Okay. My understanding of your (and I guess Bro's) argument is thus:
Playing by "gut" is better because scum can't fabricate plausible cases to look town or get a mislynch
Requiring people to actually show traces of a thought process makes the playing field tilted in favour of strong communicators
Scum can post "cases" that are fabricated, therefore cases should never be used
I don't think either of us has these positions.
I'm saying that encouraging a dumbed-down style of play where everyone just goes "psyche is p scummy for #404" but never is held accountable for why hypothetical post #404 is actually scummy is analogous to the growing anti-intellectualism movement in America and elsewhere in society.
I mean, suppose you have a 10 player game where every single player just does what BROseidon suggests and acts completely illogical, voting entirely on gut instinct. Is there any meaningful way such a game would be different than playing "single player" against 9 bots?
I think you're picking at a strawman. No gut player refuses to be held accountable for their votes. No gut player solely goes "psyche is p scummy for #404" and stops there, only repeating themselves. No gut player eschews "logic". And no one is saying that people should be encouraged to be gut players.
Case players justify their votes with beliefs about how scum behave and push lynches by explaining and arguing for those beliefs.
Gut players justify their votes with affective reactions and push lynches by getting other players to experience those same reactions.
That's the key difference and there is no black-and-white difference in their validity as approaches to scumhunting.
They both demonstrably work.
And you can discern the townhood of both by examining how convincingly they justify, build, and then organize the town around their reads.
Saying "I have this read" over and over again is not how anyone plays mafia.
When someone has a gut read and you tell them to pretend that it's not a gut read so that you can read them more easily (which is what your anti-gut position does), you're telling them to lie about the basis of their read and hoping to pull out a idea of their alliance from it. I think that's really silly.
Here's my position:
The idea that players are undiscernable black boxes when they justify their votes with a gut read is false. The idea that players are miles better scumhunters when they use what you characterize as logic to motivate their votes is false. The idea that players (like titus) should accrue townreads because they post plausible-sounding cases from time to time is also false. The idea that gut readers cannot coherently communicate and advocate for the wagons they lead is false. The idea that people who predominantly use gut reads are "inane" and people who don't are superior players - well that's just in bad taste.
I don't think we should move to a primarily case or gut based method. Everyone should just try to figure it out for themselves.
