Cogito Ergo Sum is Scum.
1. Vote / Reads Progression
Let's start back at the start of the game. CES votes llamarble and never explains why. He later calls for dueling marble-marquis wagons, and again never explains why. Llamarble calls him out on this, saying that he doesn't understand why he'd want that as town. This is CES' response:
He later describes this vote as something he chose to do instead of putting down a serious vote on the marquis wagon.In post 216, Cogito Ergo Sum wrote:It's not always about you, 'marble.
He calls Marquis the scummiest of the three lurkers (Dunn, Marquis, Wgeurts), and again doesn't explain why. He makes a lot of posts just calling marquis scummy around this time still without explaining why before finally talking about it in 526. What were his reasons? "Awkward tone" and meta from one scumgame in 2015 that he never really explains in any depth. As far as I can tell,
these are still the reasons he's scumreading Marquis
, along with lurking. It goes without saying, but these reasons are both very easily fakeable and are apparently good enough for CES for that single read to last the entire game.He briefly votes postie, perhaps influenced by marble's questioning of postie in the previous post. He again only explains this much later, saying that postie was more looking good than actually scumhunting. In that same post he says that he obviously agrees with the gist of the eddie case, but that he still thinks it would be an easy thing for postie to focus on if she were scum. All of these opinions are contradictory to eachother.
His Gamma vote comes for Gamma's case in 702, but again he only barely explains this until much later, with a vague comment about Gamma's case being "accusatory" in 823. He goes into more detail in 1567, saying that Gamma was being awkward and looked concerned with how justified his votes were. This is another weak read, and he pretty much entirely drops this point and doesn't bring it up again – you know, after the consensus largely came to be that gamma is town.
I've talked a lot about CES' read on tchill/screenplay, but let's really go over his progression there.
662 – Brings up two points that make tchill scummy, one point that makes him towny. Describes it as a "wagon driven by relatively crude heuristics."
820 – Pretty much doesn't take any stance on tchill, talks about how the lurking doesn't affect his read.
1025 – The swap makes him feel better about the wagon.
1179 – Argues that screen being willing to swap means it's more likely that the tchill slot is scum here.
1185 – When responding to ran, describes how the scumread on postie seems more convincing to him than the eddie part, which "doesn't really sway [him]".
1217 – Hammer.
CES says that he detailed the nature of his read change but he really didn't in any truly explanatory way. He's said how the odds of hitting scum in tchill went up for him, but the only reasons in his iso for this are the swap and screen's desire to survive.
Day two, back on the marquis wagon. Later, when Tsq asks him why he's not on the eddie wagon when he's stated that he agrees with postie's case, he says that that doesn't help with the goal of lynching two scum. What?
He later jumps on the Eddie wagon with no real indication as to why the switch.
Finally, day three, back on the marquis wagon.
Let's examine all of the reasons CES has voted people for, this game:
-Lurking
-Awkward wording
-Looking more good than actually solving the game (this vote never went anywhere, however)
-RVS? (Llamarble)
First of all, these reasons are, as a whole, surface level. It was llamarble who said that if CES doesn't lynch scum then he's probably scum himself – given that this is what CES has been pushing people on, I'm inclined to trust that. Next, all of his scumreads have been opportunistic – on players that looked lynchable (notable is that dunnstral is an exception to this, with a very weak reason from CES – this lends credence to my view of the scumteam). Marquis has always been a viable wagon. Tchill and eddie both actually went through. Gamma looked viable for a bit, and that's when CES voted / scumread him. His postie vote followed llamarble placing a bit of pressure there and again stopped afterwards. It's all agenda-driven.
A quick review of team mafia 2015 indicated that he didn't vote lurkers all the time. He seemed to have fairly well-developed reads that don't compare with his fairly robotic scumhunting this game.
2. Undeveloped Townreads
Here's a list of every time i could fine where CES calls someone "town":
662 – He talks about a "nice town tell" from tchill but still evidently scumreads him (if his behavior is anything to go off of).
1179 – Says that i had a "townish line".
1397 – Describes how one of quick's posts shows a pro-town mindset, but ultimately comes to the non-conclusion of "It's not hard to find scummy posts by Lickitung but it's not hard to find townie posts by him either."
1596 – Calls lycan town for scumreading him, calls tsq "sheaey", so wants to sheep llamarble's read on him.
1801 – Says that Ran is his strongest townread.
2223 – Says that davsto generally sounds town, but that he needs to take a closer look. This goes away after davsto votes him.
2610 – Quick is solidly town.
I'm pretty sure that's it. He's barely mentioned a large amount of the playerlist, and for the reads that he has mentioned, his reasons are always self-admittedly weak.
He's keeping his options open.
Look back at team mafia 2015 – a huge difference in how he approaches townreads. He's not playing the same at all, and i'm fairly confident it's because he's scum.
3. NKA
Let's examine llama and postie and their relation to cogito ergo sum.
First, llamarble's mentions of cogito ergo sum.
215 – Says to lynch CES in lylo no matter what. Can't imagine why CES called for dueling Marble/Marquis wagons if he was town.
343 – Calls CES null, and makes the point that strong players always appear town early on.
347 – Says again to lynch CES in lylo, mentions that he's been buddied by CES as scum before and to not let it happen this game.
408 – Calls CES the first alternate to his scumreads
516 – Put CES in his scumteam.
537 – Reiterates to lynch CES in lylo.
