's a mild form of such a sentence just a paragraph above), and Glork's 71, 72, 74 are souped up versions of this. In fact, 74 even gives me the vibe that was

exactly

what he was doing, intentionally setting himself up to be scummy and use that defense, and was angry that people weren't buying it. Still, UT's recent actions have placed him higher up, so...

Unvote: ABR, Vote: UT.

In fact, as a bonus point, LML/UT/ABR as a scumteam does not strike me as particularly unbelievable, either, and UT was on and off that LML-wagon even more than ABR was.

[mathcam]

You don't seem to be trying very hard to either figure out anyone's alignment or to lynch anyone.

I feel like I'm getting attacked a lot for my playstyle for a game in which every other player's idiosyncrasies are swept under the run for "being their meta." I try very hard to figure out everyone's alignment -- good or bad, I'm just not as successful as most others in believing I have done so. I don't typically push that hard for my lynches, but I listen when other people make their cases, and evaluate whether or not I think that case has merit. I've made points again UT and glork in just my last couple of posts, and I've pushed ABR today as hard as I remember pushing anyone, and it's gotten absolutely zero traction. Part of this is because he refuses to even acknowledge a case is being made against him, and part of the reason for

that

is because no one expects him to. He has literally the most brilliant meta I've ever seen anyone concoct. So when you accuse me of not pushing that wagon hard, or that I don't case who gets lynched because I've gone so many posts without pushing my wagon (which is in itself unfair -- I try to contribute to

other

discussions as well), this is largely because there's nothing more I can push without someone backing me up to put pressure on ABR, or a response from ABR himself. One man does not a wagon make.

Look, I don't know ABR is scum, but I've laid my case out, and I think it's actually pretty good, and I'll be proud of it if ABR scum wins and gloats relentlessly in the postgame. But if you don't buy it, you don't buy it. If you have questions about it, like GC did, then send 'em over. But to completely ignore the argument, to spend more time attacking me for a lack of arguments than actually addressing my existing arguments, seems downright unkind.

And here's my post on UT. If you really feel the need to point out how weak it is (as UT does in his, what, 7th wagon of the day?), go for it. But it's as good as half of the other arguments that have attracted 4 or 5 votes on people today, and that's the reason I'm voting him.

I think UT has quickly elevated into second, for being over-defensive when I suggested he might eagerly hop onto any ol' bandwaggon, but then eagerly hopping onto PJ (imo, a pretty silly bandwagon).

As the deadline gets closer, I'll probably switch to glork out of self-preservation, but at the moment he's trailing in my suspicion list behind ABR, UT, and possibly DGB.

[mathcam]

I guess I can chuck this onto my argument, which was in the post Yos quoted:

and UT was on and off that LML-wagon even more than ABR was.

ABR: Okay, fair enough. I apologize -- I did not mean gloating too derogatorily, but agree I could have been kinder in my word choice. I meant that after a deserved scum win, you get some rights to self-congratulation. And those who argued against you deserve a smaller but non-zero amount of self-congratulation as well. My point was just that I'll be there to claim mine if so!

[mathcam]

I was reading the other game, too, and I don't disagree his general demeanor was different there. I don't think this is enough to change my opinion on him (I also don't put it him completely past him to pretend to take offense to give an excuse to post a link to that game -- that too struck me as uncharacteristic), but it's a non-trivial point in his favor. Also notable is that they made it through 8 days in 68 pages.

[mathcam]

In the name of self-interest,

Unvote, Vote: Glork.

[mathcam]

Do

you

have any questions for me, DGB?

[mathcam]

MBL:

Probably pro-town

: Chamber, Sotty, StD, inhim,

PJ

, Yos
Slight pro-town read: MBL, KK, GC, VitR, Glork
Not sure: CTD, DGB
Slight scum: UT, undo, CES, BooKitty
Leaning scum: ABR, porochaz

The FOS was, in hindsight, more annoyance than determined scumminess (though I still think a little of the latter was there as well). But in any case, the read on PJ is based on his interaction with LML on Day 1. I just had a hard time seeing that from a scum PJ perspective.

If you were truly sold, did you consider lobbying against the wagon?

The entirety of the wagon sprung up and died, thanks to the role claim, between two of my visits to the thread. I most certainly would have spoken against the wagon had I been here. I suspect Yos would have as well. Hence the slight frustration that the role claim happened so quickly.

Kudos to ABR for a very solid post.

[mathcam]

What did you think about my earlier theory about Nat's exit post indicating that it was probably a ("boring") town slot?

[mathcam]

I feel overwhelmed by the large number of arguments against a large number of disparate targets, and I don't think I have the time or energy to go through each one to suss it all out. Apologies for the apathy.

Currently, my not-necessarily-logically-justified stance is that I'd be
Fine lynching: UT, Glork, MBL, VitR, DGB. CES
Meh lynching: Chamber, porochaz, CTD, GC, Boo, ABR(!)
Not happy lynching: Spyrex, sotty, yos, PJ, undo, Yos, mathcam, KK

[mathcam]

Which is a little sad for cam if he's town, because he's one of only five people who's voted neither PJ nor undo.

Yeah, well. At least they're both voting glork at the moment. I really think Glork is a better choice for today (though not as good as UT), and not just because of self-preseveration (see earlier post on his perpetually off-feeling self-metaing).

There's still time to make that wagon happen instead of me. Just saying' -- don't give up hope, y'alls.

And while I'm scrambling to think of something helpful to say, just a reminder about this, BooKitty:

Mathcam is not scum. We need a lynch soon. His point about protecting the powerroles is right on too.

[mathcam]

Also, while I think of it, did Untrod Tripod's Post 1677 influence your read on him at all, mathcam?

Not really -- my memory is that that's pretty standard UT fare -- entertaining and true, but not quite the genuine catharsis that would indicate town to me. To be fair, though, I haven't really re-evaluated my stance on him, given that he seemed very unlikely to be the lynch for the day.

I'm a vanilla townie.

Not sure I'l be around in the morning, so... Go team glorkwagon! Barring that, it was nice playing with all of you again.

[mathcam]

Just for you, UT, I won't role claim any more. Not even once.

[mathcam]

10 hours for a full-fledged bandwagon-shift, PJ? Eek.

But I think it's fighting the good fight, so

Unvote: Glork, Vote: DGB.

[mathcam]

Posting from phone in gas station WiFi. Formatting vet hard. PleAs accept this as an official vote

UNVOTE VOTE GLORK

[mathcam]

Got it

invite, vote: glork

Ebwop oh bookitty...so contrarian...

[mathcam]

Yeah, forgot to add in my hammer vote.

I don't think DGB is a horrible choice, but I'm feeling a little gun-shy about my reads given that Glork and UT were both town.

GC: A vig on UT is probably the most likely explanation by far, right? Or is a multiple-kill scum group a plausible option these days?

My goal for the early day today is to go through and look at people I haven't looked at much yet. For example, almost no one to date has said anything against Yos, and that makes me a little nervous.

[mathcam]

Isn't safe good for them? Both unclaimed and so potentially power roles, and not the obvious doc protects like masons or someone looking particularly townish.

[mathcam]

And both had no major wagons against them, which is desirable lest they eliminate the next day's likely target anyway (DGB, me, maybe a couple of others).

[mathcam]

Isn't safe good for them?

I wouldn't expect them to be making kills that are -bad- for them, so yes?

Right, so that's why I was confused that you thought these kills were odd. But your second sentence explains it better.

[mathcam]

I'm town, I thought Glork would flip town, who benefitted from the 3-way wagon, from my perspective? math cam.

Of course I benefitted. I didn't get lynched. Aren't our two situations here entirely symmetric here? Similarly, your scumputer-hunting has us in very similar positions, and I think you typically worse (though I haven't done any serious number-crunching on this front). I typically had 1 out of 5 votes being confirmed town at the end of the day, whereas you had two out of 6. At the peak of my wagon, I had 3 out of 7 of my votes coming from confirmed town -- again, looks like two out of 6. Or maybe I should [actually[/i] report it as 3 out of 6, a whopping 50% of your wagon coming from confirmed town votes. That's what the numbers read when I count myself as town, as one does when you subscribe to the

DGB school of ethics in statistical journalism.

But seriously -- the system is nonsense, or at least the data from the system is at the moment so random so as to preclude drawing conclusions. Glork was up there with town votes, and a single change in a vote from a townie one way to the other would have drastically affected the ratios. It's also at odds with the seemingly-prevalent idea that scum would at least in part be bussing each (probably a given) -- in a three way race, that would put the distribution of scum on each wagon in almost the same distribution as the town's.

I'm not sure what to say in response to the mathcam/BooKitty argument, except that it seems completely and totally absurd to me. I think a hardcore ABR/mathcam fake-fight-to-the-death scum partnership seems slightly more plausible. I think if you just thought about playing through the end of Day 1 with an LML/BooKitty/mathcam scum team in mind, almost nothing makes sense.

[mathcam]

@ CES, Bookitty, and Sotty7, if they are town and believe I am town, can have this point of view:
CES: ONE of Bookitty and Sotty is certainly scum.
Bookitty: ONE of CES and Sotty7 is certainly scum.
Sotty7: ONE of CES and Bookitty is certainly scum.

This is a very convoluted way of saying

"Certainly one of the people on the mathcam wagon is scum, and it's not me."

[mathcam]

You deliberately trying to distance yourselves so the connection doesn't fit to untrained eyes, is exactly what you intended. It's clear to me that you're scum.

It's a good thing the town has your trained eyes to see through the haze. But seriously, the end of day one featured me on a BooKitty bandwagon against the prevailing LML wagon. Just think for one second about what you're suggesting -- that as part of a scum team involving both LML and BooKitty, I decided to potentially derail my scumbuddy LML's wagon in favor of my scumbuddy BooKitty's wagon? To what end? It was clear that many more people found LML suspicious than BooKitty, so it would have been my advantage to have LML bite the dust instead of BooKitty.

I'll take a look at VitR, but in the absence of a deadline, I'm not going to be pressured to voting him just because of an implicit thread that I'm next in line behind him.

So far, pretty unimpressed with claims "definitely scum on BLAH wagon".

[mathcam]

I'm sorry, DGB, and I really don't mean this at all personally, but the scumputer still reads like total nonsense to me. If it's just an exercise in probability, then I think there's no merit whatsoever. When one person reveals to be town, that raises the random probability that every given person is scum by exactly the same amount, regardless of what wagons they were on. So knowing how many times who was on what wagon cannot possibly give information about their scumminess or townliness. So I assume there's some mafia-theoretic background that you're incorporating to make this not just about random distributions, then I think those assumptions need to be made explicit, because

that's

what your argument is really being based on. Are you

assuming

there is at least one scum on every wagon that lynches a town? On every wagon of at least 5-6 people? On just those wagons you deem suspicious? If so, those are assumptions that need to be justified, or at least stated, and

not

by probabilstic arguments (because these assumptions are being used to

deviate

from the random distribution of scum model -- if you say "By probability, it's very likely that there's scum on suchandsuch wagon, you can't then go back and reason with the random probability values for people on that wagon, since you've manipulated those values with your assumptions).

I have not sifted through all of your data (and to be honest don't really intend to), but I'm curious as to how I can be your preferred lynch of the day given that I seem to be almost perfectly average with regard to all of your scum metrics.

I still owe you guys an actual contribution to finding scum, instead of just dismissing/deflecting/absorbing attacks on me. I'm trying.

[mathcam]

I'm trrying to go back and ISO everyone. This is taking a long time (4 out of 14 or so done, and I'm going to have to stop this to do actual work for a while), but so far, I'm pretty down with a CES lynch.

12) Cogito Ergo Sum -- Not much on day one, though Yos makes some reasonable points here and there. He's pretty adamantly anti-BooKitty, to the point that he's defending LML at her expense. Posts 670 and 679 feel weird to the point of scumminess. Supsicious quote: "The LML wagon is play-style based but has some merit." I'm also interested in the start of his day 2 behavior, where he seems confused that I wouldn't be more anti-BooKitty...almost get a "Darn, was expecting some more fireworks here" feeling from him, as if he and the rest of the scum had planned over night that BooKitty vs. mathcam was going to be the big fight of the day. His buddying with chamber is really weird to me, defending him a couple of times and deferring his vote to chamber's on multiple occasions. I will be interested in thinking about chamber, porochaz, and BooKitty regardless of how CES flips.

