For me, it wasn’t a “vague statement” of any sort. It was his reaction to people questioning his statement. When I was confronted with an FoS for basically the same thing, before he ever was, I didn’t freak out. I responded calmly and directly, and everything was cool. The Capn, however, blew his poor little gasket. In hindsight, he was just a newb who didn’t take things in stride, as perhaps he should have. So, those of us who voted for him were wrong, but that was my reasoning.
I’m willing to work up a model, but based on the specifics of this game (namely, recruiting), it would be very difficult to generate a model that’s reasonably accurate and simple enough to be useful. Further, a mass role-claim would easily give the scum the information they need to recruit freely, or kill indiscriminately. And, yes, we likely have some detective roles but, as we get farther and farther into the game, the information they have is more and more likely to be obsoleted by additional recruitments.
Even worse, we’d have to have some sort of system in place to handle specific situations, primarily because we don’t have any way of knowing how many of certain roles there are. For instance, I’d guess there are 3 Priests, what if we get 4 claims, if they are 4, then we’ll probably end up wasting time looking there for scum, while the scum simply leave them alive until they’re confirmed. What if there are 5 claims?
IOW, I can’t see the efficacy of a mass role-claim at this point, unless we think we’ll gain substantially more information than the scum will. Intuitively, I just can’t see that being the case; however, if enough people think it would be a worthwhile endeavor, I’m willing to take the time to do it.
I’m just going to go out on a limb and suggest the lack of a death last night means the Vig was suitably shamed for his overeager stabbiness last night, and didn’t kill again tonight. We should assume we’re now dealing with 3 scum, unless a recruitment got locked somewhere along the way.
I guess I don’t get how the CapnPitt vague statement was any scummier than Pleonast’s, or anyone else’s. And clearly it wasn’t, since he wasn’t scum.
So far all I can see is bloodthirsty Townies. I do indeed think that the Godfather is probably stepping back, recruiting and letting us do the dirty work for now.
I agree, like I said, I don’t think now is the right time. And I am not sure that a total mass claim will ever be a good idea. But possibly a mass claim of the non recuritables at some point? That sort of thing.
What I really want to know is at what point do the scales tip so the benefit out weighs the risk. They have to tip at some point, and I suspect that the odds tip more in our favor sooner rather than later; when the scum are few in numbers and there are a large number of confrmable roles. Then they probably tip away, and tip back again near the end of the game. But I can’t do the math to make it clear when/if this happens.
NETA: Agree with this. The numbers are indeed adding up.
For the record, any reasoning about why the vigilante attempted a kill and was blocked or didn’t attempt a kill is 100% fruitless. His motivations, when we have a no-kill Night, is completely irrelevant because, the results are the same, and trying to figure out who he is or his reasoning gives us NO headway in finding scum. If ANYTHING, this sort of discussion looks like powerrole fishing, by either trying to figure out who the Vig is OR trying to figure out who the Doctor may have blocked. IOW, I think discussion of the Vig’s motives IS fruitful when we have a kill, so we can try to narrow down whether the kill was him or scum, but otherwise, it’s an unnecessary distraction for town.
So, because this stinks of power role fishing, on top of your completely unreasoned bandwagon jumping the last two Days, I’m happy to put my vote back on you.
Vote hotflungwok
Now, all of that said, what we CAN reason from the lack of kills last Night is one of three situations: 1) Successful recruit 2) Failed recruit 3) Failed kill
I think the third scenario is unlikely because the only way a kill would fail is if it was blocked. This is a fairly low probability, considering that I personally have few reads on whom the Doctor may be and I’d expect that he’s self-protecting.
My theory is, given that there was no kill, we can say with a reasonably high certainty (given the low probability of a kill attempt, further including the large amount of circumstantial evidence that it didn’t happen), probably greater than 95% that the scum attempted a recruit last Night. Also considering that if Pleonast is indeed truthful (which the scum would know), it increases the success rate of a recruit above that predicted by the formula I provided yesterday.
Without crunching numbers (but I can if anyone really wants me to), given that my expected number of scum yesterday was around 1.6 (IIRC), I’d say the expected number is 2<X<=2.5; IOW, I’d say it’s almost certain that there’s 2 scum, but it’s not unlikely that that there was either failed recruitment and/or a kill attempt in the last two Days such that there is not 3. Again, if anyone wants more solid numbers, I can go back and crunch math, but it seems people generally aren’t really that interested in that sort of information.
