In post 436, MUSHSHAGANA wrote:I think the post at the top of this page is a decent enough summary for most folks. That said: if I think about it, there's some other stuff that tends to ping me but which aren't things most people are sensitive to. May as well just rewrite it all out for ease of access.
Generally speaking: Saying one thing, then saying a contradictory statement under pressure -- feels less like stating beliefs than trying to evade attention. Making baseless assertions that seem like trying to force an interpretation (e.g. the whole Norfolk scumhunting thing). General gut feeling of the play being phony, i.e. fake, but not so much "simply acting" as it is "crafted for specific effect".
More specific to how I build out reads: Apparent lack of a coherent chain of causation -- I don't see how he gets from point A to point B, it feels like it's abrupt jumps instead of actual changes in thought process. Play is "concentric" -- instead of his play changing focus at any point, it takes a specific point (in this case, "shoot Norfolk") and centers all of his play on that singular point. All play that isn't directly centered on it is pushing back on people questioning it. Hence "concentric", his play reaches ever wider circles of the playerlist but the center point never changes, indeed hasn't changed since page 1.
Because of these things, his play feels agenda-driven: he has a specific goal (shoot Norfolk) and does not attempt to search around outside of that goal. When dealing with things that are not necessarily "shoot Norfolk", his statements are not necessarily logically compatible with one another, and there is no apparent shift in belief or understanding to explain the incompatibilities (since the conclusions he comes to do NOT appear to change alongside the statements).
I'll try to break this down. First things first I think you're far too into Cakez' intention. I know the guy and I know for a fact he does not think this deeply about interactions, scum or town. Does this turn into a bit of a meta argument? Maybe a little, but it is a good starting point. As I continue down your own post it sorta becomes even more inward and you start interpreting actions from your own perspective. Maybe you look at this game like 'I would do this as town, therefore if someone else does it that makes them town too.' I think this way sometimes, but too much and you start seeing things that aren't there. You don't know what Cakez is thinking, so you're just assuming that it has an ulterior motive. Cakez is only focusing on Norfolk. Cakez hasn't changed his thoughts since page 1. Cakez contradicts himself ("logically incompatible") Whatever, whatever.
I wanna ask you a hypothetical: Do you think Cakez' behavior is exclusive? Meaning, that there's nobody else in this game that might be close to doing the same thing? I can tell you that's probably not true and could list examples off my head. The reason I ask this is I just don't find the argument of (Cakez scum) to be all that compelling.
In post 523, Duchess wrote:You are missing what I am saying. I saw your explanation. I am not near satisfied. Read my words. You called him LAMIST. I called it an act. These are the same thing. This makes me scummy, and it makes you...?
These are not the same thing at all. I said that the things that he said are what I would consider LAMIST, but not that he had scummy intentions behind them or that he is being deceitful in some way. You said that he is specifically saying these things as if he is faking something. I seriously doubt that you can't see a difference after I already explained.
I hate the term LAMIST. It phonetically sounds out the way I feel about it. Lame.
I'm not in this conversation but at some point saying shit like LAMIST is just a lazily indicating someone's behavior. Give me specifics, not mafia jargon
So, before I address your reply, unwnd, I want to make a separate post here that isn't about you (you've been excellent with this as far as my memory is going).
People. Please. Don't keep fucking up my pronouns. They're literally /right next to my posts/. I've been trying to let it slide, but it seems like it's a third of the player list and at least one post on every single goddamn page now and I just want it to stop. Thanks.
In post 525, unwnd wrote:
I'll try to break this down. First things first I think you're far too into Cakez' intention. I know the guy and I know for a fact he does not think this deeply about interactions, scum or town. Does this turn into a bit of a meta argument? Maybe a little, but it is a good starting point. As I continue down your own post it sorta becomes even more inward and you start interpreting actions from your own perspective. Maybe you look at this game like 'I would do this as town, therefore if someone else does it that makes them town too.' I think this way sometimes, but too much and you start seeing things that aren't there. You don't know what Cakez is thinking, so you're just assuming that it has an ulterior motive. Cakez is only focusing on Norfolk. Cakez hasn't changed his thoughts since page 1. Cakez contradicts himself ("logically incompatible") Whatever, whatever.
I wanna ask you a hypothetical: Do you think Cakez' behavior is exclusive? Meaning, that there's nobody else in this game that might be close to doing the same thing? I can tell you that's probably not true and could list examples off my head. The reason I ask this is I just don't find the argument of (Cakez scum) to be all that compelling.
