Long Game 68: Studies of Ashyn

[|TJ|]

@Devotary of Spontaneity, no. My basic suspicion on Araris is based on the voting pattern with Illwei and his preference to lynch Mist over Illwei, when people voting for Mist did not have better reasoning than those voting for Illwei. Now that he has explained why meta voting might be worse than a random vote, I can understand. 

 

[StrikerEZ]

I'm going to switch my vote to Gears Lahilt. There's some stuff from Kas which already encapsulates part of why I suspect them, but there's also the fact that their posts and reads seem to be very wishy-washy, like they're trying to have suspicions but don't really know how to find something suspicious where there is nothing, if that makes sense. Not saying their reads are completely wrong, just the unsureness of their reads gives me an odd vibe.

[Ashbringer]

... you know, yes, yes it does.

I don't think I have enough time to make a reasoned vote, so I'll keep it off this lynch for now.

And now I am double ninja'd. Great.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Ashbringer

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Lotus (3/4): Matrim, Vapor, Illweix2?
Pyro (3): Gears, Lahilt, Lotus
Lahilt (2/3): Kasimirx2?, Striker
Mint (2): Sart, Araris
Illwei (1): Ashbringer
Araris (1): TJ Shade

Both Pyro and Lotus seem to be acting differently than normal village, though Lotus is also different from QF46 as a non-villager. I kind of want to see if Illwei's dedicated enough to this vote to double it.

[---]

I'm going to try and not use my second vote as much, as it kind of interferes with the whole democratic thing...I think...

Edited August 8, 2020 by Illwei

[Elkanah]

The Day is Over.

[The Young Pyromancer]

Devotary, what do you think my normal village is?

EDIT: Ninjad.

Edited August 8, 2020 by The Young Pyromancer

[Elkanah]

Incident Report 17-01-766

First responders rushed to the scene of a fire in storage room L. They used CO2 extinguishers to keep the flames at bay until additional help could arrive. About ten minutes later reinforcements charged into the room wielding aluminum blankets. The fire was quelled, but any fire in the cognitive realm yields world changing dangers. It is expected that the culture of Sel will never recover. Their traditions are lost to their minds, and while we will try to pick up the pieces, there is a more dire threat. We must find the instigators.

There was one casualty. The Young Pyromancer hasn't shown up for role call and it is assumed his was the body pulled from the flame, though the body was burned beyond recognition. Some argue this was his comeuppance, but it is possible more nefarious actors are at fault.

 

The Young Pyromancer was lynched! He was a Loyal Intern. His background in physics did little to keep him from swift and violent retribution. After studying recent ballots, you have discovered he has been tampering with the intern-removal process. Action: Remove someone's vote, your vote will be assigned randomly to someone with at least one vote.

 

Votes

Young Pyromancer (4): Gears, Lotus, Lahilt

Lahilt (3): Kasimir, StrikerEZ

Lotus (2): Matrim, Illwei, Vapor

Mint (2): Sart, Araris

Araris (1): TJ Shade

Sart (1): 

 

Player List

Spoiler

1. Gears - Dr. Gears

2. Ashbringer - Faleast

3. The Young Pyromancer Physics, Condition - Action: Remove someone's vote, your vote will be assigned randomly to someone with at least one vote

4. Teft the mosshead - Irian

5. Matrim's Dice - Farns

6. Araris Valerian - Klumm Z.

7. Lord_Silberfarben - Lord-son-...-Silberfarben History, Condition - Action: Target one player, remove their condition

8. TJ Shade - Kondrea

9. Straw - Straw

10. Mist - Tara night  History, Condition - Action: kill target player; you die as well

11. Frozen Mint 

12. Lotus - Lucy

13. Illwei 

14. Vapor 

15. Kasimir - Maris Erikell

16. Sart - Thomas

17. Lahilt - T. A. Hill

18. Devotary - Liba

19. StrikerEZ 

 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Elkanah

[Mat]

@Elkanah could we get the vote count?

[Elkanah]

Yep, Sorry. Doing that right now.

Edit: fixed

Edited August 8, 2020 by Elkanah

[Straw]

So, +1 to Sart and Lahilt, -1 to Pyro and Lotus.

[+Lotus]

22 minutes ago, Straw said:

So, +1 to Sart and Lahilt, -1 to Pyro and Lotus.

Wouldn’t it be +1 to Pyro?

[Straw]

Just now, Lotus said:

Wouldn’t it be +1 to Pyro?

Yeah, it's past midnight and my mind is not the best ATM.