582 – Says that he could could "easily believe" a scumteam with CES in it.
664 – Same as before.
875 – Lays out a lynch order where CES is first on the chopping block if tchill flips town.
930 – This one is important – says to give CES some time,
but if town isn't winning before LyLo, CES is scum
. He also advocates lynching whoever is left in lylo that should've been nightkilled.1146 Says that CES should be lower on Ran's readslist.
1160 – Places CES in the category of "don't let live to lylo".
As an aside, Llamarble's thoughts on marquis were that there were decent to very good reasons to townread him, and his lynch order had town leaving him alive until lylo. The llamarble kill day one is a point against marquis scum unless marquis is also scum with one of the people in marble's lynch order.
When it comes to postie, there's very little indication that postie would have gone after marquis and she had me as locktown. Her death clears the way for both of those pushes. This point less directly related to CES scum but still something i'd like to talk about later.
Now, a look at cogito ergo sum's use of NKA / his use of dead people's reads.
In 1557, CES says that 1160 would be where we should look given the marble kill, but the readslist in that post was heavily based around tchill being scum. One of the things marble was incredibly adamant on was that we not let CES get to lylo if town isn't winning by then. His readslist also wasn't lynch from the bottom up – he explicitly said that there was scum in the good but hard to read players.
In 2690, he says that if he doesn't care about marble's reads then nobody will as a defense of his TSQ read. Not only is this not true in the first place, but it's kind of a misrepresentation of what marble had made clear – people who are alive at lylo when they shouldn't be need to be lynched. The fact that he doesn't mention this nuance or seem to take it into account doesn't do anything to defend his weak TSQ read, and only furthers the idea of a scumteam there.
Let's look at another TSQ interaction based on marble's reads. In 2742, CES says that he feels good about sheeping marble's townread on TSQ because they know each other in real life and thus marble should have a good idea of how to read him. This again is just selectively choosing parts of what marble said.
2223 – Says that postie was killed because scum preferred to take out a scummier player with unknown reads, when postie had known reads outside of eddie.
2334 – Argues that the postie kill was to make me look better and to give me more sway to steer the lynch away from marquis. What? How does postie being dead, someone who had me as locktown, give me
more
town sway as opposed to less? If the scumteam actually cared about protecting marquis, they probably would've killed the person hard tunnelling him from day one – CES himself. The fact that he doesn't recognize this and this whole point are incredibly disingenuous. When it comes to what dead townies have said and what the nightkills mean, CES cherrypicks the points that agree with him, ignores the ones that don't and makes disingenuous arguments.
4. VCA
I'm confident in saying that cogito ergo sum has voted only town this entire game.
The cogito ergo sum wagon never moves anywhere despite nobody really townreading him. Here are the people who have voted CES:
Day 1 – {Lycan, Ran, NSG}
Day 2 – {Eddie, Lycan}
Day 3 – {Lycan, Davsto, NSG, Ran}
Comparatively, the people who have voted marquis (excluding rvs) are:
Day 1 – {Davsto, Dunn, CES, Llama, Quick, Gamma}
Day 2 – {Ran, Eddie, Gamma, CES, Quick, Dunn}
Day 3 – {CES, Quick, Dunn, Ran, Gamma, TSQ}
The cogito ergo sum wagon doesn't take off because scum don't want it to. The marquis wagon does, the same way the eddie wagon did. If cogito ergo sum were town, his wagon should have taken off at some point during this game, but it hasn't – not even after ran was canvassing pretty hard for it.
5. Defense of himself
Cogito ergo sum's defense of himself is notably lacking and inconsistent at times.
1662 – Ran brings up multiple valid points against CES, some of which i've talked about myself. His response is just to call the paragraph lots of spin with little substance and provide some self-meta of him as town.
2003 – His defense of the tchill lynch is to go back to his percentages without going in-depth as to why the percentages changed.
2279 – Discredits my push on him by discrediting both of my teammates' opinions, then tries to reduce my scumread on him to just his being on the lynches.
2534 – People (ran) apparently take this as some incredible reason to townread CES. I've responded to this already, but i'd like to reiterate some points.
CES says that he detailed the nature of his read change on tchill – my point is that his read change is justified with incredibly poor reasoning.
I made the point that he wasn't gamesolving, and he responded that he was solving the game and wasn't interested in "brownie points". He's not solving the game. He's not really coming up with any possible partners for marquis, he's not giving any thoughts as to what happens if he's wrong, he's not really sorting anyone else or looking for townreads (as we've gone over).
2571 – CES argues that scum marquis could just be saying that he townreads CES while a buddy of Marquis' pushes on CES, but he doesn't actually say who that buddy would be. In this same post he also talks about how he didn't like the tchill wagon, inconsistent with what he's been trying to tell me about his reasons for switching.
2690 – Basically completely ignores the question of what happens if marquis ends up being town.
2742 – Again discredits reads from my teammates saying that math is uninvested in the game.
6. Conclusion
Cogito ergo sum has exclusively voted town, and has voted the low-hanging fruit in marquis every day so far.
He has almost no townreads – he's keeping his options open.
He's avoided talking about what happens if marquis flips town – again, keeping his options open.
He's selectively and disingenuously used NKA and the reads of dead townies to push things like the marquis wagon.
His wagon doesn't take off because scum don't want it to. This stands in contrast to other town wagons that we've seen in the game.
Cogito Ergo Sum is Scum.