So, this starts off with misunderstanding where I'm coming from.
The things I'm getting reads off of are not something scum /try/ to do, but indicative of /failings/ that overeager, underprepared, or non-self-aware scum tend to have when doing the actual things they try to do. They also come up with power roles, which is why I have been sticking to nightless mountainous games -- I have a known-to-me tendency to both find PRs scummy and consider scum likely to be PRs. I think I've only once found a VT likely to be scum when there are PRs in the mix (obviously, mountainous games are a little bit more challenging to read).
These things can be hidden or eliminated by someone who knows what to look for or has a natural inclination for storytelling (I have not found a scumhunting panacea, in other words), but they are effective on a large number of players. They are things that happen when you have something you can't share that gives you an agenda. So they are actually things that are /more/ likely to happen to people who don't think that deeply about things; thinking deeply about things is how these things /don't/ happen.
As for the "inward" comment or the possibility of projection as the basis of the later parts: you are entirely incorrect.
Let's take the chain-of-causation problem I have as an example here and dig into how I come to those conclusions. This is going to be a gigantic fucking wall, but I want to show you how I get to this point so you can see that it isn't simply a case of projection.
Spoiler:
When I think I've found an instance of someone jumping from belief-statement to belief-statement without any natural flow between them, I read the content between two posts that give me that impression, and I look for any data that might cause someone to update their beliefs in there. If I find that, I look for evidence that they took that data into consideration (most people will start to include related ideas in their posts when new information is making them update their beliefs), but that's mostly a formality. The sheer existence of related data tends to be pretty solid on its own unless they outright reject that data -- in which case I can ignore it safely.
If I don't find any relevant data they haven't outright rejected between their posts, I look through their ISO for evidence of doubt before the more recent statement, as it's possible that they changed their own mind if it was something that was weighing on them. Evidence of doubt isn't just saying "yeah I'm unsure", it's also humoring related but incompatible hypotheticals and taking cautious stances when relying on if-then chains based upon their belief. Most mafia players do this; only extremely strong convictions, desperation and hidden agendas really cause most people to override the natural tendency to approach a gamble with some degree of caution. (Yes, natural gamblers /can/ cause me to fail at this test.)
If there's no evidence of doubt and no data that would cause them to update, there's a /solid/ case to be made that the position has an ulterior motive and is not being submitted in good faith -- in essence, it just looks like they don't buy their own bullshit. But in the case that there is data or evidence of doubt, I do one more check before I give those cases a pass.
I see if there is evidence that their change in belief has actually affected their view of the gamestate. Best way to explain this is with a generic example: Consider the case where someone says "I don't know guys, everyone seems townie to me!" and then shortly thereafter starts to cast shade on someone else out of the blue, for no apparent reason. Now, this isn't always going to be scum. In fact, it's quite rare! Most of the time this is going to be a townie who saw something they didn't like and pivoted on a dime about it.
But you don't need to take their word for it, you can check.
Paying attention to how they react to people defending the slot they're shading, seeing how they react when things they said before that don't necessarily match up are brought up, and many more besides -- these are all ways to paint a picture of what they are seeing in the gamestate, and where the parts they're invested in come from.
The key to this last step is it can't highlight a lack of cause-and-effect in thought process, it can only point out that one apparently exists. This is because you might not have enough data to compare it to their prior beliefs and come to useful conclusions -- you rarely end up needing to ask people to explain their thoughts unless those thoughts are suspicious to begin with, after all. But if you do have enough data, it almost assuredly shows you a trajectory in their thought process.
So we have three tests here, and 3 possible outcomes:
Yes, the above is made out super complex, but you have to understand that for me, I can literally scan a few pages and pull this data out without considering it too strongly. This is why I often say that I play a sideways game of Mafia and cannot scumhunt the way other people do: things that are incredibly weird and complex to others come naturally to me, and vice versa. Almost all of the stuff I use to build reads out is the same way; you can safely imagine one of these walls for each of my "more specific to how I build out reads" points, including all of the ones that aren't relevant to Cakez.
The important thing to get out of all that is that it isn't just projection. I presume that I have no way of knowing how other people think by default, not just in Mafia, because /I literally cannot know what other people are thinking/. My brain is fucked up and I cannot think like anyone else around me. I am aware of my failings and I do not step in that hole because of hard experience. Instead, it's based on assuming good faith while minimizing false positives. So you're wrong about my post, full stop, and I would like you to try again with that information in mind.
I'll answer your question now.
