Now you’re attacking me for frustrating you? After posted a case against me based on falsehoods and lies, you call me frustrating?
Weird.
Over the weekend I will be examining why scum have killed who they have. Barring power roles, which we don’t have, I think we need to start looking at who was killed and why.
My theory is that they will first not kill people who have drawn interest from us, but will kill people that do not have traits matching their own actual or revealed traits.
If I were scum, which I am not, although I miss being scum, I would off people whose dossiers have little chance of being connected with the revealed trait. I would try to leave people around who had traits matching mine (if i were scum… enough disclaimers).
I think scum may be killing people whose traits do not match either their real traits or their revealed traits. That’s what I’d do if I were them.
And while we’re at it, vote: sachertorte based on his ill-founded brewha campaign (and really, sach was parsing words to a Bill Clintonian extent, [brewha]'s explanation made sense to me). And his having the cow-udder trait. And that he has no traits in common with anyone scum-killed so far.
Hockey Monkey, I hate having to search for your spreadsheet. Can you please put it in your sig?
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pGFzeVMas_HcWdROWFdQNLA
Done. Now if I can just remember to check the sig box.
zuma, I think you may be onto something with your theory. I have some research to do on it, but it sounds promising.
OK. I have been holding back a bit on outlining my case against Diomedes, because while I think faithfool is probably not scum, she might be, and I wanted to hear her case before giving her a chance to piggyback on mine. But I’m not sure how much posting I’ll get to do over the weekend, so I think I need to get this out there now.
The Case Against Diomedes
But before I start - this stuff is modest, I know. It’s important to remember that, with rare exceptions, scum aren’t going to make obvious and unmistakable errors. Those rare exceptions are great when they happen, but we shouldn’t be counting on those. My philosophy in this situation is the same as it’s been - who seems to be trying, in ways large or small, to move the group toward an artificial conclusion? So.
I start at my own post #319. We have been discussing dossier claims (whether or not to make them). Rysto has been one of the only players arguing against dossier claims. A few posts back, Diomedes has voted for Rysto, with the following justification:
I replied, at #319, thusly:
At the time, this struck me as opportunistic voting - hey look, Rysto isn’t conforming. People who don’t conform are easy targets! I’ll throw out a vote there and see if anyone jumps on with me.
Two posts later, Diomedes replies to me as such:
He has seen my post voting for him, and is responding to it, but he hasn’t really read it, has he? He thinks I disagree with him about dossier reveals, but of course, I don’t, and I’ve said so repeatedly. Now, if my previous post had been a long-ass monstrosity, I’d forgive a bit of skimming. But it was just a paragraph long. Responding to it without reading it - well, who would do that except for the scum? They don’t need to read carefully, because they don’t need to look for clues, because they already know who’s scum.
In that same post, he says:
Here’s my response, a few posts later, which about sums up my feelings:
Now we come to #404, in which Dio votes for faithfool - piling on someone who seems to be in trouble. His explanation:
I’m awfully puzzled by this, so I reply:
(I also think his explanation for zuma’s behavior, as quoted above, makes very little sense, but that’s not germane to this point right now).
Point is, by the time Dio voted for faithfool, giving only the above as justification, all of the things that he’s now claiming make her a prime target for lynching have happened. But he doesn’t express any kind of particularly strong suspicion - instead, he justifies his vote as being “what she wants.” So he casts the third vote (!) on someone who’s in trouble, with an easily retracted justification. But by the time we get to post #558 - now that faith is off the gibbet and he doesn’t have to worry about being associated with her lynch, he has an opinion:
So here’s what he does:
That’s vote #4 on mhaye, enough to move him into serious danger. But no explanation of why mhaye “smells ripest.” Opportunism.
