The Importance of Transparency, Cooperation & Effort as Town

[Infinity 324]

You should put effort into mafia (more than some players in the current meta are doing) but it doesn't have to be a super analytical case-posting style.

[Infinity 324]

My way, no one wins the game for being better at arguing or rhetoric.

This is literally the core of the game.

People disagree with you, you are not right and they are not wrong

For me mafia is a game of psychology, of trying to get into people's heads. But using more empirical processes isn't wrong, and even I use them sometimes--they're just different ways to play the game.

[Psyche]

Cases matter because the 'current site meta' (meant in a loose sense) requires you to post reasons to lynch people. In a universe where it didn't I would never post them.

Rationally speaking if you want to lynch someone it's best to explain why. Else this game would simply be a bunch of random votes. Without explanation there wouldn't be scum-hunting and town reads to form off content, only VCA.

There's more to the game than analyzing reads and VCA and I think that those are in many ways the least useful part of the game because skilled players fool them easily.

but skilled players don't fool guts?

[Infinity 324]

Also i completely disagree that the responsibility of a mislynch wholly lies on those pursuing it. It's a mix, and if someone isn't actually playing properly the fault can very much be mostly theirs. I've never said we should only work with cases, ideally everyone would be doing so. That's not the case right now, currently we have to damage control those not pulling their weight. That doesn't mean we should just accept that fact, the contrary it's true: we should strive for the ideal.

Town's main job is not to look town, town's main job is to find scum. Therefore, more of the responsibility than not lies on the mislynchers.

[Infinity 324]

Cases matter because the 'current site meta' (meant in a loose sense) requires you to post reasons to lynch people. In a universe where it didn't I would never post them.

Rationally speaking if you want to lynch someone it's best to explain why. Else this game would simply be a bunch of random votes. Without explanation there wouldn't be scum-hunting and town reads to form off content, only VCA.

There's more to the game than analyzing reads and VCA and I think that those are in many ways the least useful part of the game because skilled players fool them easily.

but skilled players don't fool guts?

Well how would you go about fooling a gut of a player you don't know?

It's not impossible, but it's a lot harder.

[Accountant]

First of all, Infinity, how do you think a gut read forms? I mean on a cognitive level, how does your brain send the gut signals to you?

Well obviously there's some way it happens. And sometimes you can find that way. But sometimes you can't, and that doesn't mean you throw the read in the trash.

If I can't find the way, why should I have any reason to trust the read? Isn't it akin to a suspicious stranger knocking on my door?

[Infinity 324]

If your gut reads have been accurate in the past, then yeah you have a reason to trust the read. If they haven't, you don't.

[Accountant]

If your gut reads have been accurate in the past, then yeah you have a reason to trust the read. If they haven't, you don't.

Here's the way I see it.

Your mind is your property. There's theoretically nothing that you should be unable to uncover the root of inside your mind, because, y'know, it's your mind. In this manner, there should be no such thing as an unexplainable gut read. All gut reads should be able to be transformed into accurate, explained reads, which are better beacuse more people will follow you.

[Psyche]

there's nothing to gut reads
there is essentially nothing to them, and people only have faith in them because they have a memory bias, keeping in mind times their gut reads were successful and either forgetting or blaming others for gut reads that weren't; they have self-serving biases, diagnosticity biases, and so forth
just like they take their intuition for granted in a random game, they also take for granted their intuitions about their play across many games
loads of scientific studies, loads, have found that most people are confident in their ability to tell if others are lying; in fact, only a few people out of a thousand are "wizards", reliably good at lie detection, many fewer than the number of people who take their gut reads seriously on this site

the thing about gut reads, the reason it's not true that any one person's gut reads are

directionally

different from another persons, is that there isn't really any way to sharpen them
however good your gut reads are, that's how good they'll always be
a basic conclusion of learning theory is that in general skill improvement only comes through deliberate practice
deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance; it's different from work, play and simple repetition of a task because it's very introspective, constantly attentive to the relationship between cognitive/psychomotor activities and results
since gut reads are just uncritical summations of sentiment about a player, by definition drawn upon with naivete about how the reads arose, they necessarily exclude the possibility of deliberate practice, and thus of improvement at the game more broadly, except to the extent that gut reads aren't universally relied on

similarly, it's just as easy to fool the gut of a player you don't know as it is to fool that of a player you do
since gut reads by definition don't improve with experience, they're hardly ever

directionally

different between different people
they might be pinged by different kinds of posts, but on average they're still about the same in accuracy

i don't have any illusions that most case-based play is terrible
after all, i've spent a lot of time finding that a lot of the rationales people use for lynching scum are statistically mediocre
but the difference between terrible case-based play and gut-based play is that people who stick to the latter are incorrigible:
they have no path to self-improvement besides random chance