Huh? Have you read any of my posts from yesterday? Even a scummy looking “vague statement” (whatever that means), isn’t necessarily a sign of scumminess. The best way to find scum is to evaluate motivation behind actions. Bad ideas, bad strategy, bad grammar… they can all be made by well intentioned townies just as well as they can be made by maliciously intentioned scum. An anti-town strategy could simply be the result of poor reasoning and not necessarily an attempt to lead the town in a poor direction. In fact, it usually IS a misguided townie because a poor strategy tends to draw negative attention on scum.
Going “Hey, that looks scummy!” and voting on a gut feeling, is decidedly anti-town, because when you come at an impass, you have no way of making a real case, because if someone doesn’t share your view or interpretation, it won’t lead anywhere. We should be discussing why a “tell” is a scum tell, and why scum in that particular situation are more likely to do it than a townie in that situation.
Bottom line, even if a particular action is the most anti-town thing you can imagine, if a townie still has a reasonable amount of motivation to do that action (particularly where flawed reasoning, intuition, or secret information is involved), it provides very little or possibly even bad information.
As I stated yesterday, defensiveness is NOT a scum tell; in fact, more often than not, over defensiveness tends to be a townie tell, particularly a vanilla townie. You HAVE to look at it from a motivation perspective. Obviously, a scum doesn’t want to get lynched, it’s bad, so he obviously has motivation to be defensive. Similarly, a townie, particularly a vanilla townie, CANNOT defend himself, because his claim is worthless, he has no information, and it get’s frustrating and can lead to a flaired temper. Clearly, the motivation for such behavior is pretty darn close to zero, if not favoring town.
In fact, IME, I’ve only ever seen a hyper-defensive response from scum once, and that was only after he had gone completely bonkers as a townie in the previous game (this is a direct reference to Idle Thoughts 
). The continued justification of votes for CapnPitt using this, especially AFTER I made my post explaining that it was a null tell without a counter-explaination of why you, specifically, don’t see it as a null tell is, at best, specious reasoning, and at worst, anti-town motivated.
That said, I think it’s very likely that there is at least one scum on the CapnPitt wagon. Given the waning momentum of the Pleonast wagon, and CapnPitt practically screaming that he was vanilla townie, it would be very easy for scum to put a vote on him with very little reasoning and get very little backlash as a result. I will have to go back and look at the timing to see if I can’t pull out specific individuals I find the most suspicious.
Wait, so when I speculate it’s useless, but not when you do it?
How is what I said role fishing? In speculation, I asked something. It’s been done a lot in this thread. For a role to be revealed the role would have to open his mouth and say it was them, because they’re the only one who would have that knowledge.
They might be, if those numbers had any evidence behind them. All of us can figure out what the likely number of scum in the town is given whether or not A or B happened. But because we don’t know any of those things, we’re just guessing.
What? We don’t have any real evidence at this point, everything is a gut feeling. Discussing why or why not a tell is a scum tell just gets everyone’s opinions out there, it isn’t going to establish anything 100%. Your opinion is just as valid as mine, but it doesn’t mean that either of them is right. Even after all the discussion is over, each of us has to make a decision. And because we still don’t have any hard evidence, it comes down to a gut feeling.
Didn’t you already do that?
The quote to which you responded is taken out of context. I was clearly refering to a potential failed kill attempt by scum. Your reference to a failed kill attempt was by the Vig. I specifically said that reasoning on the Vig’s actions are only useful IF it can provide more information about the scum. In this case, whether he attempted and failed, or whether he didn’t attempt, both provide the exact same result, so attempting to differentiate provides no additional information with regard to the scum’s actions, so it is useless.
Trying to figure out how a power role behaved has no intuitively obvious reason why it is a pro-town discussion. I explicitly stated WHY I think reasoning on the Vig’s behavior last night is, at best, town-neutral. So tell me, why do you think discussion of the Vig’s actions last Night could lead to useful information for the town? If you can provide a good reason, I’ll concede this point.
This is exactly why I didn’t go ahead and do it, because it’s largely based on my estimations and my guesses as to game set up. If people have differing opinions, then my numbers aren’t very useful. Further, when I DO crunch numbers, to avoid accusations about where I got my numbers from, I make an attempt to always provide information about where they came from, and if they ARE guesses or estimates, I either provide my reasoning (if it’s an estimate), or plainly state that it’s a guess.