[---]

So we have (at least) full 3 vote manips that we don't know of...two people who add votes and one who subtracts...
I wonder if some of them are like pyro where they don't choose where the vote goes

Edited August 8, 2020 by Illwei

[|TJ|]

13 minutes ago, Illwei said:

I wonder if some of them are like pyro where they don't choose where the vote goes

At least one of them is, as Pyro told he got it from someone. 

Edit: @Elkanah @The_God_King 

59 minutes ago, Elkanah said:

 Action: Remove someone's vote, your vote will be assigned randomly to someone with at least one vote.

Is the reassigned vote visible? That is, is the name of the person who takes this action is visible along with the number, or just the number is shown? 

Edit 2: @Illwei, did you double vote? 

Edited August 8, 2020 by TJ Shade

[---]

14 minutes ago, TJ Shade said:

At least one of them is, as Pyro told he got it from someone. 

Is the reassigned vote visible? That is, is the name of the person who takes this action is visible along with the number, or just the number is shown? 

Edit 2: @Illwei, did you double vote? 

Right. Forgot about that.

and no I didn't double vote.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Illwei
some of my words didn't get posted apparently

[Elkanah]

22 minutes ago, TJ Shade said:

 @Elkanah @The_God_King 

Is the reassigned vote visible? That is, is the name of the person who takes this action is visible along with the number, or just the number is shown? 

No. Just the number changes

[---]

so the extra vote on pyro might not have been intended specifically for pyro, just for anyone else. 

[StrikerEZ]

For all we know, Pyro could've removed a vote on Lotus, and then his vote (which he hadn't placed himself yet) got randomly redirected to himself. @Elkanah @The_God_King Is this possible?

That isn't the most likely scenario, however. What we're most likely looking at is 3 vote adders and 1 vote remover.

Also, interesting how two of the players up for the lynch along with Pyro both voted on Pyro....

[Kasimir]

[OOC] [Mild exkasperation] Is it really this hard to read the thread? I stated I was voting Sart with ny spare vote as I wanted him to confirm TJ's account. I even highlighted Sart's name in orange (Lahilt's earlier) to indicate this would happen.

The third player messaged me to let me know they were voting Lahilt with their spare vote. The movements on Lotus and Pyro are the unknown votes. 

Edited to add: Moreover, Sart read the thread. So I was not inclined to remove my vote given his unresponsiveness. 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Kasimir

[Gears]

Concerning the vote manip on Lotus and Pyro: It is certainly possible that Pyro or someone else with the same power as Pyro used their power on someone and got their vote randomly redirected to someone. Or one of Matrim, Vapor, or Illwei [probably not Illwei since we already know their disease, but better to list all possible cases] has the power of secretly voting for someone else [invalidating their old vote and putting them on the new person. Or one of Matrim, Vapor, or Illwei [again, probably not Illwei] has an ability that duplicates someone's vote at the cost of their own vote. Or there genuinely was two separate vote manips, one to remove from Lotus and one to add to Pyro. @Lotus, did you engage in vote manipulation to save yourself?

Miscellaneous tangent concerning PMs as a vector of transmission: Pyro was wrong, or at least their evidence was wrong. Maybe they was actually right but for the wrong reasons. Pyro asked me if I had a disease, to which I replied, "I can neither confirm nor deny." They then told me that they thought they caught a disease from me and made that post in thread. However, Pyro's disease is not a disease that I have [the status of my health is confidential, the existence of a disease will not be confirmed]. Basically, I may or may not have a disease, but Pyro thought they caught their disease from me. I don't have their disease.

[Elkanah]

7 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

For all we know, Pyro could've removed a vote on Lotus, and then his vote (which he hadn't placed himself yet) got randomly redirected to himself. @Elkanah @The_God_King Is this possible?

This is possible

[|TJ|]

25 minutes ago, Gears said:

Basically, I may or may not have a disease, but Pyro thought they caught their disease from me. I don't have their disease.

That is not the proof that he was wrong. Possibly you were just one of the players he had PMd (or received a PM from). He asked me as well, if my disease was the one he had. So I presume he asked a few others as well. 

[Kasimir]

[OOC] So, I wanted to address Araris's point because something about it nagged at me last Turn but I wasn't really in the place to sit down and think about why. And then I slept on it  I recognise part of this is going to, of necessity, pertain to things better talked about in an OOG thread. It's fine if the GMs or IMs tell me to desist. I just seem to have a chronic inability to shut up about things  

17 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Why? GM PMs tend to contain win condition information, which necessarily involves the name of the opposing faction. Check your PM again. Is the name of the opposing faction there? There are also other ways to find out, like asking the GM in a doc. Don't use meta stuff, because lynches based on meta information are bad IMO, and trusts based on them can be wrong and lead to losing the game. I'm pretty sure one of the AGs went horribly wrong because a timezone thing led to Wilson trusting Claincy, atlhough I'd have to check again to make sure. It also just breaks the game, and makes it less fun for everyone (or at least for people who like doing analysis). It's like in One Night Werewolf, where you don't say anything if you heard someone moving their card around during the night.