(Brief summary of expressed opinions: Anti-Seol, "Scum team: Seol/ABR/Green Crayons/DrippingGoofball/Porochaz", then pro-Porochaz, ant-BooKitty for arguments against LML, pretty anti-BooKitty, LML wagon is playstyle-based but has some merit, votes undo weirdly, 1492: "I'll vote PJ if chamber does"?, switches to me on mason reveal, calls me a compromise deadline lynch, back to me on day 3 presumably still for being standoffish and univolved).

Vote: CES.

[mathcam]

That sounds exactly how I interpreted it, BooKitty. But this is exactly the point -- the argument you're making in the "scum distribution ratio" is evidence that scum's ideal scenario (as with so many other things) to have their ratio distributed so as to perfectly mimic the "town distribution ratio," making these ratios ideally indistinguishable. If scum are divided equally among any given subset, then of course larger wagons will on average have more scum, and smaller ones will have fewer. You need some extra input to the scumputer if you want to get out anything stronger than "scum is divided evenly."

And if I'm reading her last post correctly, that's exactly what DGB is doing -- she is forcing into her model the assumption that every wagon with 5 or more people has at least one scum on it. This obviously has the affect of raising everyone's scummitude on any such wagon by a little bit. DGB is just quantifying this raise in scumminess with numerical values. Now that I understand a little better, I don't think this it's nonsense, but I still don't think it's helpful. First of all, I'll eat my hat if every single 5-member wagon has a scum on it thus far has had a scum on it (full disclaimer: I don't actually wear a hat, so this is a bit empty). But then if you try to fix the model by taking into account that there's some small probability that a given 5-person wagon has no scum on it would completely undo all of the slight summiness-raises foisted in there from her assumption. But perhaps more importantly is that the metric is just so unstable with respect to small variations in who was around when, people's playstyle, etc. From what I can tell, UT would be near the top of the scumputer in every single game he played in, simply because he likes to vote, and so is likely to be on a lot of big bandwagons.

Are you my preferred lynch of the day? So far I voted STD, and SpyreX. Are you paranoid maybe a little?

Maybe a little, yes. I think I can be forgiven if in scrolling through your posts of the day you take into account the number of times my name appears in bold, or with the word "scum" oh-so-cleverly portmanteau'd into it, or passive-aggressive questions asking me to reveal my scum partners, etc., that I might have thought myself at the top of the list. I concede the point.

It really does look like you've made zero effort to understand what I'm doing and are only interested in shooting it down.

Really? I thought I was one of the few people to be responding to it seriously. I expressed extreme skepticism of its merits, because it was based on premises that I couldn't find written down before. Your and BooKitty's clarifications have helped me understand it better. I'm only interested in shooting it down if I think it deserved shooting down. That said, it's clear that regardless of your alignment you put a lot of time into it, and I apolgoize if the fact that I disagree that the methodology is sound made me come off as dismissive of your efforts.

[mathcam]

Sigh, I give up trying to understand, DGB. I asked you a question, you answered, and when I used your answer to explain what I found objectionable, you get mad that I'm trying not to understand it. At some point you have to accept that maybe it's the way you're explaining it. But I've now lost interest completely in trying to understand it, and consider it an anti-town distraction from real content.

Check your role PM maybe.

I think I've grown pretty desensitized to your passive-agressive barbs, but I'm intrigued that I can't even figure out what this one's even implying. That I'm scum but don't even recognize it, i.e., that your scumputer is so powerful it can detect scum not through the virtue of one's posts but by the content of their inbox? But wait, that doesn't make sense either, since if I'm reading the scumputer correctly (and who knows if that's even possible), your vote on me is flying directly in opposition to its output. It's almost as if you're saying that the scumputer results don't hold up to careful thought, and should take a back seat to more nuanced analysis -- but that can't be right, because that's what

I'm

arguing.

[mathcam]

What?

Agreed. I realize there was the sarcastic "You caught me" at the start of the post, but that sure seems out of place being mentioned again later.

Check your role PM maybe.

I think I've grown pretty desensitized to your passive-agressive barbs, but I'm intrigued that I can't even figure out what this one's even implying.

She's saying that you're not even looking for scum, and haven't been for most of the game. And then she made the sarcastic suggestion that if you do decide to look for scum, you might want to start with your own role PM.

Ah -- that went over my head.

I said yesterday that you haven't seemed to be doing much scumhunting, and you've done even less today.

Agreed, you've made your stance on this very clear.

[mathcam]

Ahhhh.

[mathcam]

I have a feeling I'm going to regret indulging you, Yos, but your comments have really started to gnaw away at me, and now it seems like you've got BooKitty picking up the torch. To be honest, I feel like I've done more scumhunting today than you have. For example, to the best of my knowledge, no one has made this argument against CES before:

I'm also interested in the start of his day 2 behavior, where he seems confused that I wouldn't be more anti-BooKitty...almost get a "Darn, was expecting some more fireworks here" feeling from him, as if he and the rest of the scum had planned over night that BooKitty vs. mathcam was going to be the big fight of the day.

I looked through your posts today, Yos, and haven't found any new arguments that you've made. Why doesn't that count? Is it not vitriolic enough? Or maybe that's not what you mean by scumhunting? Do you count posting suspicion lists as scumhunting? I could do that in every post from here until the end of the day if you'd like, but I didn't get the feeling that when I did that yesterday you were counting that as me scumhunting either. I think I also made novel points against ABR yesterday. I also think that my more typical process of furthering or disagreeing with other people's arguments is a pro-town thing to do, even if it falls shy of what you call scumhunting. And I think there's a few more like that. I'll grant that I didn't make a strong entrance into the game, but I think maybe you underestimate how difficult replacing in to this game was, and I think you formed an opinion of my play and have not updated it since. You may have even romanticized a little about what you could expect from me as a townie -- flattering, but apparently completely undeserved. In any case, I think all-told I'm nowhere near the bottom of the list in terms of pro-town content generated in this game, but I suppose I can imagine definitions of scumhunting according to which I have played sub-optimally. Could you explain your definition to me?

@Mathcam: Are you working on analysis and scumhunting? Do you have any reads at this point that you could share?

I

did

share a read already, and explained in that exact post that I was working on doing a full ISO of everyone. Can you really not wait until I'm ready to present the material myself? I'm on a different computer from my notes, but the only other thing I can remember at the moment is that I have no idea where all of the pro-porochaz love is coming from. He's not nearly as town in my book as some others have indicated. I also agree that StD is pretty strongly pro-town, and Yos as well. I still have some concerns about ABR, but with his renewed interest in contributing to the game, he's looking much more townly to me. DGB is DGB -- I have no reads at all, but she's made a series of anti-town plays and would certainly not be upset by her lynch. Aside from our masons, I think everyone else is still pending.

[mathcam]

This is a lot of words pretending to have no real opinion. Yet its clearly there.

What did DGB do that was "anti-town"?

I'm hardly pretending to have no opinions -- see number of times voted for DGB. That line meant that I have nothing I can get simply from "reads" of her. For example, I typically find cantankerous a slight scum tell, but I think DGB is like that regardless of her alignment. So I let her actions speak for themselves, and there's enough anti-town there to put her on my happy-to-lynch list. There's her defense of LML, her expressed preference for no-lynch on Day 1, there's her outing of a perceived cop on day 2, her repeated pattern of voting for the person who's annoying her the most, etc. And that's just what I could come up without actually trying to think about it too hard.

[mathcam]

So yes, I'm interested in your reads WITH REASONS. I didn't personally find doing ISOs helpful because context matters a lot in this game, but even that is preferable to reads without reasons that are essentially equivalent to gut.

I provide reasons when I have them, and don't when I don't. I think it's

better

to be honest about it, then to drum up an easy argument I don't actually believe is indicative of scum. For some reason that kind of nonsense gets a lot of credit in this thread for "contributing." And I think it's disingenuous for you to pick out posts where I've said I don't have reasons, and then imply that it's indicative of a trend, especially when you claim to have ISO'd my posts. What about my arguments against ABR? CES? UT? Glork? DGB? Do you

really

believe that your distinguishing town-mathcam from scum-mathcam rather than directly assaulting my playstyle?

[mathcam]

I still would like information on any meta that confirms mathcam's statement that this is how he generally plays.

You mean since you asked four hours ago? I notice that you didn't ask if this is how I generally play as scum -- this seems like pretty strong evidence to me that you really are just attacking my playstyle, and not evaluating whether or not it's indicative of scum.

What changed your mind on undo in the intervening time?

Nothing did -- I just didn't get the argument against him, which was attacking him for not contributing, when I saw no such lack of contributions. Apparently people measure contributions in different ways.

Can you point me to some posts in which you pushed your case on Glork, since you bring it up? How about UT?

Sure. In about 5 seconds of self-ISOing I found these.

Glork's recent trend of metaing himself: I think it's especially tempting as scum to make emphatic statements of the form "If I were scum, I'd have acted like ... " (and yes, I'm aware there's a mild form of such a sentence just a paragraph above), and Glork's 71, 72, 74 are souped up versions of this. In fact, 74 even gives me the vibe that was exactly what he was doing, intentionally setting himself up to be scummy and use that defense, and was angry that people weren't buying it.

I think UT has quickly elevated into second, for being over-defensive when I suggested he might eagerly hop onto any ol' bandwaggon, but then eagerly hopping onto PJ (imo, a pretty silly bandwagon)

Look, if you don't buy these as arguments, or as me scumhunting, there's nothing more we can talk about here -- I am literally unable to provide what you are asking for, and you can direct your vote accordingly. I typically don't make long empassioned pleas that suchandsuch is scum because I've connected all of these dots together and have an overwhelming pile of proof. I think most such piles are filled with garbage, especially when it comes to scum who know what they're doing, which I think we probably have a preponderance of in this game -- instead, you find scum by finding one little small thing that a player does that you can't convince yourself they would have done if they were town. If you have two or three of these, then that's fantastic, and that makes a case. If you only have one, you point it out in thread and see if it other people can add to it. So I find adding one little line to an existing argument to be a crucial part of the game, and one which I'm better at than constructing new arguments against players from scratch. If you (or Yos, or GC) don't value this as a contribution, I'm not sure what to tell you -- you are free to disparage my contributions, and I'll try to supress my urge to feel insulted and continue to play to the best of my meager abilities, understanding that we just have different definitions of scumhunting.

[mathcam]

That's not attacking you for your playstyle, that's asking if, in fact, it IS your playstyle.

How would I know? What difference does it make? Maybe I've had a change in life philosophy since the last time I played a serious game. I'm telling you what I am doing in excruciating detail. You can address the merits of the discussion without recourse to past games.

If this is your normal playstyle, i.e., presenting weak cases and waiting to see if others will agree and jump on with you, then I find it indistinguishable from scum.

I'm not waiting for people to agree and jump on -- I'm contributing to discussion. It's an opportunity for people to take my ideas and either further or refute them.

But fine, I'll bite -- your "Player A" example is one of a million different scenarios in which a player can post "I find ABR scummy because (reason)". That a player posts that quote is not indicative in the slightest of them being scum. What, in your book, is a townie to do who finds a reason that ABR is scummy, but finds only that one reason? Do they omit that observation from the dialogue? Do they hold onto it and risk being called out for not contributing? Or do they hunt down additional "evidence" and call it scumhunting?

In any case, I think this discussion has turned in the anti-down direction in the sense of distracting us from any other discussion. I accept your votes on me, and will try to restrain from further discussion on this unless you think it's particularly beneficial to the town for me to engage in it. On that note...

Let's get this lynch over with, too bad if we're wrong. Vig save us.

Yes, heaven forbid we have a discussion about a variety of topics (e.g., one of CES or VitR, probably quite happily laughing away at us) before calling it a day. I recognize I'm looking like an inevitable lynch today (though this is partly because my detractors are among the most vocal of players), but let's keep in mind that before DGB, BooKitty, and I barfed all over the thread, there were some promising conversations that you all should follow up on after I go.

[mathcam]

Two small notes:

1) Rereading through VitR and CES talking about each other, VitR seems much more comfortable vouching for CES as town than the other way around. This makes me think that of the two options, it's more likely that VitR is town and CES is scum. I know this is a bit of a stretch, but I feel like I can almost feel CES' awkwardness at having VitR be so wrong about him. This also meshes better with my reasonably pro-town feelings toward VitR on day 1.

