Ortolan wrote: Saying that I "hedged" my arguments then attempted to "slink away" seems to be exactly the sort of thing that falls into the category of being unrebuttable. It's a particular spin you're putting on my actions. While it is certainly a feasible hypothesis that I am scum and tried to distance myself from the responsibility for my vote from the get-go, I can only claim what it was- a poor voting choice.
Ugh...this defence really should be on the list as one of my pet-peeves
Your logic here is absurd, because ANY action can be spun as something that either town or scum could so. If we didn't hold people culpable for any actions which might possibly be "poor voting choices", town wouldn't ever win. A scumbag quick-hammers: "Oopsie! Poor voting choice". Somebody fakeclaims cop: "Oopsie! Poor claiming choice". Etc. etc. This is a game of incomplete information for town and, as such, town HAS to rely upon drawing reasonable inferences as to the likely motivations of certain actions. By this logic, the only time it is ever possible to lynch somebody is if they are confirmed by the mod to be scum - which, needless to say, doesn't happen in mafia until after death.
In your case, you never justify your vote and you are consistently stressing how weak your inclinations are. My point that it suggests you were dodging accountability is a particular spin I am putting on your actions, and I make no effort to gloss over that fact. Faced with the two viable possibilities of "scum avoiding accountability" and "town casting dodgy vote", the former is the more reasonable choice - because the latter depends upon a presumption of aberrant play.
I guess the best way to put this is that we all play with a presumption that other people are competent. If somebody does something which is only consistent with them being pro-town in the event in a scenario where some lapse has to occur in their standard of play, that action should generally be treated as a scumtell.
(Btw, I will say now that this line of talking has a tendency to veer dangerously into a pure theory discussion about "What is a scumtell?" It's a debate which never ends in MD, and which we should not be having, to an unreasonable extent, in this game. Getting into a debate about the philosophy of mafia is a diversion, not a defence)
Ortloan wrote:
And people I feel often forget on the first day that, chances are, you're not going to catch scum, you're going to lynch a townie. Thus in some sense I feel people read more into votes than there is. Technically if you feel you've come to odds better than what your prior probability would be (20% or 30% in this game depending on whether there are 2 or 3 scum) at any point then a vote's probably justified.
Nice try.
Whether or not a vote is justified is a question that has to be answered objectively. A politician may say "I feel my decision to enter a war was justified because I thought there was a threat", but that doesn't make it so. You gave no explanation for your professed belief that their were better-than-random prospects of him being scum.
Ortolan wrote: Of course, what your publicly announced justification for your vote is is a different matter
No. The public justification is everything.
Ortolan wrote: As I said, I had, at the time, a slight preference for Ectomancer. I was then asked to justify it, so tried. I believe there's a psychological phenomenon whereby if people believe something, irrespective of whether it has any factual basis, they will attempt to rationalise it by coming up with supporting arguments. I'm also of the belief that some people often go on hunches or even more sophisticated reasoning than that they actually announce to the town- because there's certain accepted conventions in mafia that irrationally make some ways of argument more "accepted" than others. One example is putting a vote on an existing bandwagon without what is felt as acceptable reasoning by others, as I did. Then if you stay on it, you're asked to give better reasoning. If you unvote, you're portrayed as distancing yourself from your initial vote. So it can often almost directly lead to your own lynch, just as for example self-voting can in other games (sometimes even if done during the random phase).
A reductio ad absurdum of your confirmation bias argument would lead to the conclusion that we shouldn't expect any votes to be justified, since people are ultimately just voting based on emotional presuppositions. The assertion that we are all playing according to subsconscious biases is unfalsifiable. If this game is to be anything other than just a random slew of votes, we need to play on the presumption that we are all acting rationally. That means that proper reasoning is required from all players. If a player cannot show that they are actually thinking about who is scum, then the most reasonable conclusion will ordinarily be that they are themselves scum.
Ectomancer wrote:ortolan wrote:While it is certainly a feasible hypothesis that I am scum and tried to distance myself from the responsibility for my vote from the get-go, I can only claim what it was- a poor voting choice.
Here's my problem. I dont get the impression that you unvoted because it was a poor voting choice. I get the impression that you are now saying it was a poor voting choice due to the flack you got over it from all sides. (something Im certain you didnt expect) Your case wasn't developed because you were trying to ride the coattails of others. Mine was a developing wagon. My opinion is that you may have been trying to reserve a 'safe' seat on the bus. You didn't start the wagon, thus avoiding too much attention, and you don't have to end it either, once again avoiding too much attention.