I'm going to use purple to indicate where I make bold markings as compared to Araris's original. Before I do this, I want to make it clear that we all are aware that the general rules of SE, which apply to every game but I'm going to cite them here again for reference:

Quote

• Don’t quote anything from your GM PM for any reason. This includes quoting your role PM or action results. Do not show your GM PM to any other player.

• Don’t use your forum or real life knowledge of a player to guarantee to someone that you are telling the truth. The bluffing and lies are part of the game.

• Don’t use your real life relationship with another player in any way to convince other players of a person’s honesty or alignment. If you know your sibling is an eliminator because you saw them in a doc, don’t tell other players what you saw. This goes for any game-related knowledge you may have due to your real life relationship with that person. Do not share it. The lack of information is part of the game.

Asking people to prove that they have the same GM PM by citing a specific word in the GM PM has gone into a grey area and has been called off by the GMs. This should not be done in the game, and we have all accordingly desisted. 

1. As someone who was in training to be a professional philosopher, I always have to ask what people mean by words. Words are important, and if we don't mean the same things, then we get into pointless fights because we aren't even talking about the same thing. "Lynches based on meta information are bad."

What sort of badness are we talking about here? Ethical badness? I certainly think it's somewhat ethically wrong to out players without their consent. It sure didn't stop Maili from becoming famous for info dumping if we revealed information to him and later lynched him. And I certainly do out players anyway when I feel it is absolutely necessary. The point I am making is this: if the badness inherent to using meta information is an ethical one, I question if this sort of ethical badness is meant to be universal, i.e. all players should recognise it is ethically bad and not do it, or it is meant to be particular, i.e. I think it is bad, and I as a player would not engage in it. If it is a particular ethical badness, then it has no power to become a constraining norm that binds the entire game. If it is a universal ethical badness, we must ask what the basis of this norm is.

b. Now, one natural response might be semi-Kantian. "If I, as a player, recognise that using meta information is particularly ethically bad, I should also will that other players recognise the ethical badness of using meta information." Thus, universal norms are particular norms writ large. The problem with this response is: why is the ethical badness of using meta information so special? Consider the Maili case again. The community response to Maili was as follows: don't give information to Maili unless you want to risk your information being dumped. In other words, what determines the difference between cases where the community response to particular norms is no, and where the community response to particular norms is yes? Where is the ethical basis that determines the difference between our moral responses? I'm waiting  [For the record, my personal views are that that community norms are simply community norms - some of them are ethical, but some of them are not, and there is no especial basis apart from mod or communal fiat. But if community norms are largely based on mod or communal grounds, then we cannot expect these grounds to have a particular ethical character, or to support ethical claims of badness.]

c. If we can't find a basis for the claim of universal ethical badness, then we have two questions to answer: why think it is universally ethically bad, if we have no reason nor ground for this? Moreover, what might be the source of confusion such that I consider meta information lynches to be universally ethically bad? This is a non-trivial exercise best left for another meta-ethics paper

2. Let's presume the badness here isn't an ethical one though. I certainly think there are ethical dimensions, as Araris acts and writes as though he believes there definitely is ethical badness involved. But we can also notice two other strands of thought in what he says: 

a. It's epistemically (read: informationally) bad: basing trusts and lynches on meta information can be wrong and can lead to losing the game. 

i.e. "lynches based on meta information are bad IMO, and trusts based on them can be wrong and lead to losing the game."

I'm going to assume here Araris is referring to precedent, but we also need to be both charitable and critical about Araris's argument. Clearly, game loss comes apart from regarding meta information as a basis for trust. Perhaps he's referring to what happens if all players acted that way, but I certainly don't think anyone is making a claim that all players should use meta-information! 

But here's the problem. What distinguishes meta information - epistemically-speaking - from making arguments based off player behaviour, or gut, or even voting patterns? Players can act irrationally. Players have had bad gut reads before. People's guts have been Darkfriends. People have falsely read voting patterns to make wrong inferences before. Just look at me trying to get Elk as a Jeskeri last game - yeah, no, he was a Cultist. Ask yourselves: have you ever analysed a post or voting pattern and made a mistake before? If you haven't made a mistake, please @ me - if you can provide evidence of your infallibility, I'll follow your lead in voting for the rest of this game. Eliminators, this applies to you as well. If you can show me proof that you have only ever 100% been correct in your Eliminator reads in SE, I'll follow your lead.