2) This might be almost as bad as mandating that every sufficiently large wagon has scum on it, but I came across LML's suspicion list

Here's who I am leaning scum on: UT, Mathcam, STD, Sotty
Here's who I have strong scum feelings for: PJ

and have a hard time believing that he didn't put even one of his scum buddies on there. Given that I think STD is town, and we already know UT and (almost certainly) PJ, this is a strike against Sotty in my book.

[mathcam]

Gah, I fell behind. First and foremost, I don't think I've ever been described as hard to lynch before. This makes me happy.

There is no way that LML didn't include a buddy in his list.

I disagree (and as the person who

made

this point, and to whom you subsequently assigned pro-town points for that argument, I hope this carries at least a little weight). As likely as it may be, it's silly to mandate that this is 100% true, to the point of taking it more seriously than, or excluding, other theories and reads.

In other news:

I too really like undo's last post, perhaps enough to convince me to vote VitR over CES, though I'm still a little surprised that people find VitR the scummier of the two (I will, however, confess to some sympathy towards VitR for having what I perceive as similar reactions to various interactions as I did). CES: I doubt I can give you a satisfactory answer to your question, but in brief, they feel very much like forced perspective. The quote on BooKitty felt oddly worded enough that I could imagine you pretending to be town, pretending to emulate a scum BooKitty and explain her actions. It just didn't seem like a natural thing to say.

I also think GC is looking very pro-town recently. I still see Yos as pretty pro-town from day 1...I doubt anything recent has taken precedence over that, though I haven't completely read the attack on him. There are better targets for today regardless.

KK's not looking great, but I had both he and Tigris as slightly pro-town, so this might only be because of inactivity. So while I'd certainly be happy to hear more from him...

Everyone knows KK is scum but no one wants to call him out on it.

Um, what? I've seen some people express some suspicion on KK, but this doesn't fit my feel of the thread (which, I admit, needs updating). I think you just use the English language in a completely different way than I'm used to, and I haven't yet learned how to translate. In any case, maybe I'm misreading the scumputer, but it seems to me that the list of people who you're pretty sure is scum is superlatively large. Or maybe it's just that you have many sets of people in which you think are definitely scum. I think it's pretty to hide behind "One of X, Y, Z is scum" and "One of A, B, C, is scum", etc., so could you summarize your current stance?

[mathcam]

I disagree (and as the person who made this point, and to whom you subsequently assigned pro-town points for that argument, I hope this carries at least a little weight). As likely as it may be, it's silly to mandate that this is 100% true, to the point of taking it more seriously than, or excluding, other theories and reads.

You sound like Einstein trying to convince himself that relativity is wrong. Stahp it.

Okay, I lolled. Lemme put it this way -- consider the worst-case scenario. Suppose we lynch one of the three today and they came up town. One nightkill. Lynch the second, town. One night kill. Lynch the third, town. One night kill. (Variants with vig acting exist, too.) We wake up on Day 6 with 11 people alive, possibly 5 of which are scum. I think it's safe to call this an almost guaranteed loss. This puts the argument in a pretty precarious perspective -- would you, right now, be willing to wager the outcome of the game on this theory?

I think it's pretty to hide behind "One of X, Y, Z is scum" and "One of A, B, C, is scum", etc., so could you summarize your current stance?

You brought it up. I agreed with you. Now I have to summarize your own stance?

No no, I was asking for a composite summary of your stances, from the various

different

"One of X, Y, Z is scum" opinions you hold, possibly in conjunction with scumputer results. For example, if I'm reading it right, you had both Sotty and STD at the top of your townie points list (maybe?), whereas you now seem to be agressively pushing for one of those two to be lynched.

@ABR: Why VitR and not CES? Of the two, I think VitR definitely gets

some

pro-town cred for attacking LML on Day 1, undo's points notwithstanding. Also, what did you think of this point? I think there's a lot of potential to analyze players who share a real-life connection.

Rereading through VitR and CES talking about each other, VitR seems much more comfortable vouching for CES as town than the other way around. This makes me think that of the two options, it's more likely that VitR is town and CES is scum.

As a meta-point, if you're really interested in getting a reasonably expedient lynch, the people on the VitR wagon have mostly expressed a willingness to lynch CES (I'm not sure about BooKitty -- seems to have been pretty silent on CES), whereas the reverse is not true.

[mathcam]

Gotta say I've been getting a really strong pro-town vibe from DGB recently. Somebody point me to this post next time I get in a fight with her so I remember to keep cool.

[mathcam]

ABR:

Serious question: Do you consciously OMGUS vote everyone who votes for you as a psychological ploy to attempt to disincentivize voting for you?

DGB:

Ok yeah, but then you posts things like this, which make it hard to take it seriously when you insinuate that you've been sticking to your scumputer results all along:

I'll point out that it's not rare finding a scum in the cohort of timid wagoners, here:

29.5 Yosarian2
18.1 chamber
18.0 MrBuddyLee
16.0 MafiaSSK/mathcam

I feel like today is proceeding almost exactly like yesterday, except without the benefit of a major revelation the day before. We swim around, attacking each person in turn, until the deadline gets closer, and then like a big game of musical chairs, someone is left without enough people to defend them and they get kicked out. I don't recall ever being so overwhelmed at the sheer number of possible lynch targets. I think I can count on one hand the number of non-me people I think it would be a bad idea to lynch today (STD, Yos, GC, PJ, undo), but have oscillated a lot on a lot of other people. I'd say I'd go do another reread, but I'm not entirely sure it would help. There are a couple of people I haven't paid close enough attention to -- Sotty is one, then maybe KK, Spyrex, and BooKitty in that order -- so I'm going to spend some time on that. Barring any revelations, I'll probably switch to VitaminR if he's still the leading wagon, even though CES seems a stronger bet to me.

[mathcam]

ABR: Serious question: Do you consciously OMGUS vote everyone who votes for you as a psychological ploy to attempt to disincentivize voting for you?

OMGUS? Correct me if I'm wrong, I voted VitaminR when he had a townread on me. Bookitty also has a town read on me as far as I know.

My bad. I misunderstood BooKitty's "OMGUS allbert" comment.

Compute?

I hardly call that "looking at Sotty", in the sense that that argument against Sotty can be made without even looking at one of her posts.

@mathcam, why did you avoid commenting on my STD case? If STD is on your "never lynch" list and I'm on your "ok to lynch" list, I'd think you'd have something to say about my attempt to ring him up.

Yeah, I probably should've done that. I guess I didn't think my input was necessary. I thought you made a pretty decent argument which I'll even admit to causing me to waver on my STD stance. Then he responded, and the response felt pretty good to me too. Net score: Slight town boost for you, maybe a slight scum boost for STD, but not enough to rock the foundation of my stance on either of you.

[mathcam]

Cam someone tell me what a VI wagon is real quick?

[mathcam]

DGB, I think you ignored my point about combining all of your various predictions and synthesizing what your current opinions are.

Here's a collection of tales from the past (not quite literal quotes, but I don't think I distorted any meaning):

Two out of PJ, STD & KK are scum.

One of these three is surely scum: Kublai Khan, VitaminR, Porochaz

ONE of Bookitty, CES, and Sotty is certainly scum.

Sotty7 & STD should vote from CES, Bookitty and mathcam

One of mathcam, Sotty or STD is scum.

For example, given a town-PJ, I take it you now think STD and KK are scum? Or has this position evolved?

[mathcam]

Ah, thanks. Just saying "VI = Village Idiot" would have been sufficient, but I appreciate the illustrated depiction as well.

[mathcam]

Okay, I ran an analysis of some things that I'm going to post in a second, but in order to keep this separate, let me first note three things that stuck out on yet another reread (I'm sure none of these observations are new -- only that they resonated for me this time through):

1) ABR's post on VitR in #1611 was quite good.
2) Sotty's stance on "compromising" for the LML lynch felt forced, as if she were pretty anti- the LML lynch.
3) BooKitty's "I'm the best lynch" stance feels a little over-eager, to the point where she's complimenting my points for agreeing that she's a good lynch.

[mathcam]

Okay, it's a bit early in the game for this, but I'm out of slight scum reads I can find on people and I wanted to actually

do

something, so I started thinking about possible scumteams. So what I did was considered the 105 pairs of people in this game (excluding PJ and undo), and whether or not I thought they could be on a scum team together. I eliminated 20 such pairings, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Then I looked for sets of at least 5 people such that all five of them could plausibly be scum with each other -- that is, none of the pairings between in that set were among the 20 that were eliminated. It turns out there's still a lot of such sets (hence the "too early" comment at the start here), but there were definitely some patterns. There are three and only three sets of 8 players, such that none of them could be easily ruled out as being scum teams. Those three sets of eight are:

1) {Chamber, porochaz, Sotty, CES, ABR, GC, STD, KK}
2) {Chamber, porochaz, Sotty, mathcam, GC, VitR, STD, KK}
3) {porochaz, Sotty, CES, ABR, GC, STD, BooKitty, KK}

Much of this is not a surprise -- the pairings I eliminated were ones where I felt confident that a dispute between those two players was strong enough that one was genuinely pushing for the other to get lynched. Given that, players who (a) haven't been involved in many altercations, or (b) players whose primarily altercations were with now-dead players, tend to get put in the set. Full disclosure: DGB and I have been under fire from probably half of the living players, so we have fewer plausible scum connections, and hence tend to get weeded out of these lists. It's also true that this does not take into account

individual

scumminess, only plausibility of being pairwise scum.

Here are the 20 pairs I eliminated: Boo-math, GC-MBL, Yos-VitR, CES-math, STD-DGB, VitR-CES, Chamber-Boo, STD-MBL, Sotty-DGB, ABR-math, Sotty-Spyrex, DGB-Spyrex, Yos-math, ABR-DGB, DGB-KK, STD-Spyrex, VitR-ABR, Yos-CES, DGB-mathcam, and Yos-STD.

Any of these are up for debate, and I can re-run the possible sets if people are interested in tweaking the inputs. There were only a couple that were from strong gut reads on my part -- like Yos and STD, who seem very unlikely to me to be scum together given their interactions. I only excluded myself from a pair if I beileved that you would believe a pro-town mathcam would believe that there's no way a random person would believe that I and that partner could be scum together. This did not include, for example everyone who voted me, or even everyone who seemed to put a genuine case toward me. If we add more excluded pairs, the number and size of these maximal sets will decrease. If we remove excluded pairs, we'll get larger sets and less information. In any case...

Upshot: There are a lot of caveats already mentioned to mitigate the awesomeness of my methodology, so I won't rehash them again here. But I think that despite the flaws, there's some real meat to the conclusions, suitably interpreted -- even if you think DGB, for example, is very very scummy individually, you have to think she's on a scumteam with

someone

. While there are a

couple

of "admissible" size-5 sets of players that include DGB (e.g., {Poro, DGB, GC, VitR, BooKitty}), this would be a pretty lucky find for us, and we can always come back to these when we have more information.

I tend to think, therefore, we should focus on some of the players who are quite likely the quietest member of their scum teams, not having heavily interacted with anyone. I personally would rule out GC and STD from consideration due to individual contributions. So from the lists above, I'd lean toward porochaz, Sotty, or KK. Given the "one of these three" argument that DGB and I have been discussing, and my very small point in my previous post about Sotty, I'm going to

Unvote: CES, Vote: Sotty.

I welcome your feedback, scorn, and FOSes.

[mathcam]

Mathcam, I'm gonna take back some of the things I said about you. This is really good.

To be honest, reading through my earlier posts, some of the things you and other said about me were more true than I wanted to admit. I think it's been slow for me to reacclimate to this game after so long an absence.

I do have a question: Did you rule out some people based on too close an association (VitaminR-CES is the one that comes to mind for me)? Or is it only based on your view of their conflicts?

Yes, thanks. I mentioned Yos-STD, and meant to mention VitR-CES as well.

[mathcam]

(e.g. if DGb is scum, I'd still fully expect her to occur in a bunch of such disallowed pairings).

Point conceded. Still, the pairings I disallowed I felt were particularly unlikely -- even if one of them was falsely disallowed, I don't think it would too greatly affect the results. It's unlikely that

too

many of them are wrong -- despite the non-zeroness of the probability, a CES/mathcam/ABR/DGB/Yos would seem rather unlikely at this point.