[Psyche]

If your gut reads have been accurate in the past, then yeah you have a reason to trust the read. If they haven't, you don't.

most people who think their gut reads are more accurate than not have deceived themselves

[Infinity 324]

If your gut reads have been accurate in the past, then yeah you have a reason to trust the read. If they haven't, you don't.

Here's the way I see it.

Your mind is your property. There's theoretically nothing that you should be unable to uncover the root of inside your mind, because, y'know, it's your mind. In this manner, there should be no such thing as an unexplainable gut read. All gut reads should be able to be transformed into accurate, explained reads, which are better beacuse more people will follow you.

Theoretically, I agree with you. But sometimes it's impractically difficult to do that.

[Psyche]

Accountant's wrong, theoretically. Most of what happens in the brain, especially how things happen in the brain, aren't consciously inspectable. That's, uh, why introspectionism is no longer a thing in psych or neuro.

[Infinity 324]

I disagree strongly that gut reads don't improve with experience. The way your intuition operates is based off of past experiences.

I'm not denying that some people overestimate the strength of their gut, or (especially) take premature gut reads and pretend they're super confident reads

But I think the average person's gut is better than random.

[Psyche]

I disagree strongly that gut reads don't improve with experience. The way your intuition operates is based off of past experiences.

You think you know how your intuition operates? That goes against a lot of what you've already said in the thread.

[Psyche]

But I think the average person's gut is better than random.

6%

[Psyche]

I could probably generate a game to test how close the actual efficacy of your reads are to what you think they are.
Furthermore, you could probably play the game repeatedly to see if your reads improve at the rate you think they do.
Under what conditions do you think a working gut read is applied? Does it require close reading of a post, or does it only need skimming? Of an iso or of a whole game?

[Infinity 324]

I disagree strongly that gut reads don't improve with experience. The way your intuition operates is based off of past experiences.

You think you know how your intuition operates? That goes against a lot of what you've already said in the thread.

Well on a general level, yes. But in each specific case, not necessarily.

Also I'm not saying I always have gut reads I can't explain. But sometimes that situation pops up, and in that situation I don't discount my gut read.

[Infinity 324]

I could probably generate a game to test how close the actual efficacy of your reads are to what you think they are.
Furthermore, you could probably play the game repeatedly to see if your reads improve at the rate you think they do.
Under what conditions do you think a working gut read is applied? Does it require close reading of a post, or does it only need skimming? Of an iso or of a whole game?

It really depends. What I tend to do is just check my gut periodically when reading people's posts. Sometimes I'll have a strong gut reaction, sometimes a weak gut reaction and sometimes no reaction. I also have to take into account the number of posts I read by each player and also how well I know that player's meta. Rarely, I'll get gut reads on people within their first few posts; usually I need a significant sample, and sometimes even that won't give me anything.

It's probably different for each player though.

[Accountant]

Accountant's wrong, theoretically. Most of what happens in the brain, especially how things happen in the brain, aren't consciously inspectable. That's, uh, why introspectionism is no longer a thing in psych or neuro.

You're positing that gut reads happen in the part of the brain that isn't consciously inspectable?

[Psyche]

With a few exceptions, basically all of our introspections are incomplete or wholly inaccurate.

[Accountant]

Oh. I didnt know that

[Infinity 324]

Psyche will disagree with me here, but I think that's the reason (aside from random chance) that people can be right for the wrong reasons.

[Katsuki]

Gut reads are everything and the only true way of scumhunting.

[Postie]

There are different

kinds

of gutreads, Psyche. There's nebulous "hunches" (and if we were talking only about these I would agree with everything you've said), and then there's the kind of gut feelings that can be categorised and compared.
If you gave me bunch of ISOs and asked me to tell you about

all

the gutreads I got on them, I would expect my accuracy to be utter trash. If you asked me to just record the gutreads I was confident meant something? Completely different story.

[Infinity 324]

That's related to what I was trying to say

Not all gut reads mean a lot about someone's alignment, but the ones that do can be very accurate

The problem is when people confuse those.