I'll wait. I'll bet none of you - except possibly Orlok, and I don't think even Orlok has been completely infallible without the need to correct himself - can meet that criterion. And that's because the point is that meta information isn't epistemically different from player behaviour, gut, vote analysis, or post analysis. Let's be clear: meta information isn't epistemically privileged over player behaviour, gut, vote analysis, or post analysis. But neither is the latter epistemically privileged over the former. They are sources of evidence. Sources of evidence can be wrong. Part of this is due to the nature of epistemic inferences, as inference is inherently none truth-preserving. I can go into this in greater detail as it's been part of my academic work for the past ten years or so, but that's best left for Discord, a dead doc, or another paper on epistemic inferences and truth-preservation 

Now, let's take a look at the Wilson claim. Part of the problem is we need to distinguish between what Araris is talking about, which involves a move from basing trusts or lynches entire on meta information and nothing else and never, ever revising your beliefs, to...regarding meta information as one out of many sources of evidence. Let's be clear: Wilson's trust in Claincy as an info hub was partly based on timezone analysis. It was also based on an assumption about Eliminator behaviour that turned out to be false: that a player who was so clearly uninterested in being told information and participating in an information hub was unlikely to be an Eliminator. If we want to balance that out, we can take MR4 again: part of my basis for narrowing down Spy suspects to include Karlin was basically the fact that my timezone used to be a bit weird for SE - and Karlin shared a similar timezone, and I was in an anonymous PM with the Elim because of RNGesus. I didn't get to act on it as there were other things and Karlin didn't say much in thread, but I was rambling on suspects in my GM PM with Wyrm. Where does this leave us?

So: if you use post analysis as your source of evidence, and only post analysis, and fail to account for and aggregate other sources of evidence or context, and you fail to revise your beliefs in the face of countervailing evidence, you end up with: "Wyrm contradicted himself! Elim! Lynch him!" And then you end up with bad votes, and possibly, losing the game. Funny how that works, isn't it? It's almost like the epistemic badness doesn't emerge from the source of evidence itself, but from poor epistemic behaviour on the part of the player

Let's take stock. I'm arguing so far that we can't simply claim that the badness of meta information is inherent to meta information qua meta information: that this has much more to do with players being epistemically vicious (i.e. opposite of virtuous) rather than it has to do with meta information as a source of evidence in and of itself. But barring what has been @Illwei's view on Mint and myself, I don't think of us are making this claim! (But I'll come back to this after the section break, in my handy tldr; for this game before y'all scream at me for making this esoteric.)

b. it's pragmatically bad: doing this makes things unfun for other players.

i.e. It also just breaks the game, and makes it less fun for everyone (or at least for people who like doing analysis). It's like in One Night Werewolf, where you don't say anything if you heard someone moving their card around during the night.

Does it, though? 

Does it, really, though?

Again, as I have clarified at the start of this mini-essay, no one is talking about the three prohibitions from the SE rules. While my arguments may be taken to partly attack their basis, I am much more concerned with problematising the whole issue of meta information in the first place. I would argue there's a distinction between saying, "Only a Villager would secretly roleclaim the way Mint did," and demanding that all other players cough up their GM PMs. One is gamebreaking and rule-breaking. The other is not game-breaking, and may be grey by the rules. But in this particular game, we have already wandered into the grey twilight realm anyway.

Is it game breaking? Is it any more game breaking than having a Seeker create a trust and Mayor the whole village and tell people what to do? Any more fun destroying than that, by any chance?

Let's be clear: no one here is asking players to reason this way. This began from Illwei saying he reasons this way, and from me saying, "Gee, Araris, in light of some presumptive, defeasible reason to think Mint is a Villager, I'm interested in why you're zooming in on her like this." No one at all is saying: "Everyone should reason this way. Analysis, schmanalysis, who needs that?" I think the charge that: if we acknowledge some players will and do reason this way, then it will break the game and no one will have fun, or at least, players who enjoy analysis won't have fun is extremely exaggerated.

How do we get from one to the other? Do you think, for instance, that maybe players who enjoy RP are any less put off by the constant focus on analysis? Or that players who like being chaotic and going on a gut level are any less annoyed by being made to analyse? How the ruddy hell do we deal with that? The same we always have. By asserting that within limits, it is okay for players to do the things they do, as long as it doesn't become a game-wide expectation that everybody plays this way, or else!