[mathcam]

Actually, my Yos town read had no impact on anything (except in the list of pairings removed, which were Yos paired with CES/VitR/mathcam/STD, any of which I would be happy to entertain removing). The only real "read" input I had was to remove STD and GC when making my list of top three -- the five players that were in all three of my groups of 8 were porochaz, Sotty, KK, STD, and GC, and I elected to prune away the last two when posting my top three.

[mathcam]

I'm very intrigued by Sotty's last few posts, which have all focused on how there's nothing for her to argue against. There's no "The wagon is wrong because..." or "A better wagon is blah because..." She even goes so far as to call the wagon unfair. Whether or not this is true, this does paint to me a slight picture of scum bemoaning being caught for circumstances out of her control, annoyed that she played the game carefully enough to have nothing to actually be attacked for, and yet got caught away. I'm sure this is partly me trying to retroactively justify the wagon, but it sounds pretty reasonable.

So I like the Sotty wagon still -- as we scramble to find the most approved of wagon, I think I would still be fine with VitR or CES. I personally don't think DGB is likely to be scum, just because of all of the outrageous plays she's made (e.g., most recently approving of the vig killing a townie). But PJ's conviction that she really could be scum and pulling these crazy plays is somewhat compelling. I think I'd be able to sleep at night after a DGB lynch too.

[mathcam]

Though I agree that the comptuation of numbers once you've put down a formula is a completely objective process, deciding on how to construct the formula is not particularly objective. As I harped on at some length in a previous post, deciding how to weight being on certain types of wagons is a judgment call (being on

these

types of wagons is scummy, but

these

are okay). You could easily come up with a scumputer-like formula that gives a completely different ordering of scumminess.

Apart from the rationale that LML pointed to mathcam, sotty, and STD (a point you said was not compelling), the only other knock against sotty that I recall seeing is that she's not very aggressive.

It's not just not being aggressive. It's also a lack of any interactions with anyone that made me think "Hey, those two are unlikely to be scum together." I haven't been particularly aggressive this game, but I would bet you'd agree that there's quite a few players I'm unlikely to be scum with. So Sotty, who I think most of us have a pretty neutral read on, hasn rarely been seriously attacked, and has rarely done any serious attacking, and so could be scum with just about anyone. So while there are certainly aspects of my argument that merit some skepticism, the following is a fact: If X and Y are

a priori

equally likely to scum, but we then find out that X is not scum with A, B, or C, but do not know analogous information about Y, then Y becomes more likely to be scum. The argument against Sotty is precisely that.

This is terrible. Can I please get a case against me to actually respond to?

That

is

the case. I believe you are the best lynch for today because of the above paragraph. That is a case you can respond to. You can argue that there is something wrong with the algorithm. Or you could agree with the algorithm, but disagree on the list of pairs I excluded. Or you could agree with the algorithm, but propose a different conclusion from the results (e.g., going after porochaz or OGML). Or you could even argue that although you see the merits of the case against you, it is pretty circumstantial evidence (with which I would agree), and hence you believe X is a stronger lynch today because of Y.

Any of those options, executed well, seem pro-town to me. Complaining that the argument is unfair just feels to me like an annoyed scum who thinks they're on the road to a noose but feels obligated to put up some token resistance.

[mathcam]

This game is pretty disgraceful... why are we having to scramble for yet another deadline lynch. Deadlines are not the ideal times to be lynching people, especially when games are overly long such as this. This game has a definite "too many cooks spoil the broth" feeling. And there are still people who are not voting.

a) Oh, come on, get off your high horse. It's a game, and it is what it is. It's not like anyone

wanted

a deadline scramble.
b) There are two people not voting, one of which has been in the game for 2 days with a 90-page reading deficit. Go yell at MBL if you want.
c) I'm not saying I'm going to move my vote, but who's your next top choice after DGB? I don't think she's scum.

ABR: Why is Yos on your list, but not CES?

[mathcam]

First, I would propose that just about every player currently voting for Sotty7 would be an unlikely partner for Sotty7 were she to flip scum. Therefore mathcam's original reason to vote for her has been undermined by the very fact that people have voted due to his case. mathcam's own reasoning has therefore debunked itself.

This is just glib. You think Sotty is town, and all (or a majority of us) on her wagon are scum, so of youcrse think there we're unlikely scum partners with Sotty. Arguing that this invalidates the argument against her being scum is completely circular. I can feel your visceral desperation, and am willing to listen to rational arguments, but don't go off the deep end just because DGB and ABR are being DGB and ABR.

DGB and ABR: I agree that the cheerleading (e.g., 2339) is pointless, and perhaps even detrimental to your cause. Please stop.

[mathcam]

Whoa. "youcrse" --> "course you"

[mathcam]

poro, you're acting as bad as ABR and DGB. It's been a hectic 15 minutes of posting. Just chill out. I would like an answer to

c) I'm not saying I'm going to move my vote, but who's your next top choice after DGB? I don't think she's scum.

before I move my vote.

porochaz' anxiety reads scummy to me, as if he's eager to look town by sheeping PJ.

There seems to me some support of my analysis, even if there's now a counter-push away from sotty. For the rectord, the other top candidates being output by that process were OMGL (who I could not morally bear to lynch after his goodwill at replacing in) and porochaz.

[mathcam]

"Your cause", mathcam? This is your case. Your cause. We've taken it up because it's strong.

I wasn't trying to disown it. I just meant that "doing X is counter-productive to what you are trying to achieve." And just so we're clear, I think you've had some good posts recently. I'm not asking you to shut up.

Unless, you, PJ, will go into more specificity and detail about why you think Sotty’s play runs parallel to your experience with her in another game,

I agree. I don't think there's anyone not thinking it, so I'll put it into the open that I'm worried there's an implication that PJ has something more than just an intuition that sotty is town. If that's the case, we're close enough to the deadline not to dance around the issue. If we've bandwagonned the wrong person and PJ has evidence to back it up, I'll move somewhere else. But if not, I get the feeling that prochaz is reading such an implication, so it's not like it's a particularly well-kept secret. And I'm a dense pile of bricks when it comes to reading breadcrumbs or subtle hints of knowledge. And so without something explicit, I'm reluctant to let even a confirmed-town PJ's intuition trump the merits of the wagon, meager though they may be.

OGML/ABR: I think you'll find a lot of resistance to a Yos-wagon. Bring it up tomorrow again if you want, but it would be dangerous to start it now. EBWOP: Oy vey.

[mathcam]

It's not dangerous, come with us. Join us.

For all I've disparaged your playstyle this game, and for as much as I am befuddled by your internal decision procedure for deciding who to vote for, I have to say that on a purely metalevel I appreciate the levity with which you approach bandwagonning, somehow putting out a global reminder that this is still a game. The opposite of this philosophy is what makes games go 100+ pages. That post made me laugh.

Not going to join the Yos-wagon. If we're going to go nuts and start new wagons, I'd be more inclinced to look at porochaz, as recently discussed (many possible scumteams as per my algorithm, recent post about anxiety, similar to Sotty in having many nullreads from many members).

But for the record, it seems likely that you may have single-handedly caved the Sotty wagon under the weight of PJ's pressure. If Sotty does ever flip scum, you go up in scummitude a few points.

[mathcam]

mathcam, any sentence that starts with "before I move my vote", by the person who is the primary engineer of a bandwagon, contributes to the self-destruction of that bandwagon

Fair point. I should have said "before I consider moving my vote." I definitely did not intend to imply I would be following PJ's next-in-line, only that I wasn't about to leave the Sotty wagon without a better one to jump on to.

I think I've saturated the thread with my thoughts sufficiently much for now. I'm going to try to keep myself away for a few hours. I'm going to be pretty bandwagon-happy when I come back.

[mathcam]

Heh. This game.

QFT.

Patrick

: This is a bit obnoxious, since you posted one 6 hours ago, but can we have another votecount?

[mathcam]

Unvote, Vote: CES

[mathcam]

Amusing that that's a disappointed headshake from an obvscum.

[mathcam]

Nope, but I do think that Mike Ehrmantraut is.

What do you think of DGB and mathcam jumping on that wagon?

For the record, my vote's been on CES for the large majority of the day.

[mathcam]

Still happy with CES. Sorry, the "I know him well enough" is fine enough reason for you to hold your vote back (unless he flips scum, in which case it becomes a liability), but does nothing for me. If I wasn't going to blindly follow PJ's stance on Sotty, I'm certainly not going to dismiss my suspicions of CES.

I haven't found OGML particularly protown today, and he was in the top 3 from my partnerships algorithm. But to be honest, I'd feel bad killing him off this quickly. Idunno, I'd have to wrestle with it.

[mathcam]

Ummm....

Leaning scum: ABR,

porochaz

Porochaz

hasn't posted enough to get a solid read, but he, like LML, has done nothing to me that seems pro-town. I'm a little surprised by his absence on other people's scumlists

I have no idea where all of the pro-

porochaz

love is coming from. He's not nearly as town in my book as some others have indicated.

So from the lists above, I'd lean toward

porochaz

, Sotty, or KK.

porochaz

' anxiety reads scummy to me, as if he's eager to look town by sheeping PJ.

If we're going to go nuts and start new wagons, I'd be more inclinced to look at

porochaz

, as recently discussed (many possible scumteams as per my algorithm, recent post about anxiety, similar to Sotty in having many nullreads from many members).

[mathcam]

mathcam also looks worse. He failed to acknowledge the rather obvious flaw in his vote (i.e., he did not reassess Sotty7's potential partners after the wagon on her started, and this goes to show why that type of scumhunting is flawed this early in the game; such analysis also rewards players who have ever been in an argument with anybody or, really, ever been wagoned, because a player who has been wagoned is more likely to be seen as "not paired" with other players).

This is very much like your last critique on my method, in that a moment's thought indicates why it is silly. First, reassessing potential partners

after

the revelation of the method is inherently dangerous, as now that the method is known, the rankings can be gamed by scum. So while I was planning, for example, to run computations at the start of tomorrow with the new information if I was still alive, I

wasn't

going to update in light of the end-of-day discussion, for precisely this reason. Think of the results of that as a static "This is what the game was at this time", and not an ever-evolving ranking. The numbers get outdated fast, and it is senseless to try to continuously update them, for precisely the gaming reason mentioned before.

Second, I've put on as many caveats to the results as I can. I

did

fully acknowledge that the system has a tendency to target unwagonned and unagressive players, and did so at more depth than your cursory dismissal. This does not invalidate the information, it is just a further piece of information, to be used in conjunction with everything else (e.g., me throwing out STD from my lynch candidate list despite being in all the lists). Sotty's reaction to the bandwagon was to my eyes scummy, and so I

did

reassess as the wagon went on, and it moved her in the scum direction.

[mathcam]

While I am thrilled at the prospect of having people join me on the anti-poro train, I agree with PJ that it's too late to start it. On the other hand, VitR has been as discussed as one can get, and I think there's time for that wagon if people are still interested (we have about 10 hours until deadline). I'm kind of swayed by the idea that he's been buddying CES, whereas I had read his defense of CES as being pretty genuine (but wrong).

[mathcam]

I know there's only been one vote since PJ last posted this, but I find it handy to have shoved in my face pretty frequently.

Cogito Ergo Sum (5) -- Sotty7, Yosarian2, Bookitty, mathcam, Save the Dragons
VitaminR (2) -- undo, MrBuddyLee
DrippingGoofball (5) -- petroleumjelly, Porochaz, Green Crayons, OhGodMyLife, chamber
OhGodMyLife (1) -- SpyreX
Yosarian2 (4) -- VitaminR, Cogito Ergo Sum, Albert B. Rampage, DrippingGoofball

Let's assume only those three wagons exist. Looks from his last post that Spyrex will go Yos2, I can't tell if MBL is leaning CES or DGB (but not Yos), but I would guess CES, and I think undo's pretty clear on DGB over CES (although has not taken much of a stand one way or another on CES).

Cogito Ergo Sum (6) -- Sotty7, Yosarian2, Bookitty, mathcam, Save the Dragons, MBL
DrippingGoofball (6) -- petroleumjelly, Porochaz, Green Crayons, OhGodMyLife, chamber, undo
Yosarian2 (5) -- VitaminR, Cogito Ergo Sum, Albert B. Rampage, DrippingGoofball, Spyrex

That's a pretty crappy state to be in, with 9 to lynch.

