In post 41, Psyche wrote:If "#123 is p town, #321 is p scum" can achieve the same results as "cogent, traceable town-minded thought process", then they're both equally inane by at least one standard.
My contention is that the former makes it easier for scum to hide, and the latter makes it harder. I have not seen evidence that they produce/achieve the same results, nor would I expect to.
But you don't seem to be arguing that the two are better approach to finding scum.
Correct.
Instead, you seem to be arguing that scum and town are more obvious when everyone engages in the latter rather than the former. That's cool, but if you can't credibly show people that they will lynch scum more often if they take the time to engage in these "cogent, traceable town-minded thought process", I don't see how you can expect people who do agree to play the game your way to do so in a manner that looks genuine.
Well, can you show anyone that they can credibly lynch scum more often if they just go "psyche is p town" over and over?
I can point to at least one anecdotal bit of evidence, which is Wisdom and maybe one or two others in Mastin's recently completed bastard Large Theme. Wisdom didn't display an ounce of what I would call "a town thought process" but for reasons passing understanding, others were townreading that slot. Myself and a few others fought a huge uphill battle to get Wisdom lynched, often against misguided townies.
Titus, on the other hand, did a really good job of presenting argumentation with seemingly-consistent reasonings and might have won the game. She certainly had me fooled.
IMHO this reinforces my point: people shouldn't give a person towncred for just making declarative statements without providing the accompanying reasoning or thought process.
It's as if you're telling some dude to participate in a religious ceremony that he doesn't believe in, all while planning to kill him if it doesn't look like he's doing it with conviction. Ridiculous.
I don't really think that that's an accurate characterisation of what's going on here. I'd say it's more akin to telling some dude that vaccines don't cause autism, but he and a huge majority of others have been taken in by some kind of popular wisdom, and it's dragging everyone down into a pit where intellectual mediocrity is not only accepted but expected and cherished.
In post 43, Psyche wrote:I do believe that there are good cases, and good ways to build cases.
But I also think that readiness to make posts like "#123 is p town, #321 is p scum" comes from decisions by individual players about the relative effectiveness of strategies for finding scum. Would the average player find scum more reliably if he engaged in some demonstrably cogent, traceable town-minded thought process rather than use his gut when reading a thread? I really doubt it. I really do.
It's not just about finding scum. It's also about being read as town so that others can come to the same conclusions as you. Purposely making yourself look scummy by actively refusing to provide a thought process for others to follow is just lazy.
I think you're misunderstanding my point.
And I think part of the reason is because our only guidance on what goes into a good case is a wiki of lame scumtells.
Speak for yourself. I find "tells" to be highly overrated.
One's self-meta cannot be known without invalidating it.