Normal 10 (Intrigue Mafia) - Deadline: March 18th 11am.

[mathcam]

Yes, yes, yes! Take that, canucks. Off to another undefeated season here in Uptown.

On a more serious note, we have things to discuss.

First, we should discuss (and this applies at least to my neighborhood, but other people are welcome to listen in) whether or not we should discuss who we're going to try to elect in the daytime. We wouldn't want to make clear targets for the mafia...thereby also leaving us without representation for the day. Maybe we can find a way to communicate in secret?

Second, I wonder if it wouldn't be the smartest play to keep the neighborhoods balanced in terms of numbers...it's very unclear to me what kind of special roles are out there. It seems quite likely to me that the strength of some mafia member/team might depend highly on how large their neighborhood is. Consequently, I'm going to vote somewhat non-randomly (see below) from one of the two neighborhoods with 8 people.

Third, the distribution of people into the various neighborhoods looks highly non-random to me, though I might just be paranoid. Look at the abundance of "Po" and "D" names in East-Side, and "M" names in Uptown. This might suggest something in terms of distribution of roles. For example, given that it's non-random, there's a good chance that the mafia are fairly evenly distributed between the neighborhoods. Specifically, it appears to me that perhaps Doomcow was originally in East-Side, when the names were organized alphabetically, but that he was moved to enact some kind of balance of mafia. Of course, this is just a wild theory and should be taken with several grains of salt, though I believe it's better than random.

Vote: Doomcow

Fourth, this is the first time I've been the first non-moderator poster in a thread. This seems like very important information.

Cam

[mathcam]

Sorry, got confused for a second. I'll will now unvote my illegal vote for DoomCow and write what I meant to write:

FOS: DoomCow

Jeep, I'm leaning toward your second option of one bigger mafia and some SK's out there, but I"m not sure. I kind of feel like the sports pages were comic relief with no bearing on the game, though I could very well be wrong.

Cam

[mathcam]

mathcam: Why was it illegal to vote Doomcow?

I guess I was confused. Cuban's original post made it sound to me like the only thing that mattered in lynching people was the council's votes, and the townies were there to encourage their representatives to vote in a particular way. That has since been clarified in my mind. I tend to agree with the people in favor of lynching. It seems rare to me that even with the information from the first night the first-day vote is anything but random...why not get a head-start? It's like playing chess and passing on the first move. Therefor,

Vote: DoomCow

Am I alone in thinking the distribution of the names is suspicious? It seems clear that it was originally alphabetical, and then modified to make sure that something (likely mafia, in my mind) were equally distributed.

Cam

[mathcam]

Oh, right. Voting tonight. Well, first:

I concur with dourgrim, voting based on experience can be very dangerous if these experienced players all turn out to be scum.

Not that I necessarily advocate this plan, but I think this is faulty reasoning behind rejecting it. If people we end up voting for (by random or by experience of however) turn out to be scum, then it's very dangerous. The extra danger incurred by having it be experienced mafia on the council is precisely offset by the extra good inherent with having experienced townies on the council.

I don't understand the fixed but random plan...aren't we just setting up that person to be killed at night? If we do that in all 4 neighborhood, there's a good chance that at least one of them will be mafia, and if there are two mafia clans acting, they could kill off 2 other councilmembers, giving the mafia at least 50% of the voting power on the council. That would be horrible. Of course, the random vote is little better, allowing for the possibility of mafia co-voting to get their guy elected. Therefore, I propose the following voting plan:

Theare are almost certainly some people who know of other innocents, in my mind. We could have everyone vote randomly except those who know a collection of innocents. Anyone who knows any innocents in their neighborhood should vote for the first alphabetical name in that list. Thoughts?

Cam

[mathcam]

Ahh...I think I have an even better plan on how to vote. The problem with having one person to vote for (i.e. rnadom fixed person) was they would die over night and we lose our leadership. The problem with having everyone to vote for (i.e. random votes) was that the mafia could get essentially pick who they wanted. Consequently, our optimal play must be somewhere in the middle between 1 and all. I suggest each neighborhood picks three people at random during the day, and then everyone vote for one of them (randomly) at night. The mafia will have a chance at killing the prospective council member, granted, but only with a 1/3 chance. Also, the mafia will not have enough votes to counter-bandwagon any particular neighborhood. The one problem, of course, is that it would be still be easy for mafia get elected...if a mafia is any of the three nominated in a particular district, then there's a decent chance they'll win (approx. 1/3 of the random votes and all the mafia votes). But, of course, this is a concern even if we pick someone at random, and there's a still a very good chance they

won't

win (small sample size implies less even distribution).