And then, at #599,
So basically, Dio’s on board, and thinks mhaye seems scummy, but as far as actually saying why, Dio’s got nothing. It’s an interesting pattern - he writes a fair bit. If you’re just blowing by on a fifth read, it might appear that he’s justifying his votes. But somehow what he says in his voting posts is always something other than justification for the vote - he talks about faithfool but votes mhaye, then he follows-up by saying mhaye is scummy, but not clarifying why. If you don’t track his comments specifically, you might think he has made a case, but he hasn’t. Oh, and why the sudden aversion to a no-lynch? Up above, he thinks “our next best option is to no-lynch until we have more information out of confirmed townies death scenes.”
Possible exculpatory move, at #701 - he doesn’t jump on the OaOW bandwagon, which has already basically sailed. If he is scum, this is a pretty dangerous move. But then he jumps back on at #772.
And that’s about it. So, is he scum? Hell if I know. This is the case against him. However, there are a few new additions to my suspicion list, and I’d like to take a look at them a bit closer before my vote happens.
But dio is town like me. Heh. Oops I said it again.
Meanwhile…
(I have some free time this morning, can you tell?)
I am very worried about sachertorte. This is not based on a pattern of behavior, but on one post. Suspicion based on one post is inherently flimsy unless the one post says “I am Scum. Ask Me How!”, but I think it’s neccessary to state it out loud because if sachertorte is scum, he is not going to make many mistakes.
The post is #934, and the brief excerpt with which I am concerned is this:
And, specifically, item #1 on this list. And, even more specifically, the parenthetical. Now, when you think of sachertorte’s participation so far, what do you think of? He doesn’t trust the dossiers, right? He keeps reminding everyone that scum will lie about their dossiers, we can’t trust any of the private info. And yet here he states, as bald fact, that it is rare for two dossier traits to match.
I asked him about this, and he replied:
Emphasis mine.
How many times in the 20 pages we’ve had so far do you suppose sachertorte has argued with some sort of dossier-related theorizing on the grounds that lying scum would alter the statistics? But this time, in developing his own theory, he didn’t consider that possibility? That seems… unusual.
Unless.
If sach is scum, then he knows that two matching traits is actually rare because he knows the true contents of all the dossiers. The statement above would have seemed innocuous to him making it, particularly if - and I’ve been wondering about this - the scum have lied not at all or relatively little about their dossiers. That would explain: (1) why sach has emphasized the idea that “scum will lie” the whole game long; and (2) why he assumed Hockey Monkey’s spreadsheet would be identical to the true dossier composition for the purposes of analysis.
I could be wrong. I kind of hope I am, because if sachertorte is town he’s probably our single best asset, especially as we get toward the endgame.
But it has to be out there.
This one is for you, Hal:
Hawkeyeop, apparently I can’t do it. As far as being frustrating, well I suppose that makes us in all in the same boat.
As for the rest of the weekend, I’m about to sign off soon and leave for a funeral tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be back until Sunday. Unfortunately, after all the re-reading I did last night to consider other players than the one I’d been focused on, I still don’t feel that I’ve made any legitimate headway. So do I need to cast a vote now or what?
regarding brewha
I stated my case against brewha on the second day of Day 3. There was a little discussion between brewha and me about it, but other than that there wasn’t much else. If anyone thinks I’m wrong, tell me why. I was open to discussion Yesterday, and I’m open to discussion now. While I don’t think we should exclusively discuss brewha Today, I think we failed to discuss brewha sufficiently Yesterday.
I’ll try to explain again.
brewha accused zuma of lying about his dossier based on not being able to find some of zuma’s traits in source thread #1. On the surface this accusation makes sense since zuma has two traits from source thread #2.
The thing I first questioned brewha about was why he accused zuma but did not suspect Hockey Monkey when brewha should have also not be able to match one of Hockey Monkey’s traits to source #1.
brewha responded that he saw Hockey Monkey’s traits in the “other thread.”
I interpret “other thread” to be source #2.
I looked back at the post history and brewha mentions revelation about source #2 after his accusation of zuma, so brewha could not have known about source #2 when he accused zuma. Therefore, his explanation either doesn’t explain why he accused zuma and not Hockey Monkey or he is lying about his story.
brehwa then explains that when he said “other thread” he meant source #1 and that when he wrote “other thread” he didn’t even know about source #2. The post history shows brewha acknowledging source #2 before the “other thread” statement post.
