Question: What options are available for someone who genuinely holds a belief and they are presented with conflicting information?
Answer: They double down on their opinion, they change their mind, or they acknowledge the cognitive dissonance.
Remember this. We'll be coming back to it.
HEM is a pretty confident universal scumread for everyone. So I'm not going to waste my time there.
Then, we get to Math. His meta is unquestionably strange and hard to put the finger on. I was dealing with the fact Math wasn't pushing theories at all, but he didn't seem to have an agenda. Roden acknowledged this too. Harley Quinn thought it made Math scum, but I wanted to sort out the lack of an agenda.
We're at
1929, I began to get suspicious that Ari was defending a scum!Blade here. Why would Math be suddenly able to play the game after voting out his townread and in an environment where he feels like he cannot give townblocks?
I sat on this for a bit (not long LOL) and discussed HEM + Math together with Roden for a moment. We both observed the same behavior from Math, so that likely meant it was significant and worth exploring. If I could get Ari alone, I could get Ari to articulate a reason to townread Math beyond he'll be useful after HEM flips or he'll give a scumread. I wanted to corner Ari to see if she was actually townreading Math. I didn't predict it to be as illuminating as it was.
In
1945, I start to put feelers out on if Ari is ever willing to vote Math because it does no good to catch Math if the people who have the stomach/fortitude to flip Math are all dead. That's most likely me and HQ. Ari said that she persuaded Math of something which is a rare feat. So Ari would be in that class. So it was worth a line.
In
1952, I claim that scum are going to argue that Math is town because they're a counter to HEM.
Ari immediately does that in the next post.
Ari then starts going back to my old Implo/HEM theory.
I didn't even bother reading the rest of the post for detail once I saw Ari claiming Math's flip spewed him town. I was like nuuhuh biatch.
Ari's post sets out two premises
1) HEM is anti-spew (not 100% sure I agree but I see it and I scumread HEM so ok)
and
2) Math hasn't anti-spew because his flip clears so many.
So that makes me think, was the odd behavior from Math anti-spew?
In
1967, Ari says that when Math sees he's going down that he goes straight into anti-spew and gives a link.
In order to check my theory, I go to the game. I find out who Math is (he's under an alt). I then go to the back of his ISO because that's the most relevant part, establishing how Math sounds when he's anti-spewing. Math's refusal to form a townblock or a cohesive readslist sounds like anti-spew to me.
So I test this theory through a series of questions that I can use no matter the answer. The idea is to get Ari to compare an "unknown" speaker to scum and then compare it to Math's game to see if I can get Ari to defend Math's actual play here or whether Ari would think Math is scummy in a vacuum.
This lets me read Ari to see if Ari is genuinely believing her Math defense and if she is to give her an opportunity to defend the root of the issue, Math's "odd for him" play.
When I posted
1975 asking if the speaker was town or scum, that wasn't the point. No matter what answer Ari gave, I would have told her it was scum that posted. It was a softball designed to have a casual conversation and not inform her that I was actually hunting any particular read in particular since I go off on tangents all the time. That "no tangents" thing might have been ruined but non essential.
Twenty minutes later, Ari says the post is "scum anti-spew". Ari and I both know that Ari has to say it's scum anti-spew. Otherwise, her linking the very game the post comes from is pointless.
Now, unpredicatably, Math comes in and claims ownership of the post in
1994. Now, if I was Ari and a player claimed a known scum post as their own, I'd at least be a little concerned. Instead, Ari is replying to a post from earlier stating she'd be "confused" if Math was scum.
Ari then states that Math stops posting when faced with going down and that's how he "anti-spews". Now, how many of you think that Math can actually stop posting when he gets on a roll? He literally cannot. His anti-spew matches more the text of the post from his micro game that putting in effort isn't worthwhile.
Ari in 2000 italics added wrote:you are talking about one post...
i am talking about the entire iso
math when hes antispewing just shuts up and stops posting
That made me think to compare Math's ISO. Math's tonal irregularities match the last post of that microgame. His ISO is full of it and excuses about why he's not the regular math with theories. No one would listen etc. This isn't a micro game where Math can prod dodge and if he did that would be a scumclaim.
So he just picks fights and never solves.
In
2008, Math says he vibes with himself...when he's scum. Like Math could not be waiving a bigger red flag. He then says if it's not this game it's not relevant which is LOL but adorbs.
In
2011, Ari says that she reads Math by volume and
intention
but how can she be reading Math's posts for intention when she "stopped reading" his posts "awhile ago" according to
1998?
After a bit, Math realizes that he should probably 180 on me. He tries to claim my reaching out to him was scummy in
2020 in an abrupt about face. The rationale is laughable.
Ari's response to this conflicting information and sibling fight is to turn back to the implosion read.
2022
Math just tries to copy this theory by adding me with HEM and Implo.
Now remember that question from before...
Question: What options are available for someone who genuinely holds a belief and they are presented with conflicting information?
Answer: They double down on their opinion, they change their mind, or they acknowledge the cognitive dissonance.
Wallflower's wrong post in
2064 is more consistent with what I expect town to do. Wallflower's wrong, but she's defending the read with substance and not deflecting like the repeated attempts to turn to HEM without saying how Math is town. Wallflower says how Math is town. (No Town!Math never does a full reset here, but it's important that Wallflower defended the position and not the accuracy.) Wallflower still has a chance to be scum if I'm wrong about Ari but I fully expect not to be.
Whoa! Yeah, you, Gamma and Roden are definite townlocks for me now. I’m also liking Implosion better and better.