So for now,

Council: Tri-random

Cam

[mathcam]

I agree that we should wait until DoomCow gets back before we lynch him (Thanks for the reminder, CS), but my vote will stay until then. I think we shold hold off on picking the three people for tri-random until there's nere consensus that we'll follow it. Second, I think the three people picked (if we decide on this plan) in each neighborhood should be picked randomly by someone not in that neighborhood. We should also maybe decide on a systematic way to pick the three at random that everyone can verify was random (i.e. someone's (maybe Jeep's) earlier stock market plan or something).

Cam

[mathcam]

I keep staring at that list, and the more I look at it, the more I realize that I got it wrong the first time. DoomCow's not the one noticably out of order...it's jeep. It looks like he was deliberately switched in, rather than doomcow deliberately switched out (I base this on the fact that d8p is also in group 1, another "d" name which I didn't notice before...stupid lower-case letters). I'm still not claiming to fully grasp what this means, and I'm sure there will be a scathing reply from jeep trouncing my "logic", but I encourage anyone who believe my argument for DoomCow before to follow me and

Unvote: DoomCow, Vote: jeep

Cam

[mathcam]

Also about name distributions, the odds of having the only three people with a given initial being placed in the same district are something like 54 to 1 against, and of it happening twice in the same district are something like 2500 to 1 against.

Exactly, and that's only the start of it. ambic and Angel Fish are next to each other alphabetically and next to each other in the same district (also the first two alphabetically, and the first two listed), as are Dragon Phoenix and Dragon Slayer, RubberDuck and Saber Kitty, kelvin and leonidas, Corsato and DarkBlade, Nightmare Dragon and NightStalker, etc... In conclusion, there is a

very

strong correlation between having names close to one another and being in the same district. I mean no offense to Cuban Smoker by this, but the lists are most definitely non-random. Maybe he got lazy, or maybe this is an emergent phenomenom based on some aspect of this game. Perhaps he's just messing with us. In any case, I believe that there's information to be gained.

Plus, I think that we gain the

most

information by acting on these suspicions and seeing what they lead to. What are we gain (other than a casing of the long line of inanities) if we lynch RubberDuck? True, he might be mafia, but probably not (just by odds...), and I think mafia more typically play to win than non-mafia.

As to Jeep, I find it very odd that he did not find the ordering of the names at all suspicious. The people immediate surroudning him alphabetically are jadesmar, kelvin, and leonidas, ALL of whom made it in to the west-side. This, and jeep is very out of place in east-side, surrounded by the three "P"s, and four C's and D's. Jeep was placed there for a purpose. Personally, combined with the suspicion mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph, I believe this purpose was to balance the mafia between the neighborhoods. It's possible that it was for another purpose, and if so, at least we gain a lot of information from lynching him....which we can't do from RubberDuck.

I'll leave my vote on Jeep and encourage others to join me (or feel free to find holes in my logic). We just don't gain much from lynching RubberDuck. Maybe his role becomes more useful later on...in any case, I doubt he's mafia.

Cam

[mathcam]

Hmmm....RubberDuck has only posted one-liners in Time Travel Mafia also....maybe he's just annoying. Still....

Cam

[mathcam]

You're right, of course, that my statement is unprovable. I was speaking colloquially. I might be able to buy the "Your argument doesn't mean anything" attack...but the "Hey, there's a chance the lists actually were random" attack just isn't going to cut it....the odds are astronomical. Even if I'm wrong, I'd take those odds any day of the week.

If you have plenty of time on your hands, go for it, but I think this is a red herring.

I do have plenty of time on my hands, unfortunately, so will pursue your counter-proposal. That you chose to attack my argument in the way you did makes me think more and more that you're mafia, however. These sound like the words of an outed mafia.

Cam

[mathcam]

I've heard reference of this lepton's gambit before, but I have no idea what it is. Perhaps you could enlighten me?

1) why it is more likely that CS moved around mafia members only and not useful roles as well?

