The Importance of Transparency, Cooperation & Effort as Town

[Infinity 324]

You're preaching so only the choir can hear.

[Infinity 324]

I agree with everything in the OP (except the site rules thing, I agree with nahdia on that), I'm just not sure I'm willing to take the first step and start lynching unreadable players that could easily be town just because they're doing jackshit.

[Infinity 324]

Like, you could make an argument that doing

that

is playing against wincon.

[Infinity 324]

the problem is that too many people think gutreads are credible rather than shitty
for example postie writes that "the less i'm able to justify a scumread the more likely it is that that person is scum"
which frankly is almost definitely false, a self-defeating mindset, and a prototypical example of what's wrong with the current site meta

The thing is, I'm the same way with townreads. That's just what my experience shows. I'll obviously try my best to explain my reads when that happens, but I'm not always going to be able to and I'm not going to ignore gut reads if they been accurate in the past.

[Infinity 324]

I don't think that logic follows. Being articulate =/= being accurate.

[Infinity 324]

Convincing others is obviously going to be pretty hard if you can't explain your reasoning, but that doesn't mean you can't vote based on that.

[Infinity 324]

Convincing others is obviously going to be pretty hard if you can't explain your reasoning, but that doesn't mean you can't vote based on that.

Great way to make yourself look like someone who stubbornly follows bad gut reads and refuses to give real reasons for their vote, thus making it even harder to push the wagon to a lynch.

It's the sort of player that places a one vote vanity wagon on a player, yell at others for not sheeping them, and then complain that nobody listened to them postgame.

You don't have to yell at anyone or complain about anything at post game. But you could just say "I have a strong gut scumread on x but I'm having difficulty explaining it. If a wagon pops up on x, I'll join it."

[Infinity 324]

But you could just say "I have a strong gut scumread on x but I'm having difficulty explaining it. If a wagon pops up on x, I'll join it."

That's fine. But remember this. Gut reads do not materialize from thin air. They are an expression of your subconscious mind trying to tell you something is off. Engage with X, find what it was trying to tell you, put it down in words and turn that nebulous gut read into a real, firm

case

. And THEN you can start/join the wagon and it will likely attract other players too.

That's great in theory, but it doesn't always work out unfortunately. Especially when you're dealing with strong scum players.

[Infinity 324]

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.

[Infinity 324]

I agree with 127

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.