My understanding is now brewha’s story is that he found Hockey Monkey’s traits in source thread #1, but didn’t find any of zuma’s in source #1 (despite there being (3?) of zuma’s traits in source #1). I take brewha’s explanation as backtracking and doesn’t explain his Day One behavior since Hockey Monkey should still have been suspicious since there would have been one trait not found in source #1.
zuma
I acknowledge your vote for me, but my response will be terse:
- I think brewha is scum. I’ve outlined my reasoning.
- I have the cow-udder trait. I do not have the VWBug trait. I’ve explained my reasoning several times on how lynching based on private data is a really bad idea.
- Your theory that I’m scum because none of the victims share a trait with me is intriguing, but am I the only one for which this fact is true?
Hockey Monkey
Feel free to examine zuma’s theory more on your own, but I’ll tell you right now, you’re in the same boat as me.
storyteller
Scum lying about their dossiers to avoid getting fingered by trait reveals is different than using the dossiers as a whole for statistics. And to be precise, I’m not completely against dossiers, just the private parts. That is, I’m against lynching someone simply because one of their private traits matches the killer’s trait revealed.
Also, I didn’t think further about the impact of lying scum on the incidence of two matching traits statistics because it wouldn’t effect the conclusions. If I should be smacked around, it should be for saying “small” instead of “less than one” because it was the “less than one” aspect that contributes to the case (but is not the whole case). Scum lying would affect the numbers, but scum lying would not affect the conclusion. In other words, the conclusion didn’t hinge on that assumption being true so I didn’t consider counter-arguments to the assumption.
faithfool
Vote when you feel like voting, but the general consensus is that holding back votes for no good reason isn’t so good. I think we all know where your vote is going anyway.
Thanks. I’d prefer to do what is considered good etiquette within the game, so I’ll go ahead and vote now, regardless of whether it’s anticipated outcome or not.
vote Dio
For the same unintelligible reasons that I’ve reiterated before and because switching to someone else for no good reason feels wrong to me. Now I’m gone for at least 48 hours. Everyone have a nice weekend.
OK, I’ve been through the dossiers again and the people who do not share traits with any of the night victims are: Pleonast, Hockey Monkey, Sachertorte, Kat, and Santo. **Kat ** and **Santo ** were town, and I know I am town, so I think that theory doesn’t hold water. Sounded good to start with, but doesn’t pan out.
The more I research from different angles though, the more I am convinced that **brewha’s ** revealed dossier was fabricated. He shares traits with 11 people (10 unique). That’s the most of anyone. Combined with not having any unique traits (like OAOW), I just have to come to the conclusion that his dossier is heavily borrowed.
Ahh… finally, the great case against me. Let’s see where story starts:
So it’s not a strong case. That’s a relief.
Perhaps you’re not seeing my intentions there. My idea was to force the reveals in order by force of lynch. It wasn’t intended towards Rysto, per se, but it was intended as part of the reveal process. While there certainly can be townie non-conformity, I felt then (and still do) that the biggest reason for an Associate to withhold the dossier information was to hide the fact that they were Disgruntled. As we’ve seen, the only function of the dossier in this game is to functionally allow us to match up the clues given with each death post with someone’s dossier. had we allowed the dossier-sharing to take an extra day, the scum would have been able to set up their dossier-reveal lies better that night.
That was the reason for my vote on Rysto: merely as part of a process that would, if popular enough, force the scum to reveal in a timely manner lest they be lynched for withholding.
Sorry, mate. I’m a skimmer. I didn’t really register the “I disagree with Rysto”, and just registered that you were against my plan (in this case, forcing the dossier reveals on pain of lynch). You didn’t suggest a better way to force players to reveal their dossiers quickly, and I suppose I didn’t see much of a correlation between “Reveal dossiers” and “Enforcing the dossier revelations is a bad thing to do”. I guess I still don’t.