I'm not sure it's more likely, and I brought up this point myself earliier....I don't know what roles are out there. It's possible that there are no other roles that need to be split up (It doesn't make too much difference if there are two cops in the same neighborhood), but there are almost certainly evil people on the same team, which

do

need to be split up (to dilute a strong voting block). That's why I think it's more likely. Plus, if Jeep had argued "Hey, I have a role that might need to be split up", then that would be one thing. Instead, he has tried to argue a possible non-randomness of the lists and tried to guilt me into backtracking:

mathcam, I guess I want to give CS more credit as a mod than you do...

I guess this is true...I think CS is a great mod and has great games, but I certainly wouldn't put it past him (or anyone) to not take the time to truly randomize the neighborhood placements. I hope he takes no offense to any of my posts.

2) how many maifa members and SK's are present in the game?

I'm not sure why you think I know this. I would guess that there is/are serial killer roles, but as to one or two mafia clans, I have no idea....maybe 4-7 total mafia, depending on if they have special abilities or not?

I'll make it easier...explain to me why, with the alphabetically 5, 7, 10, 11, 15, 23, 24, 25 people in one district, you think 15 is more out of place than any of the others.

Mostly because 13, 14, and 16 are all in the same district, as is the case for many other groups of numbers that are close to each other. I don't see how anyone can deny that there was once an alphabetization of the list given the overwhelming evidence, and that the current list was formed by switching a few people around on that list. I'm sorry I didn't reply to that quote earlier...I guess I missed your post or something.

It's very possible that jeep is not mafia, but there's no way in hell that list was randomly generated. That is information, and I think we should use it. If no one else wants to, fine, I'll unvote jeep and vote for RubberDuck, but I think we're missing a huge opportunity. Can someone else comment on thi s issue? I can't believe I'm alone here.

Cam

[mathcam]

So far I haven't come up with anything that I'd even jokingly call order,

I'm not claiming there's an order now, just that it looks like there used to be one before balancing took place.

Plus, you can say "The chances of it coming out like this are 2500 to 1" about anything.

Of course not. I haven't said anything of the sort. There is a distinction, however, between, say, a sequence of 100 coin-tosses in a row that come up heads and a sequence of flips that don't appear to follow a given order. Nonetheless, I suppose the population has weighed in, and I will reluctantly

Unvote: Jeep, Vote: RubberDuck

Cam

[mathcam]

Sorry for the long post...it's almost all quotes.

Also, you could just be throwing numbers around to look more convincing (even if the numbers are right, they could be used just for that).

Right, I'm just saying that I've never thrown around any numbers. I'm just saying the ordering is suspicious. And it is.

Your time would be better spent elsewhere.

I disagree, but fine.

I dont think CS would have made the game so that we could figure out who was bad on day one.

Not intentionally, no. It's impossible for CS to mess up? Now who's playing fast and loose with the laws or probability.

Masons would be a pretty good group to separate.

I didn't know there

were

masons.

you've been looking at the lists more than anyone else and you have no idea how many maifa/SK's/ or any other role are in the game. How can you claim there is rhyme or reason to the placements and not even have a guess within 1 of how many mafia there are.

What? Just because I'm putting some effort into this game and trying to find some better-than-random target for our lynching, I'm to be held responsible because I don't feel like I have a good guess on how many mafia there are? My theory on ordering has very little to do with the actual number of mafia, only their likely distribution between the neighborhoods. I'm sorry my guess is too vague for you...perhaps if other people were discussing the merits of alternative theories we could have come up collectively with a better estimate by now.

Cam

[mathcam]

The village idiot claims seems a little odd....would the village idiot be allowed to claim village idiot? If he's not lying, then it's always in our advantage to load him up with a bunch of votes at the end of the day (say, one less than the number on the person actually being lynched). If he gets to investigate everyone voting for him, then this game is a lock for the town. We systematically get everyone investigated by him, have the doc(s) protect him every night, and anyone who refuses to vote for him, we lynch.

Cam

[mathcam]

Night Stalker, please post soon, not willing to vote yet, but your absense is suspicious...

Annoying, yes. Voteworthy, probably. But suspicious?

We should deicde now-ish the exact formulation for picking the three at random for tri-random. Since it's best to plan ahead, I propose the following: We look at today's closing Dow Jones value. The first three digits (starting from the right) that are not 9 and 0 (and are not repeated) will represent the three people from East-Side and Downtown to be nominated. The first three digits that are not 8, 9, or 0 will represent the three people from Up-town and West-side. For example, if the closing value today were

7126.86

That would give us
Downtown: Ambic, Angel Fish, Green Crayons
East-Side: Corsato, Darkblade, PolarBoy
Uptown: Gaspode, Mackay, SaberKitty, warrior
West-Side: Bobacino, Dourgrim, NightStalker, Tigris

Cam

p.s. Woo! I managed to go a whole post without mentioning the order of the nam...ah, crap!