[mathcam]

Worse, I think any one of the three wagons has at least a lynching number of prospective people who might end up on it. For all the chaos of vote-switching that's going on now, it could be worse in a few hours, meaning that the day's lynch will come down to who was on at what time in the random fluctuations of leading bandwagons.

MBL/undo/Spyrex: Could you pick one of the three?

ABR: I don't know. But he came off as pretty town on day 1, and I can feel him getting pretty flustered today. I'm getting a genuinely frustrated town vibe from him today. You've been advocating for a compromise lynch. I think the only reason you're not compromising on CES is because Yos is so actively pushing for it. You've voted for CES in the past, and expressed a willingness to do it again. Yos isn't going to happen. Do CES, then we'll talk.

[mathcam]

Yos, stop. I'm with you for now, but you're not doing yourself any favors.

[mathcam]

I agree with the town read on DGB.

[mathcam]

"CES is lynchbait" is not a valid defense. That he is frequently lynched in other games has precisely zero relevance to whether or not he's scum in this game. In fact, I believe you (ABR) have conceded very recently in this thread that CES might be scum.

"I know CES and this is not his scum meta" is also not a good defense, especially from VitR so early in the game. It implies that CES's scumplay is so bad that VitR (or chamber, or whoever) can instantaneously deduce it. I don't know CES all that well, but I'm pretty sure we've played a few games together, and my memory of him was that he was a much better player than that stance would imply.

[mathcam]

mathcam, doesn't that logic sort of invalidate the use of meta always?

It makes it a pretty substantial claim, yes, especially early in the game. I was pretty against glib meta arguments back in the day, and this game has made me doubly so. I'm a firm believer that the circumstances of any individual game do much more to influence player's reactions than does some fixed internal notion of someone's meta, not to mention the fact that it's pretty reasonable to imagine that a playser's base playing style might evolve over time, even from game to game. I'm not saying it's a frivolous activity, or even that it's not worth investigating, but it takes a pretty solid case before I start weighing it in to my deliberations.

[mathcam]

MBL

, it's becoming increasingly damning that you haven't taken much of a stand on either of CES or DGB, as is your lack of voting for someone lynch-plausible. (I grant that a lot has happened since your vote late last night, but it's not like you were particularly vote-y before that, either).

[mathcam]

Those were a pretty painful eight minutes from a reading-the-thread standpoint. Given the potential for a risk of a no-lynch, I'm relieved to see the early hammer. Where "early hammer" now apparently means three hours before the deadline.

Let's now just all sit quietly and relax as we wait for Patrick get here.

Silently.

Ahhhhh....peaceful.....

[mathcam]

Well, I hope everyone who gave me shit about "buddying" CES realizes that I was totally right.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense, in that you buddying CES is only possible if he's town, which we now know to be the case. I voted CES over you because I thought it likely that one of you was scum, and felt you wouldn't be so brazen as to 99% clear CES while you were scum...but near the end of the day, people were starting to sway me in the other direction. That said, I also have to revisit the hypothesis that one of you or CES is scum. I think I'm leaning back toward my day one read that your attack on LML was genuine.

Gotta admit Yos looks a little bit worse today. The "I don't know how I could've been wrong" post feels a little...rehearsed.

The absence of Yosarian in those wagons is noted.

I don't think I get what you were trying to say there, undo. I also feel like your game could step up a little...yesterday evening was somewhat lacking. How do you feel about VitR now?

Idunno about STD. I've been feeling pretty townly toward STD all game, but there's this possible {STD, Chamber, OGML, VitR, porochaz} scumteam that niggling at the back of my head. (Admittedly, OGML's posts have been making this feel less likely).

If anyone's interested, taking out Sotty and CES from yesterday's algorithm, we're down to a unique maximal set of non-eliminated scumpairs, which is {Poro, MBL, ABR, Spyrex, Yos, Boo, OGML}, which is sadly disparate from my set of 5 mentioned above. There are plenty of smaller sets of such teams, so take that with a grain of salt. I will note that OGML and porochaz still fit on both, and were two of the algorithms principal targets from yesterday.

Barring major developments, which feels unlikely (I feel like the CES flip and the night result are particularly uninformative, though I might have to let my brain ruminate on that for a while) I tend to think my vote will end on one of those two today. Actually, let's start now.

Vote: porochaz.

[mathcam]

This game is mentally exhausting. I just can't keep a read, and the lack of significant new information means we're almost back where we started after the marathon mess that was yesterday's end.

I'm constantly fluctuating between people who I think are acting not-particularly-townly and talking myself into thinking their probably town (DGB, porochaz, ABR, chamber), and people who I think are pretty towny looking and talking myself into being paranoid that I'm glossing over them (Yos, STD, GC). Currently my most paranoid suspicion is BooKitty, both for DGB's Boo-STD pairing which seems plausible, but also because their are a couple of her actions which I could see as very appealing to make if she were scum. For one, she's been very receptive to both DGB and my's processes for finding scum. While it's possible she's a sucker for apparent effort, it's also true that it's beneficial to appear to be pleased with effort. My only real hesitation is that her end-of-day-1 play doesn't seem to ring with an LML scumbuddy.

It's taking effort not to vote for DGB just to get a pleasantly fast lynch for once. She feels town to me, but I also believe she could do this as scum.

[mathcam]

I had eliminated STD being likely scumpartners with all of MBL, Yos, and Spyrex.

[mathcam]

It's a more productive vote than my current one, though I'm still mystified that poro doesn't get any attention.

Unvote, Vote: STD.

Today begins two weeks of low access for me. I think I'll still be participating regularly...just maybe a little less than yesterday.

[mathcam]

We don't know.

PJ, that was a dick move. I think several of us have enduredbfar worse than you this game , some times partly at your hand. Shame.

[mathcam]

Still limited access, but short notes:

1) DGB is looking worse and worse...the pro-town vibe of apparent hysteric scum hunting has faded into bandwagon cheerleading, and that's bad. There's a case I made earlier against someone -- those of you who are sure that DGB is town because of her apparent enthusiasm and hard work are saying that she is incapable of these things as scum. STD (I think it was) had an excellent point when he pointed out that the town is feeling confused and bedraggled, but scum if probably feeling energized. Over the last game night, I had begun to convince myself that DGBscum was capable of this level of enthusiasm and play as scum, and that feeling has only strengthened over the course of the day.

2) I agree that chamber needs back away from defending DGB. Unless you're absolutely sure DGB is town -- if there's any doubt -- let

DGB

navigate her way through the conversation, even if it's unfair or a trap. You should be as excited to get an even better read on DGB (or Yos!) than you already have. Stopping this discussion has no benefit.

3) Juls: No, 4 living scum is not confirmed. I'm a little worried there's 5, given what appears to be a cop, doc, 3 masons, and a vig. Perhaps someone more familiar with Patrick's style could weigh in.

4) Yos -- I'm a little puzzled by your re-evaluations not having moved porochaz away from obviously town. I'm not as anti-porochaz as my posts might make it out to be, but I can't fathom why he looks so town to people. He's got almost no play in the bandwagon press. Looking back at Day 1, I never would have though I'd see you be on the verge of voting STD but still consider porochaz obvtown,

[mathcam]

(1) You're looking more scum to me because I no longer truly believe you couldn't pull of this play as scum. You should feel honored. In fact, when you make claims of the form "It should be clear from my play that I'm town," you're actively calling yourself a bad scum player. Note I"m still voting STD, and intend to leave it there for the forseeable future.

(2) There's a difference between arguing that someone is pro-town (which was the case in all of the examples you referenced), and interrupting an active line of inquiry designed to get answers, for a nebulous reason like the questions being unfair.

(4) I've constantly been harping on porochaz' lack of being targeted. Yos was the most recent to perpetuate this notion that poro is obvtown. I have a hard time believing current discussions with Yos will evaporate by introducing this question. If they do so magically disappear and Yos turns out to be scum, I agree that you have found a point of scumminess against me.

[mathcam]

For the record, the two reasons I find compelling to vote STD are the output of my process indicating that there's a large clique of people he could be mutually scum with, and LML's list of scum reads.

That said, I would also be down for an OGML replacement lynch for the health of the game.

But I am a bad scum player. I hate playing scum. I just troll.

But wait...isn't that what a scum DGB would

want

us to think in this situation? Hmm...

chamber is saying that Yos is scum asking unfair questions. Don't you think Yosarian is scum?

Not particularly, no. And I think you're perfectly well equipped to respond to unfair questions on your own.

[mathcam]

Shanba flipped 3-shot vanilla cop. Vanilla cops are weak PRs that can investigate a player and find out whether they have special powers or not. Mafia goons appear as "vanilla" to a vanilla cop, and doctor appears as "not vanilla". Godfathers and masons would appear as "not vanilla".

Really? You don't think it just meant Shanba was a regular cop? Vanilla as in no weirdness?

While I'm professing ignorance, what's PoE? I mean I sort of get it from context, but don't know the acronym.

[mathcam]

I personally would be surprised if there were anything fancier than one godfather. Then again, I didn't apparently know what all of our revealed roles were, so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

[mathcam]

I thought ABR was a cop.

Seriously, though, what makes you speculate that? Maybe it's better not to say, actually. Dunno.

[mathcam]

Yos is at least making me pay attention. DGB, just answer the question. I'm curious as to why this is so difficult. (EBWOP: Okay, an answer has arrived. I agree that I don't see why the answer wasn't obvious, e.g., "I'm confident he's scum, but not so confident that I'd wager my game life on it.")

Most recently, I got a strong town tell from the way he figured out that Sotty was a mason, didn't say anything, and then tried to get Albert to stop badgering her before she was forced to claim.

For the record, I got completely the opposite read. I think everyone in the game thought considered the possibility that PJ was hinting at having information beyond just a gut read on Sotty (thought it was hard to tell -- I have to admit I was still leaning on the side of PJ being forceful with a gut read). I certainly wouldn't classify poro's posts as "not saying anything." In fact, his post made it clear that he believed that Sotty was a mason. I could certainly see a scum-poro trying to get pro-town cred by being exasperated that a mason was about to be revealed.

[mathcam]

I'm not sure DGB sees herself as a likely lynch tomorrow if SGB flips town, nor am I particularly convinced that scum-DGB wouldn't be willing to make that bet and then try to scramble her way out of it the next day. Regardless, the point probably isn't worth debating too much until we see STD.

[mathcam]

I don't think waiting a week will hurt anybody.

I respectfully disagree. Players are bedraggled, and if we add stagnancy on top of that, all enthusiasm from anyone but scum might dissipate. Plus, I think you can continue to reread and get caught up in your night communications with the masons. I of course agree that it's your prerogative to withhold your vote if you think that's best -- just explaining why I don't see it as anti-town to want to move things along.

[mathcam]

ABR: Wait, did you just unvote STD because Yos voted him?

[mathcam]

ABR not voting STD is totally weird to me. For all we know, Patrick's got a list of people that have expressed interest in replacing, and it'll just take a couple of days for them to confirm they're still in. I don't envy Patrick's task, but if STD is the right lynch, then we should do it.

[mathcam]

Huh, I thought that I was going to be bandwagon-fodder the moment the gates opened, so I spent a little more time thinking about my own defense rather than who to go after next. So first, here's that:

I'd argue that the real knock any theory that has a STD-mathcam theory scmpair is my argument (which played heavily into my willingness to lynch STD despite my erroneous read on him) is that one of LML's scumlist {mathcam, STD, Sotty} had to be scum. Just think about how silly of a move it would be to postulate that one of three people were scum, when two of those people were on my scum team (and the third on almost no one's top scum list at the time). Even with the inevitable WIFOM argument that a scum

could

make this move, I think you'd have to agree that there was no reason for me to, and doing so was done at the detriment of the scum.

I'm not a big fan of DGB's "one of these two, one of these two, one of these two" arguments, at least when they come from the surety that one member of a bandwagon has to be scum. That said, I'll reiterate my unease with porochaz that I've been mentioning for weeks, and would not be upset at a porolynch. Given Yos's early-game point about STD not being afraid to pick fights with people, it's in hindsight somewhat notable that STD didn't seem to address porochaz almost at all.