That said, constantly stating “we’re just guessing” is the wrong approach too. For instance, I GUESSED that there were three Priests yesterday. Is it accurate? Who knows, but I’d bet dollars to donuts its more accurate than a guess of 15 Priests. We’re not going to get a whole lot of plainly black and white evidence, we have to piece together fuzzy information with reasonable guesses and estimates. We CANNOT continue to hold all alternatives as equally likely, or we will never infer ANY useful information.
If people want me to crunch numbers, I’m fine with it, I’ll crunch them and use my estimates. If people like my formulae, but don’t like my numbers, and want me to use other assumptions to compare and contrast, I’m fine with that too. I try to provide enough information so that people who can follow my math know I’m not deliberately fudging it.
Bottom line, saying the numbers have evidence behind them and are just guessing, is patently false
I believe this is a poor job explaining my point on my side, but this just plain isn’t true. Establishing motivation isn’t a hard science, but it isn’t just intuition and opinion either. We will establish different opinions about the levels of motivations for particular actions, so there is a certain amount of opinion and intuition involved. My main issue with how yesterday went down was that people were discussing anti-town motivation, but were completely ignoring potential pro-town motivation.
For instance, yes, defensiveness can be anti-town motivated, but when compared to the potential motivation for a townie to do it, it just doesn’t provide any information. I specifically stated this yesterday, and made several references to how motivation should be used as the primary tool for evaluating actions as opposed to risk/reward or pro-town/anti-town evaluation models.
Are you serious? If I’d have done this, I’d have provided a list, explained why I found the timing suspicious, and followed up on any I thought would be fruitful. The only person I’ve picked out specifically was you, of whom I was already suspicious from yesterday for different reasons.
Pleonast (1) - Darth Sensitive
hotflungwok (1) - Blaster Master
I didn’t make the post so that I could impart useful information to the town concerning scum activity, I did it because it’s what popped in to my head. Besides, the vigilante by himself is just as powerful as the town is, maybe more powerful because he doesn’t need a consensus, and anything the town can do to help or steer him is good. Discussing the vigilante can help give him information or help him make a decision or give him a different perspective, and that’s why it’s useful.
But did your guess that there were three priests yield any useful information? Any of us can make guesses on things like that, I’ve crunched a few numbers myself. But because those numbers are backed by guesses, any one of them is just as useful as an opinion. People don’t even agree on whether the first kill was vig or boss, a rather important piece of information given the numbers it affects.
It isn’t always about pure motivation. Yeah, if we can narrow down likelyhoods, great. But we’re talking about people, and people can and will do things differently, especially if it’s to their advantage. What if a scum puts up a big defense because people think that a big defense is a town tell? What if I put up a big defense now? Will that make you think I’m town? Their motivation might not be pro-town or anti-town, it might be pro-me-staying-in-the-game or anti-that-jerk-who-voted-for-me-last-game. Saying that motivations are always pro or anti-town is just as big a mistake as saying that X is always a scum tell.
That was sarcasm, actually. Just remember, you voted for me without doing any of these things, and providing only gut reaction as evidence.
:dubious:
Weren’t you the one who talked about looking hard at motivation?
Two thoughts,
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sure, he’s new…but while his behavior strikes me, it does not strike me as scummy. I don’t see the payoff for scum doing this now, and doing it this obviously.
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bandwagon jumping, at this stage, is something I am more inclined to believe a townie would do.
You were so level headed yesterDay…
Sure. It’s pretty simple. You slipped advice for the mafia on how to recruit into your post (my orange highlight).
I can’t think of a single town reason to do that.
Do you want to explain yourself?
Off-topic, NAF1138, but I think this is the second time today I’ve seen you capitalize the D in “yesterday.” Is it a conscious thing?
If you want to provide guidance to the Vig, I’m fine with that. However, discussing what he’s done is irrelevant when looking at what he should do. Does it matter if he killed, or attempted to kill, when analyzing if he should try to kill Tonight? The BEST way to help the Vig is to make an attempt to find scum, and then he can use that information to decide, if his analysis of that information is worth the risk of attempting a kill. That’s pretty much the best you can do for him unless you have specific advice.
Still, while it’s fair enough that you claim to be trying to help the Vigilante, I still don’t see how trying to figure out whether he attempted and failed or didn’t attempt provides any assistance to him. Clearly, he’s completely aware of that information already.