[mathcam]

Okay, a small refinement is probably in order, but you're probably all going to yell at me for over-complicating the matter. The problem with the plan I just proposed is that there's a significantly better chance that the 7th seed of each neighborhood wiill get selected, simply because 7 will almost assuredly the first number of the DJIA (and if not 7, then 6). To randomize it fully, instead of starting (say, in Uptown) by counting ambic as "1", we look at the last digit of the NasDaq composite (again, skipping bad numbers), and start counting 1 with that person. So if the Nasdaq is 1724.23, then we start counting "1" from CaptainBlicero.

Note that I'm more than willing to do all this myself, and as the plan is completely laid out and the numbers are public and not at all influencable by me, then you can simply verify that I followed this plan later, even if you don't want to spend the time to understand what the heck I'm talking about now.

I really think we should pursue this RubberDuck thing....vote someone to lynch with n votes and give RubberDuck (n-1) votes to maximize his possible utility. I have no idea what his powers are, but it couldn't hurt, right? I'll leave my vote there, and you guys bump someone else up. I have no idea who, though.

Cam

[mathcam]

why not just use the same numbers for all four districts?

I'm certain this is a by-product of me not explaining the algorithm well, but we

are

using the same numbers for all districts. It's just that instead of ambic, Corsato, Gaspode, and Bobacino being counted as number one, in my above scenario we'd have CaptainBlicero, Dragon Phoenix, mathcam, and jadesmar being the start of the counting. Otherwise, the seventh people down on each list have a significantly higher chance of getting picked. I'll post the results in an hour.

Cam

[mathcam]

Oh, and I agree with Werebear...something's definitely weird about the Duck's claim...it seems like Cuban would have forbade him from revealing his role. Otherwise, there's no incentive for him to actually act his role out. He would just instead say "I'm the village idiot. Vote for me so that we can gain power." Maybe every post that mentions his name gives him more power. That seems unlikely, also, or he would have mentioned that. Nonetheless, he's definitely someone we can gain more information from, so

Unvote: RubberDuck

I think we need to pick someone to counter-bandwagon, and I guess there's nothing better going than the people who've been arguing to

Vote: PolarBoy

Cam

[mathcam]

Well, we weren't taking just the cents portion. The way you present is certainly another way of getting numbers, but then we have to wait days. I think the day will go smoother the faster we get the numbers. I'm not sure what you find wrong with my system.

Cam

[mathcam]

Closing data just in:

DJIA, 7524.06
NASDAQ 1271.47

So the numbers of relevance from the DJIA are 6, 4, 2 and from NASDAQ, 7. Your official nominees are:

Downtown:
Werebear, Angel Fish, d8p

East-side:
porro, DarkBlade, DragonSlayer

Up-Town:
Gaspode, mathcam, RubberDuck

West-Side:
Bobacino, jadesmar, Leonidas

I propose the following: People being nominated...vote for yourselves. People not being nominated...If you know that one of the people being nominted in your neighborhood is innocent, vote for them. Otherwise, vote

actually

randomly.

Cam

[mathcam]

I hear what you're saying, Kelvin, but it's a little sketchy to agree on a plan (at least, the vast majority of us did), and follow it through to the stage of picking names, and proposing an alternative plans only once the names have been revealed. Not that this makes me suspicious of you, but I would not be able to now switch plans in good conscience. I will be more than happy to entertain your alternative plan tomorrow...I have a fun role that will necessitate a cold day in hell before it becomes useful.

As for voting, I think it would be silly to lynch RubberDuck. Undoubtedly he's going to have to come out with information tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, etc...We'll be able to tell if he's mafia more quickly than a random joe schmoe. And hey, he might be telling the truth. The reason I'm voting for PolarBoy is that though his original bandwagon was random, he hasn't said anything to clear himself, and frankly, he already had some votes on him. I want to make sure RubberDuck comes in second with a bunch of votes, and PolarBoy was the easiest for me to propel in front of him. A massive bandwagon-switch from PolarBoy to warrior would not be opposed by me.