MBL: I'm sorry, this is lazy. Can you remind me what the numbers and notation in your list means? A link is fine if you've explained elsewhere.

[mathcam]

I think Albert, Yos and VitR may be the last three scum. *fingers crossed*

Wait. Really? I'm not saying it's impossible (to the contrary, I'm rather intrigued), but this would have required some pretty good acting for ABR-Yos and some pretty good foresight from Yos-STD.

[mathcam]

I don't really understand the evolution of your read on STD. Can you explain that a bit more, please? Was it solely based on your "most likely scumteam" pairings?

I don't think there's been much to the evolution. I got a town read on him very early, and that maintained for the vast majority of the game. As the game's progressed, I've been getting more paranoid about my town reads, and MBL's post came at a good time for me to seriously question my stance on STD. He swayed me down from a solid town stance on STD, but then STD's rebuttal brought it back up to pretty solidly in the town camp. Whether or not MBL's seed of doubt contributed to my eventual willingness to lynch STD, I'm not sure, but the two principal forces there were the most likely scumteam pairings and the belief that one of {mathcam, STD, Sotty} had to be scum.

I agree that chamber needs back away from defending DGB. Unless you're absolutely sure DGB is town -- if there's any doubt -- let DGB navigate her way through the conversation, even if it's unfair or a trap. You should be as excited to get an even better read on DGB (or Yos!) than you already have. Stopping this discussion has no benefit.

This seems to indicate that you are certain that Chamber is town. Are you?

I guess what I meant was that regardless of chamber's alignment, I was asking him to butt out of the discussion by appealing to the argument that if he's pro-town, he should want to see this develop. I read an implicit "assuming you're pro-town" in my sentence there (as that's a little pedantic to write out each time you're discussing theory in-thread), but I see where you're getting that indication from. In any case, no, not at all. I'm not even sure I'd put him at townish.

@mathcam:

Do you still think VitaminR is the most likely scum? (all others on the potential most approved of wagon list you gave are or were town.)

I'm not sure. I'm working on re-developing all of my reads/stances again. The only thing worth reiterating right now is that the scum-pairings I precluded form my list involving STD were STD-DGB (yay for me), STD-Spyrex, STD-MBL, and STD-Yos. I'm not sure I have the faith in my convictions any more about that last one, but I think I'm pretty confident in saying that I would not be down for a Spyrex or MBL lynch today.

undo

: Why

would

you follow DGB's lynchplan? Because of the scumputer? I'm genuinely curious.

Also: Welcome, CDB! Definitely remember the name, though not if we played any games together.

[mathcam]

Huh, didn't expect that comment to raise so many eyebrows. I'm aware that there's some pro-chamber sentiment floating around, but there's been a lot of that toward porochaz also that I've felt is unfounded, and there's always been this ABR-Chamber-VitR-CES-Porochaz clique thing (from playing together so much, not necessarily related to scumminess) happening that makes me uncomfortable. So I've been trying to ignore the vibes coming off that clique, and without it, I just don't see that much townly to find with respect to chamber. There's not a particularly strong stand against either STD or LML, and his defense of DGB is more anti-Yos than pro-DGB. Maybe someone else could point out why chamber is so obvtown? I'm just not getting it.

So just transcribing a few of my notes (please don't ignore them cause you are set in your reads)

255 - he sets up an if Vit is scum LML is town (one reason to suspect LML/Vit/Yos)
290 - comment about LML and Vit being buddies
289 thru 318- really light investigations of LML but puts vote on nati completely throwing aside all conversations with LML
379 - votes LML while retracting suspicion of Vit
381 - over the top declaration of STD as town
381-401 - lots of direct interactions between Yos/lml/std
433 - another comment of if LML is scum, Vit is town. See the reciprocal in 255

I agree that Yos-VitR is a pretty strong pairing early in the game, and these are good points. I'll be interested to see how your read on the develops a couple of thousand posts later. There's a pretty strong Yos-VitR clash, and I'd be interested to know if you thought it could be faked.

[mathcam]

Also, there's a wide gap between not even "townish" (your position) and "obvtown" (false alternative you made up).

When X expresses shock that Y doesn't find Z townish, it's not unreasonable to suspect that X finds Z more than just townish, so I don't think it was quite the false dichotomy you make it out to be. Also, I've never used the word obvtown in my life before this thread (I think), and have seen it used with a quite wide range of sureties as to whether or not the target was actually town. I may have used it wrong.

[mathcam]

Apart from ABR's most recent "we knew CES because we've played together" spiel earlier today, how have you picked up a we're-all-town-together clique vibe from these five? I can think of a few examples of suspicions/votes that specifically cut against such a clique.

No no, I specifically said it had nothing to do with alignment. There's been a

lot

of "We know each other, trust us" in this game.

[mathcam]

To the contrary, I think this discussion is entirely semantic, and so is eminently relevant (at least insofar as any of this discussion is relevant). Don't you think you guys are being overly pedantic here? It raised eyebrows in the sense that in that there were two nearly immediate posts questioning how I came to the conclusion. It expressed shock in the sense that I read you as being surprised at my stance. My exact words were "I'm not even sure I'd put him at townish," which sounds to me much closer to "not being obvtown" than "chamber is not even townish" (the latter of which sounds to me rather anti-chamber). In any case, I think my follow-up paragraph makes more explicitly clear what my actual stance on chamber is -- I doubt there's much to be gleaned from probing deeper into the semantic issues, but I suppose I'm game if you are.

[mathcam]

If the clique's vibes have nothing to do with alignment, then I misunderstood what you were saying here. And, in light of 3585, I don't really understand what you're saying here. What are these "vibes"?

I'm not sure I have a way of expressing this without antagonizing the group involved, but there's repeatedly been comments of the form "When it comes to us, we know best." I am skeptical of their claims to be able to read one another, their definitive and retroactively-vindicated proclamations on CES notwithstanding, and tire of the implicit (and some times explicit) refrain that people who don't know them have less valid opinions. There's even an extent to which I think PJ and OGML suffered from disagreeing too much with the clique. So my original quote was that there seemed to be a lot of pro-chamber sentiment coming from expressions of that sort, and I don't put a lot of weight into such expressions, at least when not backed up by something more definitive.

[mathcam]

My response is reads neutral, because it is neutral

It does not read neutral to me. The "Well" at the start of that sentence carries with it (to me) a sense of surprise, or at least skepticism.

You thought you were responding neutral, and I was being over-defensive in response. I thought you were over-reacting to my stance, and being rationally explicit in elaborating my stance. The wonders of communication.

your non-alignment-indicative position that chamber is a completely null read

Completely null-read is uncharitable. My elaboration makes it more explicit that I don't have anything particularly towny in chamber's column, and that there are even some points against him. I don't think this elevates him to the top of the scumminess pack, but it's in notable contrast to at least several people who seem pretty convinced of his townliness. If I have to boil it down to a quick phrase, I think "at most neutral" better describes my stated stance than "complete nullread."

[mathcam]

TLDR: I think you are making this clique thing out to be bigger than it is/was?

Almost certainly. It was a nagging thing in the back of my head, and putting it to words makes it sound much grander than I believe it to be.

I equate neutral and null in terms of alignment descriptors. Language!

Okay, fair enough. To clarify, I took your implication of nullread to mean that I hadn't thought at all about chamber, wheres I intended neutral in the sense of "There are pros and cons, but about the same amount of each, so they balance each other out." Since I haven't been putting a lot of faith in my actual reads this game, the fact that chamber fairs poorly when compared against the known wagons is probably the only strike against him I can make. So yes, that was my only point, and I agree it is lacking in depth.

Looking forward to reading MBL's most recent posts, which I have not yet done.

[mathcam]

Okay, I've been doing some rereading. I have two quick questions first:

1) Does the STD-as-scum revelation give any more meaning to the fact that he killed the ABR-Yos fight early when hammering CES? I can't help but wonder if he thought one of his scumbuddies was looking bad, and decided to put an end to it.

2) MBL: What distinguishes chamber and porochaz to you? To me, they're almost interchangeable this game, save for DGB.

[mathcam]

Alright, here's a summary of my current thoughts.

1) Chamber and 2) Porochaz
-- As hinted in the past few exchanges, I can't find almost anything I've found that either of these two have done that I'd call pro-town. Maybe better put, there's nothing where I thought "That's a ballsy play for them if they're scum." Porochaz seems to be the worst of the two. One extra note on Chamber is that in LML's list of reads, from which we got STD as scum, he had this list of town:

Here's who I currently think is town: Chamber, DGB, Shanba, Glork.

Chamber's the only unknown on that list, and I think it's pretty reasonable to believe that LML would put one co-scum in the scumpile, and one co-scum in the town pile, leaving everyone else leaning town or null. Chamber is also, along with VitaminR, on STD's list of people he

wouldn't

vote for, in post 377. Neither of these amount to

too

much, but interesting nonetheless. (GC: Side note on language, this stance is a good example of "at most neutral" that I wouldn't call a nullread).

5) MrBuddyLee
-- Been making a lot of good arguments recently, especially ones that tend to conclude that people are town. When combined with masons, this doesn't leave too many scum candidates left. Seems like an odd thing to do for scum. Also had STD-MBL very unlikely, and this holds up after a reread.

15) Albert B. Rampage
- Willing to buy for now his claim that he's not that good of an actor.

16) Green Crayons
- Generally pro-town the first time through, and rereading solidifies this. Not particularly anti-STD or LML, but is there for both at the end.

17) SpyreX (replacing inHimshallibe who replaced Zorblag who replaced Natirasha, who replaced farside22)
- I think Spyrex-STD is very unlikely.

18) VitaminR
- In the end, actually defends STD in what feels like a pretty genuine way. I still have some wariness left over from yesterday, where I was hesitant to believe that both he and CES were both town. It jsut felt to me that the extent to which he whole-heartedly believe CES to be town could only come from (a) being blinded by a scum CES, or (b) being sure since he was scum himself. I'm starting to waver in this belief, however.

20) Yosarian2
- I've had a good townread on him for most of the game, but I'm now questioning my stance that Yos and STD were unlikely to be scumtogether. I could see Yos thinking that there was some amount of balance as scum to being pro-STD but anti-LML on day one. His frustration with ABR was almost certainly genuine, but in the end, alignment-neutral.

21) Bookitty (replacing Seol)
- Leaning town. Her attacks on me have always felt very genuine, and reading Day 1 with her as scum just doesn't feel right, especially how STD discusses voting the two of them. Still, definitely not impossible she could be scum...I always get this nagging feeling I'm not reading her carefully enough.

22) ChannelDelibird (replacing OhGodMyLife who replaced Kublai Khan who replaced Tigris)
- Agreed with the points by MBL, echoing my own feelings. OGML was too genuinely frustrated at the end to be scum. I think I also had slight pro-town reads on both Tigris and KK.

---------------------

Combining these individual reads with likely scumpairings (which I should update, but haven't) leaves me with a reasonably clear ordering.

Very happy to lynch: porochaz
Would not mind lynching: chamber, Yos, VitR
Only if in a pinch: ABR, BooKitty, GC
Generally opposed to lynching: MBL, Spyrex, CDB, masons

Also, poro's last post did nothing for me. I too have been wrong about almost everything this game, but I feel like I've accrued some pro-town points in the process. I feel like all poro's done is attack townies, and that's pretty hard to overcome without something strong in his favor.

Vote: porochaz.

[mathcam]

CDB: I won't try to influence too much of your reading as you get caught up, but two things.

1) Juls, undo, and Sotty are essentially uncontested masons. So, e.g.,

Only one of {mathcam, Sotty} at most is likely to be scum

is pretty certainly true.

2) Interesting that you should derive that opinion on chamber from that list. chamber's placement in that list was exactly what spurred me to take a closer look at him.

[mathcam]

ABR: There is nothing in this game that is bothering me less right now than MBL's vote on you. It definitely bothers me less than that mysterious four minutes between you voting for porochaz and you voting for VitaminR. What exactly happened in that four minutes?

Juls: Nice post! I'm not sure I feel any worse about Yos, but as a self-regulatory mechanism, I appreciate hearing the perspective of someone who didn't get a pro-town read from him on day 1.

[mathcam]

Yos's about-face on Porochaz is the scummiest thing I've seen so far from him this game. Maybe from anyone.