The telling event here is your referencing orangepenguin as a source for your case, when he said himself that it wasn't one. Additionally, you had to climb over the posts where I demonstrated where his analysis fell short, or was just wrong. You didn't even talk about those points at all, or really any other point from anyone else either.
I'm also not satisified with you answer concerning the justification of your original vote. Telling us that you no longer believe it, therefor why would you explain something you don't believe is hogwash. You know why you did it back then, and current belief holds no bearing on a belief you supposedly once held.
QFT
Springlullaby wrote:
Are you deliberately isolating my statement from the rest of my post here? Here your quoting makes it appear as if I have voted you without reason, but the rest of that post you quoted states clearly why I think your votes sucked.
I didn't pick up on this. Good find.
Mykonian wrote:
I appoligise for annoying you. I'm afraid I knew that could happen. Still I don't agree with you. You simply explain Ecto's behaviour, without any points why. Just saying that I shouldn't have missed it. You avoid proof that way. More people go after Ecto because he is "too agressive". Also explaining the behaviour, without telling where, and if this is scummy.
I seem to have given you the wrong impression. When I said "missed it", what I meant was that you seemed to have missed my posts discussing the existence of prejudice in his statements. I wasn't avoiding proof. My statement was essentially saying that "The tone of the attacks is relevant, in case you missed my reasoning in previous posts, because it shows prejudice".
ecto wrote:
And Ecto's point with the sheep is valid. It is not weird people would pick on you, because you made yourself special. The reactions from you that followed Ecto thought scummy (I really don't know if agree with them, seem weak), not the vote itself. Your defense assumes he votes for the selfvote.
This isn't true.
As I have said repeatedly now, I don't take opposition to self-voting as a scumtell (that would be absurd). Ecto challenging my self-vote was not scummy in and of itself. What followed, and the reason I challenged his question requiring an explanation, was to see why he thought that self-voting needed justification. As I have said, it became apparent that his attack was all bark and no bite.
If we then apply that later evidence back to the initial question, we see that the initial questioning of the self-vote, it becomes apparent that, whilst somebody might have legitimately been inquiring for good reasons, Ecto was not.
Mykonian wrote:
Even if OP can't point the finger to it, and I can't too, I feel the orto wagon went too fast. Not right on this moment. It is on weak reasons, bad posts from orto.
How do you reason that it went "too fast"? It hasn't had a conclusion yet
And what about the reasons do you consider weak?
Ortoloan wrote: You can make an argument for someone being scum for joining a bandwagon at any stage. "You started the bandwagon against him, therefore you're scum", "you were the second vote in the bandwagon, if that isn't scummy I don't know what is", "you were the third vote on the bandwagon- you were trying to join an already established bandwagon and hope you could ride it to the end"..."you hammered, you're getting lynched next". I worry that most people's case against me relies on very specific interpretations of what my goals were, which are no more privileged than any other interpretation. This is really no different from what I said in post 143:
See my rant at the top of this post. Every attack has to rely on a specific interpretation because town doesn't have complete information. This is no defence and is simply a means of using a poor theory argument to justify any sort of behaviour.
Mykonian wrote:
It's speculation about my motives rather than any coherent and internally consistent case for me being mafia.
I could say for example "vollkan's gambit was intended purely so he would have a device for continually launching suspicion on different people- firstly he could launch suspicion on those who called him on his self-vote, then he could launch suspicion on those who called the caller on his self-vote etc., basically a mafia's dream". However this is just an interpretation. It is ironic however that the people who attack me either aren't aware of or deliberately ignore the fact that what I am being attacked for- making a subjective determination, is exactly what they're doing in attacking me, they're just better at pretending they're not being subjective.
This is also very relevant to springlullaby's case against me:
(The statement I quoted was "Two non joke votes, two vote that sucks." and asked for an explanation for it)
Even ignoring my meta, the self-voting argument you present above is invalid because there are reasonable arguments in favour of self-voting. There are no reasonable arguments for crappy play and so, whilst the possibility of error precludes us from taking poor play as a solid instant obv scum tell, it is reasonable to rationalise such play as scummy.
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