Kelvin: I don't know too much about politics, but it seems like a political party based on trying to lynch it's own press secretary has some internal issues it needs to work out before proceeding.

Not that I think this side conversation is very important, but the stats issue is not the D's and the P's, but the M's and the P's. It's quite likely that there would be three D's in the same group. But beyond this, the sheer number of people who are next to each other alphabetically and also in the same group is mind-boggling. I look forward to CS's explanation at the end.

Cam

[mathcam]

Angel Fish, d8p, RubberDuck, and Blicero...how about picking between warrior, Polar, and RubberDuck (I recommend one of the former two)?

I didn't understand it and now that I do, it can work, but, as you say, it gives higher likelyhood for some people to be selected.

Just to clarify, this problem (of a higher likelyhood for some people to be selected) was eliminated with the last addition to the algorithm (if we can assume that the stock market is essentially random).

Cam

[mathcam]

Unvote: PolarBoy, Vote: warrior

This has little to do with why I'm voting for you, warrior, but the issue was not how to come up with a random number...that's easily achievable. The point was to come up with a better plan than "Pick someone at random." I think that's been achieved, though there is some disagreement. I agree with Jeep that the first council is not that important....we'll come up with a stronger method tomorrow.

Cam

[mathcam]

That's a very good point, rite...on top of that, even if he's telling the truth, it's not a very important role. The night thing is almost never useful and I think the information aspect of his role is really only helpful if it's information that we get and the mafia don't. The role claim is suspicious, and if he is telling the truth, it does look like he pasted from the mod's PM.

Unvote: warrior, Vote: PolarBoy

Cam

[mathcam]

Hm...it sounds like I should check out this Improbable Role mafia to get a better feel for what's going on.

BTW You do realise that the elected members serve for 3 days don't you (barring death)?

Well, I would say that

realize

would be a little strong...maybe, realized at one point but has since forgotten would be more accurate. Oops. Well, I still plan to vote according to tri-random.

Nonetheless, I think we should kill PolarBoy, either for being mafia or for quoting his role...almost certainly one of the two is true. I think we definitely shouldn't kill RubberDuck, so maybe a couple of you want to unvote him just to make sure?

Cam

[mathcam]

Unvote: PolarBoy Vote: RubberDuck

Yeah, as much as I dislike the notion, PolarBoy is an almost guaranteed Wizard in my mind. No offense to you, PolarBoy, but hopefully the mafia kill him tonight so this problem is out of the way. In the interest of fairness to the mafia, I think any docs out there should not protect PolarBoy. An easy mistake to make, PolarBoy, but it does significantly unbalance the game. I don't want this to look like I'm advocating a punishment for you, just a way to partially correct a wrong.

I cast my above vote to maximize the number of votes on RD as a second-place finisher. I'm not currently convinced by warrior's stance, and am not sure a role claim will change that much...but who knows?

Someone wrote that they weren't trying to hurry the day along. I think we actually

should

hurry the day along. The more roles we force out into the open, the more information the mafia have for their first night. Given the absence of the first night, I kind of feel like the more information exposed (beyond a point), the more helpful to the mafia then to us.

Cam

[mathcam]

Based on my last post, I think I will, for almost the first time ever,

Vote: End Day

Cam

[mathcam]

Typically, 'cino, I think, end day means the player with the most votes dies. I think you're thinking of no lynch.

Cam

[mathcam]

Something about our approach to this game just seems a little weird. We bandwagon people until they reveal their roles, switch to someone else, and repeat. Why don't we just all demand at the beginning that all roles be revealed? We then all have all the information and can pick the most suspicious roles out of there. This is mostly a rhetorical question, but it seems to mirror the approach taken in this game a lot.

I don't find Night Stalker at all suspicious, but then again, I don't find anyone but jeep suspicious. My priority, however, is not getting RD killed, so

Unvote: RubberDuck Vote: Night Stalker

Note it has nothing to do with you not talking...I just agree with PolarBoy's plan.

It's occured to me since then that there is a major flaw in this plan. If RD lives through the night, then it may mean he's actually a maf and when he reveals his investigations we won't be able to trust them. This basically leaves us back at square one, with nothing but our suspicions.

I disagree. Information that he spews might be useful even if he is mafia....and in my mind, more likely than not he's actually a townie. Warrior, I suggest you protect RD tonight (assuming we can get enough votes off of him).

Cam