...(Porochaz + mathcam + VitR) or (Poro+ mathcam + CDB)...

Nice setting up the next lynch if Poro flips scum (a situation which you now miraculously seem to find obvious). Tell me again how you think mathcam-porochaz is a plausible scumpair? I believe I've been the most vocal critic of porochaz of the entire game, at times when others (e.g, Yosarian2) had been definitively and repeatedly declaring him obvtown (in the strong sense of the word).

Calling chamber confirmed town is as bad as DGB calling out her perception of ABR being a cop.

If you're scum, Yos, 3713 is the post that lost you the game.

[mathcam]

I believe that once chamber moves back to poro, we're at L-1.

[mathcam]

Well, the situation it evokes is one of Yos and poro being scum together, and Yos reluctantly realizing that despite a full game of running under the radar, the poro lynch is actually quite viable. So he figures he's running out of scumbuddies, and has to play his cards pretty carefully, dissuading the poro bandwagon as long as he feasibly can before it's inevitable, at which point he has to whole-heartedly be in support of it. So while he starts off eager to propose alternative lynches ("Sure, poro is one option, but you know, I was just thinking that there's

also

a mathcam over there...amirite?), he quickly converts to looking like he wasn't opposed to the lynch via a flimsy excuse ("Sure, I always knew poro was scum, was just trying for a better information lynch"), intense buddying ("Hey, obvtown buddies! No way I'd vote for you!") and threatening (e.g., "the only way poro is town is if you're scum").

None of this suspicion makes a ton of sense if poro is town (it'd be easier for Yosscum to play it being opposed to the poro lynch than the rigamarole he actually did), so from my perspective it doesn't make sense to go after Yos first. That said, there really is a lot that doesn't feel right about the last few posts from Yos. He's moved up to my #2 scumminess slot.

[mathcam]

Really, ABR?

[mathcam]

I mean, especally this paragraph:

You mean, the paragraph in which I attacked you? Funny that that would give you pause.

That, frankly, just makes it sound to me like mathcam is scum, possibly scum with porochaz.

I had the courtesy of detailing

how

your posting evoked my Yos-poro-scum-radar. All you've got is "it sounds like"?

But all day, his posting has been really bad. Taking seriously the idea that I'm scum with VitR, trying to manipulate the masons, ect.

"It's not impossible" is a bit shy of "taking seriously," but regardless, I'd consider any scumpairing that had an argument to back it up. Trying to manipulate the masons? By saying "Nice post!" Or am I missing the substantive part of your argument. "ect"? Yeah, nice way to make it look like 2 tremendously trivial acts are part of a great conspiracy of scummy things I've done.

You didn't defend me against MBL's terrible vote, what did you expect?

Fair point.

His comment on page 149 about how he's been going after porochaz for most of the game gives me pause. But, honestly, if that does mean that mathcam and porochaz aren't scum together, then out of the pair, it's mathcam who looks worse.

Okay, do tell. Why did that give you pause? Because you think it's false? Or because of how I brought it up? Note that it was in response to your "theory" that porochaz and I are scum together, and I can't honestly believe you think that's likely.

[mathcam]

Alright, fair enough. This situation is pretty amusing.

[mathcam]

CDB: Dude. I totally would've posted that if I had had it when ABR voted me. Kudos.

ABR: Nah, let's do poro today.

[mathcam]

ABR: I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but I'm starting to question your sanity. Why wouldn't a person so ravenously craving a lynch not keep their vote on porochaz, especially one who had quite willingly declared porochaz as scum repeatedly in the last couple of days? Or, barring that, why not at least justify your spasmodic vote switches in the hopes of getting other people to join you? Perhaps there was another instance in which I or CDB failed to defend your honor, thereby earning your vote?

I haven't put ABR in my scummy pile in a long time, but at this point, it's starting to feel less like "town ABR desperate to lynch" and more like "ABR is realizing he's looking pro-town via his desperation and is intentionally trying to foster that appearance."

Juls: I'm quite happy with the rate at which you're catching up. The only thing I would note is that their

is

a detriment in letting the game stagnate, so it is a matter of weighing pros and cons as to how worth it is to delay for you to catch up. That said, I think almost everyone else remaining is in it for the long haul. I'm a little curious about your chamber read (being the last in a long series of players to find him very pro-town, none of which have offered justifications for this stance), but it's not worth doing a write-up for. Maybe tomorrow.

[mathcam]

By the way, one thing I noted and I haven't seen yet. Did anyone ever question/speculate why Shanba was the night 1 kill? I didn't necessarily see a crumb and I didn't think she was a particularly vocal player. It's probably all wifom anyway but I'm just curious if anyone even looked at it.

Only to see if there was a crumb. I suspect it was mostly random, though staying away from anyone who might have been a likely doc protect.

Does anyone REALLY feel like poro is the BEST lynch today or is he just good enough?

Yes. I was slightly anti-poro before today, but PoE ratchets him up significantly, and I feel like today he's been acting like caught scum who can't be bothered to try to extricate himself from his predicament. MBL's comment at the end of the last page (if he were town, he'd recognize his thoughts are valuable even after death) is 100% dead on.

I haven't liked mathcam not seeing me as town and seemingly trying to add more possible mislynches to the pool,

I think I've made it clear that I haven't particularly seen you as scum either, and certainly haven't made any moves to add you to a lynching pool. I just don't see what other people are seeing when they're so definitively declaring you town. Do you? To me, you've been active but unassuming, engaging and contributing to discussions but rarely sticking your neck out on a stance. Do you think people see you as incapable of pulling that off as scum?

[mathcam]

Well, to be fair, I

was

trying to argue with Juls about it, and you said you didn't like it. But whatevs, this is a distraction from lynching poro, so never mind.

[mathcam]

I haven't put ABR in my scummy pile in a long time, but at this point, it's starting to feel less like "town ABR desperate to lynch" and more like "ABR is realizing he's looking pro-town via his desperation and is intentionally trying to foster that appearance."

Yeah, this is bad. Stop this. ABR is town and I feel his pain. I would love to have more lynching and less twiddling thumbs. This just makes my skin crawl.

Can you explain what is changing your mind towards him being more scummy now?

I think we all feel the pain that you're describing...but have you seen ABR's posts? I think a quick look at ABR's last 20 posts before my sentence that you quoted, it will show what appears to be a schizophrenic voting frenzy which actively works against his professed goal of getting a lynch as quickly as possible. He knows he's gotten a lot of credit for appearing so genuinely frustrated with various aspects of this game -- this spat of posts was the first time it actually felt somewhat forced to me, cultivating exactly that appearance. Also note that his jumping around all over the place makes it very hard to tie him to any scum once they're revealed, so this is a pretty good scum ploy as well. I'm not saying he's ratcheted to the top of my scum list, but it's the first time in a while it's entered my consciousness to question his townliness.

I think Yos makes a lot of sense as scum if Poro flips scum. I'd say lynch Poro first and see. If Poro flips scum, I'll be on Yos like white on rice. If Poro flips town, I might actually go read VitR vs. Yos. That said, no shed tears if Yos is the target for today -- I think he's probably the player I'm most curious about, and boy would we get some interesting information.

[mathcam]

I didn't realize we were so close to deadline. Assuming neither the mathcam nor CDB wagons receive tremendous upswellings in the next few hours, we're down to Poro and Yos. Assuming they vote for each other, our new unofficial vote count would be:

Yosarian2 (6) -- Juls, Albert B. Rampage, chamber, VitR, MBL, Poro
Porochaz (5) -- mathcam, Sotty7, Boo, Green Crayons, Yos

Not voting for either: ChannelDelibird, undo, Spyrex

CDB, undo, and Spyrex should chime in quick if they want a say in where the day ends up.

[mathcam]

Huh, this is...interesting.

I think Yos makes a lot of sense as scum if Poro flips scum. I'd say lynch Poro first and see. If Poro flips scum, I'll be on Yos like white on rice. If Poro flips town, I might actually go read VitR vs. Yos.

This post doesn't really make sense if Mathcam is scum and porochaz is town, like I was just assuming (literally 15 seconds ago). Something's wrong here.

Funny, I made that exact point in a previous post:

None of this suspicion makes a ton of sense if poro is town (it'd be easier for Yosscum to play it being opposed to the poro lynch than the rigamarole he actually did), so from my perspective it doesn't make sense to go after Yos first.

and it didn't seem to draw Yos's attention then. This newfound revelation of his seems a little desperate/forced.

I also don't like Yos's ignoring of 3999: A town Yos would recognize the benefits of producing such a list, a scum Yos (a) doesn't want to give away too much if he dies, (b) doesn't want to throw his buddies under a bus as we approach endgame, and (c) doesn't want to let the town think "Okay, now that we have his list, we can lynch him and go from there."

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with this lynch.

Unvote: Poro, Vote: Yos2.

[mathcam]

Vote: porochaz.

[mathcam]

I'll sheep Juls on this.

Unvote, vote Yosarian

This looks really bad in hindsight.

[mathcam]

Oh. My bad then.

[mathcam]

I hammered because (a) there were less than 24 hours left until deadline and the town had expressed a clear preference for that lynch over the poro lynch, and (b) after a game full of me actively thinking Yos was town, I had last-minute psyched myself up into thinking Yos was scum, and got eager to know for sure. I probably could've waited a few more hours, but the Yoslynch was pretty inevitable at that point.

There may be 2 in CDB, Poro, math

I don't disagree. Still, poro first, then we re-evaluate.

[mathcam]

Interesting. How did porochaz disappear from that list?

[mathcam]

Do you think ABR is scum, mathcam?

No. But it's up in the air enough that if we get down to say, a 5-player lynch or lose scenario, he's definitely not getting a free pass from me.

undo:

a) You've seen me "go after" ABR in this game. That was not me going after ABR by a far stretch.

b) I disagree with that characterization entirely, but I'm not sure there's much either of us could say here to sway the other. The

reason

for the hammer was the position of the game -- the post in which I hammered only explained why I was starting to feel better about our hit chances of hitting scum with a Yos lynch. I don't see anything unnatural or half-assed about those justifications, but I concede they fall short of a compelling argument (which they were never intended to be).

[mathcam]

...you guys would be lynching Prozac whether or not I had caught up in tim... That absolutely should be corrected Today, and I will be looking back to see where the key derailments of that wagon were.

Gotta say this was definitely a factor:

I'll iso Prozac tomorrow to be sure but I'll probably be voting for him then.

One more vote could've really made the difference.

[mathcam]

Mathcam, any updates to this post?

Not much, at least not without updating the list of removed pairings (which is a little dangerous). One notable thing is that in

every

large set of possible scum together, there appears the names Porochaz, Spyrex, and CDB. The significance of this stat is at least slightly dubious because there are sets like {Poro, Spyrex, CDB, Chamber, MBL, ABR} which have six people in it all not ruled out as scumpairs, but is obviously too large to be our scum team, and is actually so large as to include two different scum teams (Poro, Spyrex, CDB) or (Chamber, MBL, ABR).

Actually, now that you got met looking at this again, the output definitely seems to be clumping people together. I haven't totally grokked the significance of this, but here are some sets which I think appear to have very close ties, based on the frequency with which they appear together in large possible scumsets:

{Poro, Spyrex, CDB} <-- Again, the strongest connection.
{chamber, mathcam, GC, VitR}
{chamber, ABR, GC}
{chamber, MBL, mathcam, VitR}
{GC, VitR, Boo}
{ABR, GC, Boo}
{MBL, VitR, Boo}
{MBL, ABR, VitR, Boo}

I feel like I could fill several paragraphs with caveats about these results. To be brief, I'll just emphasize (1) these don't include any new scumpair eliminations since the original list, (2) this does not take into account any individual actions (e.g., Spyrex not being scum with STD), (3) The above list doesn't include Poro, Spyrex, or CDB in any of the other sets because they were in every single large set, and wanted to see what was left without them, so don't take their presence in one set to mean anything, and (4) I'm not actually confident that there's anything significant about these sets. Still, if the remaining scum happens to be one of those sets, I shall take pride in this later.