I believe that any /single/ behavioral element I have pointed out from Cakez is not exclusive. I believe the full mixture /is/ exclusive to Cakez so far -- certainly I can't think of but one other "concentric" player in the game, and that player doesn't contradict themselves and has a natural-seeming chain of cause-and-effect. That is not proof of towniness (concentric play is always vaguely scummy to me), but it reduces the degree of scumminess I attribute to them by comparison to Cakez.
However, I find this question to be pointless anyway -- since even if there were other players who did indeed have all of the traits Cakez does, there are multiple scum and it would not rule out all of them being scum. The premise (it mattering at all whether or not Cakez and Cakez alone is guilty of behavior I find scummy) is flawed.
In post 351, Duchess wrote:Even then, I do not expect anyone to announce in their Private thread before making their first post in the game.
They had 24 hours of discussion before the game started and you don't think that the inexperienced scum ran openings with his more experienced partners?
They actually had longer than that.
I believe it was like a 48 hour day start timer, but an extra 6 hours or so of Syry being online before him opening the thread and confirming the first gunbearer.
Mush I have to say after glancing at that post I think you're playing Mafia at a whole other level then I ever have
I don't think I've ever in over five years of Mafia put that much thought into this game
In post 380, Imperium wrote:If he's town, you get rid of netflix and you get the day cut short handing the gun to someone who's already stated they lack confidence which is a win win for scum.
Possibly going into night then shooting someone for less information again.
I don't think you're approaching this game genuinely. Like at all at all.
I don't understand the bolded part here.
But my basic thoughts regarding this was that I felt we were being led into a Norfolk shot (this doesn't necessarily mean Norfolk is town). But in the event that he is town, then I agree that we just die and scum gets a win-win because now Norfolk (a low confidence town player) would have the gun and they could potentially manipulate his next shot.
If he were a goon, then scum can immediately try to eliminate another threatening town slot before they gain traction.
If he were a godfather, we just die and then scum choose their next townbearer.
But basically, us shooting pretty much means we're okay with getting a flip at the expense of a townslot, whether that means we die from shooting a townie/godfather, or we shoot a goon and the mafteam decides to use their kill.
In post 380, Imperium wrote:If he's town, you get rid of netflix and you get the day cut short handing the gun to someone who's already stated they lack confidence which is a win win for scum.
Possibly going into night then shooting someone for less information again.
I don't think you're approaching this game genuinely. Like at all at all.
I don't understand the bolded part here.
But my basic thoughts regarding this was that I felt we were being led into a Norfolk shot (this doesn't necessarily mean Norfolk is town). But in the event that he is town, then I agree that we just die and scum gets a win-win because now Norfolk (a low confidence town player) would have the gun and they could potentially manipulate his next shot.
If he were a goon, then scum can immediately try to eliminate another threatening town slot before they gain traction.
If he were a godfather, we just die and then scum choose their next townbearer.
My bolded was basically your "if he was a goon..." It felt like he was urging you to take that shot early, which even if goon would potentially cause us to lose another town super early. I realize that they don't have to kill another town right away, so maybe they wait until they see who is threatening, but that's what I meant there.
In post 534, SirCakez wrote:Can I get an outsider opinion on Lotus v Duchess? I can't put a pin in either person's alignment and its really bothering me.
I got nothin. Was planning to reread them and their interaction tomorrow to see if I'd get something then.
I don't know MUSH. The simplest explanation I have for your own thoughts is that you suffer from overthinking.
I couldn't really follow half of the things you said either, so at some point you have to realize what you're saying is in some form incomprehensible. Critical thinking doesn't need to be at the expense of clarity
In post 391, Imperium wrote:And I don't think that netflix is going to shoot this soon
My partner is actually itching to shoot somebody, and the only thing that would keep me from stopping him right now is you.
I still want to give you a fair shake at getting your thoughts out here. But us shooting here basically means I [we] have accepted that one or both of us could very well die.
In post 391, Imperium wrote:And I don't think that netflix is going to shoot this soon
My partner is actually itching to shoot somebody, and the only thing that would keep me from stopping him right now is you.
I still want to give you a fair shake at getting your thoughts out here. But us shooting here basically means I [we] have accepted that one or both of us could very well die.
If you're ready to shoot then shoot.
This feels like a baby game state to me in that I don't have a lot of reads I feel super comfortable with. I wouldn't mind a Norfolk shot at this point but I think it'd be smarter if you let more posts happen. If you're shooting outside of that then you're seeing things that I'm not.