You’re missing the point. My guess was fairly reasonable, as I didn’t see anyone dispute it, and it allowed me to estimate the failure rate of a recruit. My guess is based on my experience playing the game and how I probably would have set up the game if I were the one moderating it. You’re right in saying that I have no way to determine it’s veracity, but I feel like a broken record when I say that leaving all options as equally probable is NOT helpful. I think we can all agree that a guess of 3 Priests is fairly reasonable, and the actual number probably doesn’t differ by much, meanwhile a guess of 15 Priests is unreasonable and would probably provide a useless result if used.
So, yes, it’s “just a guess”, but it’s not a complete stab in the dark. If you disagree with my guess, say so, and explain WHY you disagree, but constantly classifying my guess as completely useless, while not providing any reasoning or, better yet, alternate guess and counter-reasoning, is NOT productive.
Bottom line, do you think my estimate on the total number of unrecruitables is WAY off the mark? If so, why? If I’m off by a little, it doesn’t significantly effect the resulting calculation. That is, if I got a 31% chance or a 36% chance, both still live as “about 1 in 3”. If I got a 45% chance, it should live as “about 1 in 2”. Absolute precision isn’t necessary or even useful, but there IS a notable difference between “about 1 in 3” and “about 1 in 2”.
That is precisely what I’m talking about with regard to motivation. Motivations are relative to a situation where as “third vote is a scum tell” is an absolute which doesn’t take the situation into account. Let me try to be more specific. A townie is trying to track down scum, he wants to maximize pro-town information, he wants to protect pro-town power roles, he doesn’t mind sacrificing himself (assuming he’s vanilla) if it means meeting one of those goals. A scum is motivated the opposite way, he doesn’t want to be detected, he wants to minimize pro-town information, he wants to uncover power roles, but he may or may not be willing to sacrifice himself, but he has to accomplish these things while attempting to look like he’s trying to do the pro-town things.
Simply put, your actions cannot be both pro-town motivated and anti-town motivated. Obviously, a townie will always have pro-town motivation, meanwhile, a scum will be attempting to look that way, but ultimately has anti-town motivation while will have to surface, otherwise all of his actions are against his motivations, and thus ultimately hurting his team.
Of course, there is the slight exception of the particular scum role of “survivor”, who may or may not exist, who’s primary goal is to live as long as possible. In such a case, he will tend to have as much of a pro-town motivation as anyone else, with the exception of the “willingness to sacrifice” versus “not wanting to die” motivation. Thus, it will eventually come to surface itself.
And let me give a hypothetical, but common, example. A given scum will know when a particular lynch candidate is or is not scum. He will then do one of three things: ignore it, support it, oppose it. Scum also know that constantly voting for townies will start to look suspicious. So say he chooses to oppose it. His motivation is thus “I do not want to have my vote on this particularly townie when he’s lynched” meanwhile, a townie who opposes it will have a different motivation of “I do not agree with the reasoning”. Obviously, the scum will attempt to mimic the latter. And, while it may not be easy to distinguish between the two, patterns DO emerge, and tendencies to favor a pro-town motivation versus an anti-town motivation, or vice versa, will show up.
To put it simply, the whole point is, either faction definitively has different motivations precisely because they have different winning conditions. Thus, if you can determine the motivations, you can determine the winning conditions, and if you can determine the winning conditions, you can determine the faction.
Quite the contrary, but I can do it again in greater detail, if you’d like. I found your two completely unreasoned votes suspicious because being in a large bandwagon like those is a good place to hide. While a bandwagon can be pro-town motivated, it will tend to be townies going “I agree with such and such reasoning”, where as a “Vote XYZ” without reasoning has the distinct anti-town motivation of allowing you to add certain reasoning post hoc.
Town has the motivation to maximize information, not to hide it or leave wiggle room to adjust it later. Your actions with those votes are more consistent with the latter than with the prior; hence, my vote yesterday.
As for today, I feel like I provided my evaluation of your motivations sufficiently. If you have specific questions, I’ll be happy to address them.
Actually, it’s pretty SOP. It means not yesterday as in chronologically yesterday, but yesterday as in the previous day of the game.
Huh? If he’s going to give advice to the scum on how to recruit, he can do so at Night. That quote specifically seems pro-town motivated to me, precisely because he’s giving his guess for how the scum may recruit. This is information that would be against the best interest of scum to propogate.
If scum DO communicate in the Day, they’re generally not going to use such overt methodology.