Boo: I was just a tad anti-town porochaz for most of the game (mostly due to an adverse reaction to how many other people seemed to think he was town), but yesterday he came across really poorly. I think both GC and I made some comments to that effect in previous posts. I'd put him at .... 60% scum? I'll have to get back to you on VitR -- my mental position dates back to when I thought one of CES/VitR was certainly scum, and is sorely in need of an updating. Since so many of his posts have been fighting with Yos that I've basically ignored, I haven't had much to update with. I don't think the fact that Yos flipped town reveals particularly much about VitR, though -- it seems clear to me that they were genuinely frustrated with each other, independent of alignment.

[mathcam]

I agree with VitR about CDB. As far as pairings go, CDB and Poro are on equal footing. But CDB has given off some fairly believable pro-town vibes, whereas I haven't felt that even once coming out of poro.

[mathcam]

Two quick thoughts:

a) I'm a little impressed with poro for maintaining his stance on ABR.
b) When

I

insinuate I don't find ABR 100% town, I feel like I unleash a hornet's nest. Why are those people so quiet when poro does it? Especially you, ABR.

[mathcam]

Then there is the whole cam-scumputer, which has striked me as odd, considering his stance against DGB and her scumputer. Especially because this seems to be based on his opinion more than anything else and is presentic scientifically.

To me, the difference is that I attacked DGB's scumputer because I isolated and demonstrated specific flaws in her system which she refused to acknowledge. I feel like I've done a pretty reasonable job of putting out all the caveats of potential confusion that came with my results. There is no perfect algorithm for finding scum (and maybe not even a "pretty good" one), but as long as you present verifiable information and are careful about how you use it, I'm all for it. I agree that opinions went into mine via scum-pair elimination (and I was upfront about it), but still feel the results contribute non-negligible information. Of course, anyone else is free to disagree with their significance.

I don't have much in response to your other points. I agree my case against you is minimal, though I'd counter that this was because you managed to successfully avoid having anywhere near the density of serious interactions with other players that most of the rest of us did. There's just not that much there.

The game is stalling. I know for myself, I keep thinking about the boatload of effort it would be to

really

catch up and get dissuaded. My preference would be to do another reasonably fast lynch or two, hope we get at least one scum, and then really buckle down and hash it out from there. I'd still prefer Poro over others, and am a little confused as to how yesterday's poro-wagon members seem to have mysteriously vanished. (As a side bonus, I also like it when ABR doesn't get his way.) That said, I will (like yesterday -- ahhem) defer to majority opinion if CDB is the choice.

[mathcam]

I realize you don't want to dive into discussion, but I thought you were pretty with us yesterday in thinking that poro was likely scum. A quick look at your recent ISO certainly has you not shying away from declaring him as such. Since then, the only thing he's done is attacked you and ended up on the Yoswagon? Could you explain how he's entirely left your set of lynchable candidates?

[mathcam]

I'm not sure I agree, but fine. CDB-Poro is up there for most likely scumpairs for me.

Unvote, Vote: CDB.

Maybe votecount?

[mathcam]

@cam

, you posted this a while back:

MBL: Been making a lot of good arguments recently, especially ones that tend to conclude that people are town.

Which arguments that I made did you find "good", and by good, did you mean "convincing"?

I don't necessarily mean "convincing" in the sense that you've convinced me to change my mind -- maybe better would be "not obviously refuted." They might be extremely minor but legitimate points. And to be honest, I don't think I can cite which arguments I thought were convincing at the time, though if we assume my mindset now is reasonably close to what it was then, I can respond:

• 1) "KK significantly townish": I'm not sure I'd agree with significantly, at least when it comes to 3550, but you make two good points. Still, it's probably easy to find arguments of that caliber for any scum in the game. (STD would have had several such). But I found 3598 (summary of KK/OGML play) pretty convincing -- I found OGML's frustration with the game very genuine, in a pro-town setting.
  2) "Poro, GC and Boo hypothetical town because STD went after a wagon with himself, LML, Tigris, and those three on it. Would he really draw attention to a wagon heavy with scum?" That seems a pretty minor argument to clear three people, no? I certainly think STD is capable of that, though I admit I'm responding to this in the abstract, and haven't actually chased down the posts. If you feel strongly about this argument, let me know (preferrably with a post number to get started on).
  3) "* cam/SSK for the way LML seemed ashamed to be caught on the SSKwagon." 100% brilliant and unquestionable detective work.
  4) Completely agree on Spyrex vs. STD. I ruled them out as a possible scumpair well before STD flipped. For the record, the STD pairs I ruled out were Spyrex, MBL, Yos, and DGB. I still feel pretty good about those (despite my over-riding this instinct and voting for Yos).
  

I'm ashamed you've caught me voting for CDB despite not finding him scummiest. He's a lurker lynch, and I'd much rather be lynching porochaz. But I also want progress on the game, and don't want the game to endure another replacement. What do

you

want to do?

[mathcam]

Ok, it hasn't really been talked about and I want to puzzle this out because it may crack a nugget open.

Look at how long yesterday had pressure for a poro wagon versus how quickly the yos wagon grew. That is enough to make me want poro lynched.

But, poro-scum sees today with a CDB wagon and pushes still on ABR? That seems suicidal.

I completely agree -- hence my post about being impressed with poro for choosing that particular route. I think the explanation that makes the most sense is that poro knew that most of his other choices would look opportunistic, and went with something that had shock value in order to give everyone pause. I think it's a pretty smart play as scum.

While we're cracking nuts, I want to think a little more about STD at the end of day 3. Two things in particular: First, there's this quote.

I'm willing to vote CES or DGB today, I'll keep checking the thread and I'm going for whichever wagon is going to seem more possible. Gun to my head I'd compromise on Yosarian (not VitR or OGML) but at this point I think we're more likely to find scum in CES and DGB so I'm not going to do that unless I have to.

Interesting that his top three choices are all town -- where does that leave VitR and OGML?

The second think I want to think about is why STD chose to hammer so abruptly. I brought up this point before:

Does the STD-as-scum revelation give any more meaning to the fact that he killed the ABR-Yos fight early when hammering CES? I can't help but wonder if he thought one of his scumbuddies was looking bad, and decided to put an end to it.

But maybe he was just as genuinely uninterested in the fight as the rest of us, scum or not.

[mathcam]

You want a REASON? I'll give you a reason:

Tigris: You are a member of the

secret illuminati

. Your teammates are Kublai Khan, OhGodMyLife, ChannelDelibird, and Thok. You have no special abilities, but would like to infiltrate the town through your successive deaths and rebirths. You win if all members of the team are brought into the game via replacement without anyone suspecting a conspiracy. At this point, everyone else will die.

[mathcam]

Unvote: CDB.

I would like CDB to either:

1) Come back, say he doesn't have the time to contribute to this game, claim, and then we go from there (lynch anyway or hunker down for another replacement process). Or

2) Participate. I know the replacement process has been overwhelming. I don't think you need to have read all 165 pages to be able to meaningfully contribute. What if you just had the last 20 pages to go on? Who would you suspect? An "outsider's" take on the last 20 pages would be helpful.

Please just stop stringing us along. I would be happy to have my vote elsewhere if you would just minimally contribute.

[mathcam]

Boo: That was a joke.

It feels, mathcam, that you are looking for an excuse more than anything. I've made my case on CDB, others have expressed suspicion and made there cases. I deliberately didn't vote so that he could post, but at what point do we start getting ridiculous. I came back and saw the thread a few hours after 4096 was posted. Thats 13 posts in 2 days, it's time to stop prolonging this day any longer.

vote CDB

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're looking to take credit for contributing to the attack against CDB? 'cuz what I get from rereading that post is you wanting to vote for ABR, and coming up with this killer anti-CDB argument:

CDB hasn't done very much scummy

Okay, I cherry-picked a little, but still. And now you wait until there's almost precisely zero hope of CDB escaping the wagon, and you eagerly hop on.

I'll hammer CDB in the morning if he hasn't claimed or contributed by then. Poro-CDB scumpair has promise.

[mathcam]

Lol at

Has it really been 6 days ._. wow I'm bad. let me find something useful to say in a minute.
...
(2 hours pass)
...
I think we just need to lynch cdb.

Alright, I'm out of patience.

Vote: CDB.

[mathcam]

I think so. We'll see...

[mathcam]

Damn GC was a bad call, vig.

Alright, let's kick the day off with an ABR rant about how he knew all along that CDB was town. ABR?

[mathcam]

Preliminary thought going in to the day is that Spyrex, MBL, and mathcam are town (Spyrex and MBL by virtue of not being likely scum with STD). Undo is town. ABR is probably town. That leaves three out of {Chamber, Boo, VitR, porochaz} as scum. Of the four, I'm most confident that porochaz is scum.

Vote: porochaz.

[mathcam]

I did spend some of that time looking for something useful to say, that I had nothing and kept putting it off lead to the later comment after 2h.

Sure. That wasn't meant to be an "attacking LOL", just a regular "LOL."

However, at this point, I feel that its now or never for ABR

That might be true. I can tell you that my ABR read comes from the fact that he's felt so genuinely frustrated with so many parts of the game, to the point that it would be difficult to fake for scum. I will say that it's hard to get

too

much information from his in-game choices, as he relentlessly jumps on almost every bandwagon he can get ahold of, and then vigorously asserts rretroactively that he knew what was going on all along (hence my snide comment toward him at the start of the day). It's hard to give him credit for being on scum bandwagons for this reason.

[mathcam]

I was initially thinking we had one more mason to run through before needing to mass claim, but your point about having time to process a counter-claim is interesting. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could see a situation with two people claiming vig where we couldn't reason out the true claim from the fake one.

[mathcam]

So mathcam, I see you're getting the habit of dropping terrible hammers?

Pretty snarky question coming from a guy with your level of contribution this game. Why don't you tell me how productive

your

vote has been recently?

Porochaz: Could you propose a likely scumteam with ABR on it?

VitR: I honestly don't see what's even slightly dodgy about either of those hammers. Your vote seems ... convenient.

[mathcam]

Along with the unnecessarily unpleasant response to undo about what I thought was a pretty reasonable comment about the hammers

Aww, come on, he started it. In any case, I'm pretty confident that if undo didn't have mason cover, he'd have been lynched long long ago. By actions alone, he has been the scummiest player by far to me. I don't remember your comments to undo saying the same thing, but it's not like it was a big secret. As scum, there's no incentive for me to discredit undo. Depending on whether or not we mass claim, undo's going to die tonight anyway.

What I'm not fine with is this baiting and concerted lynch effort against ABR. I can kind of see Porochaz-town doing this given his expressed suspicions of ABR previously. It's mathcam's "convince me" without putting in any effort himself to see if ABR is actually scum that is pinging my scumdar.

Hm? I have ABR as probably pro-town in my book. If someone feels differently, they have to put forward a case and convince not just me, but everyone (or a majority).

I've been giving you a pass for way too long because I've been getting this careful pro-town vibe from you, but neither of those hammers fit that profile at all.

I agree with that statement, but some times, a desire to progress with the game takes precedence over being careful, especially when the result of the lynch is inevitable. It seems you're putting a lot of weight on

my

vote on those wagons, ignoring the fact that they're just the last of many. Both of those hammers were indeed rather forced, as you'll note I expressed skepticism of both of those wagons shortly before pulling the trigger, but my desire to move on with the game overrode my desire to delay an inevitable lynch by letting someone else drop the hammer.

[mathcam]

Unvote: porochaz.

I gotta think about this. Also, I'd like to hear from some more people I don't think are 75% scum.

[mathcam]

Probably pro-town. He's probably pro-town for that reason (he genuinely felt frustrated), and probably for some PoE reasons that I haven't completely thought through, but not certainly pro-town for that other reason (it's hard giving him credit for his presence on various bandwagons). Probably pro-town means he won't get my vote unless something serious changes -- for example, that porochaz puts together a coherent attack on him.

[mathcam]

I still don't see the anti-townness of the behavior, so I don't believe I need an excuse for anything. The comparison was only in response to what I perceived as an unnecessarily snarky tone. If Boo's reading of your tone was more in alignment with its intent than was mine, then I apologize for an overly hostile response.

[mathcam]

Okay, I've been rereading a lot of the game, and I feel convinced that the best thing for us now is a mass claim, and not just for the sake of doing something (which, you know, would also be nice.)

Vanilla Townie.

[mathcam]

Well, I'm definitely interested in what MBL has to say.

[mathcam]

This massclaim was only useful for scum.

How so? And it's not done yet.

[mathcam]

Maybe we could modprod MBL?