If players are reasoning using meta information as one source of information, I don't see how this is game-breaking. I also would go so far as to say that One Night Werewolf is fundamentally a communal norm. If you want to make this a communal norm in SE, fine. I accept communal norms as the price of doing business in a community, but I don't pretend to reify them if they are not based in rationality.

You can claim: "Well, if we stop saying it's bad, more people would do it, and that would make discussion boring." To which my response is: "Too bad. Deal with it." You want more analysis? Encourage players to do more. Bring that up in discussion. Stop engaging deeply in meta debates and engage players in analysis debates to shift the focus of the thread. Honestly, I used to be really put off by having to do pages and pages of analysis, which is why I've started to play the game more Kasually. And I could level the same charge: coming as an RP style player, it can be quite off-putting for players to miss what I'm doing or to fail to engage because they're not there for RP. Doesn't sound nice, does it? The whole point of being a community is we have to tolerate each other. We have to allow for diversity in playstyles. And while I'm on this, thanks to those who put up with my failed attempts at quoting for the first cycle-and-a-half.

On a very crude, practical level: Someone show me where Illwei is breaking everyone's fun. Or I am. (This post excepted  ) I'll wait.

3. What do we define as meta?

I think this is a relevant question to ask. Clearly, not everything OOG or about the game is considered 'meta' in the unacceptable way. Is it unacceptable for players to blue-text inform us they are busy and can't commit attention to the game as a way of prefacing or explaining differences in their playstyle? If meta reasoning is unacceptable, is it unacceptable for us to say, "Okay, TJ seems suss but he's busy, and so I grant that he doesn't do as deep analysis as he used to"? You are directly letting out of game reasoning impact your own in-game analysis. You are allowing it to function as a mitigating factor. You are allowing it to serve as a counter-point to analysis-based reasoning. Do not give me anything about how it's not being used as evidence. It's being used as a counterpoint.

How about this: Teft has last logged in to 17S on Tuesday, at 12:02PM (my time.) Is that meta-information? Would you use it to reason that Teft cannot have been the one to do any vote manipulation this cycle? How about this: if we know there is last minute vote manipulation that required recent knowledge of lynch states, would you look to see which players were or tend to be on at the end of the cycle?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, or no to any of these questions, why or why not? Do you think everyone shares your views of what is meta? Where do you draw the line, and what is your basis for the determination? What do you think makes your views correct?

---

Here is the promised tldr; for everyone:

• Some players dislike the use of meta-information. Araris is among them, and so is El, and probably Wilson. I respect that, and I'm quite frankly tired of having to defend different views; I hope the same respect will be extended to those of us who treat it as just another source of evidence, within the rules of the community and the game.
• Respecting and accommodating differences in the way we play and reason has been core to SE. I hope this will continue.
• I argue that meta-reasoning is like any other source of evidence: players reason badly when they do not open themselves to revising their beliefs, or when they do not bother to account for other sources of evidence. I argue that no source of evidence (in general, with exceptions) should assume priority over the other.
• I argue that charges that meta-reasoning is bad because it is ethically bad, pragmatically bad, or epistemically bad cannot account for either how the community functions or cannot be substantiated without appeal to a player's preferences. In SE, the solution has generally been to accommodate each other's preferences and to maintain fun. I argue that meta-reasoning properly harnessed it not intrinsically anti-fun.
• I argue that the line between meta and OOG and non-meta is fundamentally troubled anyway, and that distinctions drawn are not going to be bedrock and can be open to charges of ad-hocery.

The direct application for this game:

I don't think anyone apart from @Illwei has argued that Mint should be treated as a Villager without reservation. Illwei has since adjusted his view, which will be for the better. My personal read on Mint is mild/tentatively Village, partly for Illwei's reason, and partly for circumstantial reasons that I won't elaborate on at this point in time. My own read on Mint certainly isn't exclusively based on her claim, given the circumstantial reasons. I have thus also appropriately regarded it as a weak read, since Mint hasn't said much more.

If anything, my question to Araris from D2 might be appropriately phrased as thus: why do you not engage with the people who do think there is weak reason to believe Mint a Villager? He has answered that he considers it defeasible. Well and good. I will and have adjusted my views on Araris accordingly.

Thank you to anyone who made it to the end.

[+Lotus]

2 hours ago, Gears said:

@Lotus, did you engage in vote manipulation to save yourself

Yes, I did. I removed a vote from myself, and my vote was assigned randomly to someone else. I didn’t want to use the vote manip powers, but it increased my my odds of survival.

Edit: @Kasimir That is quite a long post. I’ve personally been reading about the pychology behind mafia. Very fascinating.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Lotus
I removed a vote from myself, not Pyro