On the other hand, I might have just been confusing you with sachetorte in my mind. It’s hard to create a defense based on an attack on your suppsoed state of mind several weeks after the fact.
If you understood my reasoning for voting Rysto, you wouldn’t be harping on this: I wasn’t voting for Rysto so much as I was voting for a non-revealer. I spelled that out for you as plainly as possible, but you still seemed to fail to understand the difference. So I came outright and told you that my vote for Rysto was, in essence, a prod. A prod that would become more forceful as he became the blocking point for revelations. A block that I felt (and still feel) was an anti-town (whether or not he was town or scum) move.
I had unvoted** faithfool** in order to vote for Rysto. faithfool, the entirety of day one (and up until now!) was my biggest suspect. I wasn’t piling on her as a matter of opportunism: I was returning to my previous vote once the reveal schedule thing had been blown all to hell. The fact that she had requested to be lynched was yet another nail in the faithfool=scum coffin.
No. It was a move towards lynching somebody. I don’t like no-lynches, and it felt to me that faithfool wasn’t going to be lynched that day. I didn’t have a solid reason to lynch mhaye, other than on of those very vague gut-feelings you get about players. Would it have made you feel any better if I’d said I wanted to lynch him because he was taking too long to reveal his dossier (looks up at aforementioned Rysto nonsense)? Obviously not. I felt it was better for the town to get a lynch in.
Plus, I wasn’t vote four. I was vote five. Freudian Slip was vote four. Now which vote is the critical mass one: the vote that we’re going to blame the person who lays it on whenever a townie gets lynched? Three, four or five? When you make up your mind, tell me, so I know not to join any bandwagons until before or after that point.
I think I’ve answered this above, but just to be thorough: faithfool wasn’t getting lynched, mhaye might have been. He was a speedbump on the road to full-revelation. (No offense, Mhaye! Sorry!)
Definitely out of character for me, I admit. I don’t know what I was thinking there.
I jumped on it to speed things along: there wasn’t any other possible outcome for the day at that point, and me holding off just meant the day would be extended without much pertinent discussion. Rysto claimed a few posts down that ‘we’ (Pleonast and zuma speak for us all, I suppose) had agreed that it would be bad form to start the clock early, but all that had happened was Hockey put forth her ideas, they were mulled over a little, and… then… what? 24 hours of silence. My vote just changed the clock a little, and I was hoping would make the scum do their planning on New Year’s Eve and Day.
Well, if that’s the case against me, I’m relieved. You’ve been gunning for me this whole game, story. Did I piss in your Wheaties or something?
Skimming is a sign of scumhood because scum doesn’t need to read as carefully? I’d say that’s pretty off. Scum needs to pretend to be like town. I think that’s a weak case against Dio. Also, I thought the third vote thing was pretty much crap?
This game has no ettiquette: It’s a game of lying, conniving, accusations and double-crossing. But thanks for the Idle Thoughts-style vote, anyways. 
No more so than faithfool pissed in yours.
I am suspicious of you. It’s nothing personal, and I certainly could be wrong.
Then we disagree. Townies tend to read every word of every post, looking for tells and little bits and pieces that might be tells. They tend to parse sentences closely and carefully. Scum don’t really have to do this. They have an agenda, and they pursue it, so some posts they might parse closely and read carefully - when their agenda requires that they find something. But if their agenda doesn’t require it, they can blow past important bits.
OK. Don’t vote for him, then.
Crud -
Those last two quotes in my last post were from Freudian Slit.
Idle Thoughts type vote? : p
Not so much free time today.
I believe the game secret is the fact that the Dossiers come from two SDMB threads. That fact is entirely non-obvious, or least it was to me.
Some component of the secret might be how the Dossiers are arranged. If that it the case, we probably won’t have enough confirmed information to make use of it until more of us are confirmed. My hope is that if we get to a lynch-or-lose situation, we can find some pattern that gives us better odds at getting a Scum.
I may not be around much on the weekend (or the rest of today). I’m going ahead an voting for who I think is most likely to be Scum:
vote faithfool
I’d also vote for Hal and brewha.