Long Game 68: Studies of Ashyn

[Kasimir he/him]

5 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Yes, I did. I removed a vote from Pyro.

Did you add a vote to anyone, though?

Edit: @Lotus I'm sure someone will go "Kas, how is it you can write this but are too busy to analyse?" To which, I am guilty as charged - I just genuinely felt compelled to respond because I've had these arguments with a few players on and off, and at some point, I just had to say something as someone who used to study human reasoning from a normative perspective for a living.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Kasimir

[Sart he/him]

5 hours ago, Kasimir said:

[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. 

Ugh, fine, sorry for not confirming it. TJ PM'd me saying he roleblocked me. Once he spoke up, i considered the matter closed. Frankly, I didn't want to remind people that I had an action. I considered sending you a PM, but I have the same disease as TJ and Ashbringer. I have lesions that prevent me from PM'ing, in exchange for a roleblock. I was trying to decide which of the two were more suspicious, but I ended up getting distracted with other concerns.

[|TJ| he/him]

34 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Yes, I did. I removed a vote from Pyro, 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.

Hold on, wait what? The score was 3-3. Why would you remove a vote from Pyro? That would get you lynched? 

35 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

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?

Yes, Kas. I believe my action would be not fun for the eliminators. I regret it, and apologize once again. I didn't think ahead. The idea popped in my head, I thought it was smart and I went with it. One way to determine if I'm being "right" is I look at the matter from the opposite perspective. And that's when I realized my mistake. If I was an elim, I would definitely NOT enjoy being to forced to tell something would surely and easily (potentially) out me as an eliminator. Retrospectively, I should not have done that, no matter how useful it seemed to me. I should have thought about all this before taking my action. To me, my actions were unethical and wrong, and I will not repeat this in the future.  

7 minutes ago, Sart said:

Ugh, fine, sorry for not confirming it. TJ PM'd me saying he roleblocked me. Once he spoke up, i considered the matter closed. Frankly, I didn't want to remind people that I had an action. I considered sending you a PM, but I have the same disease as TJ and Ashbringer. I have lesions that prevent me from PM'ing, in exchange for a roleblock. I was trying to decide which of the two were more suspicious, but I ended up getting distracted with other concerns.

Me and Matrim actually. Lesions is correct, and since no one mentioned our disease in-thread, you must have it (or you got the info through some other means, but I won't get into that now. 

[Kasimir he/him]

17 minutes ago, TJ Shade said:

Yes, Kas. I believe my action would be not fun for the eliminators. I regret it, and apologize once again. I didn't think ahead. The idea popped in my head, I thought it was smart and I went with it. One way to determine if I'm being "right" is I look at the matter from the opposite perspective. And that's when I realized my mistake. If I was an elim, I would definitely NOT enjoy being to forced to tell something would surely and easily (potentially) out me as an eliminator. Retrospectively, I should not have done that, no matter how useful it seemed to me. I should have thought about all this before taking my action. To me, my actions were unethical and wrong, and I will not repeat this in the future.  

Disagree. As Araris pointed out, Eliminators could lie. They could also ask the GMs for information and to give that information. [Edited to add: I also note that I have already identified in a previous post and in communication with you that the GM PM might contain that information already.] I have also already specified that this is not what I am primarily interested in defending, since it has already been stated numerous times that the GMs are not allowing this, and neither are the community rules. So if you repeat it in future, in any case, you would be in violation of SE rules. And I'm not interested in asking people to violate SE rules.

[Edited to add: In other words, this isn't about you. If you think that's defending what you did, that's a whole other debate I'm not interested in exploring because it involves actual concrete SE rules. I'm defending what I said, and what, to a very lesser extent, Illwei said. @TJ Shade ]

It's fine if you want to adopt as your ethical yardstick: "Would the other person enjoy this?" I just point out again that this is a particular ethical claim, not a universal one. You are saying, "I don't find this unethical." Not "This is universally unethical." I certainly use this as the basis of my reasoning that I don't out players without their consent or without telling them I am doing so - because I don't enjoy it when Maili does it to me. I don't think this is good enough to tell everyone not to do it though.

But ultimately, my point continues to be: there has been a continuous tendency in SE to wave off players who want to appeal to meta factors in their reasoning. If you think that this is not okay, what about Teft's activity? What about overriding any evidence of you or me playing suspiciously with the knowledge we are busy? This is directly overriding analysis-based reasoning with meta-information. What about reasoning about role distributions, i.e. the likelihood of three Village role-blockers? El considers that meta. Would you? You certainly were okay with using it as a factor in considering Mat suspicious. What about the likelihood of every vote manipulator being Village? You claimed it would upset game balance. That's an argument from game design. It is a meta-argument that does not work off analysis.

You can argue it's not meta. And that's where my point about the troubled definition of meta comes in: if we define meta as "everything I don't like and wouldn't do", then we're talking past each other.

I think I also need to emphasise the context of this post. As I've said, this debate has occurred on and off on the margins of SE for a while now. I've noticed a persistent dismissal of players who do want to do meta reasoning about anything, e.g. role distributions. We've often been dismissed with poor arguments ("What about LG5? Spanreed! What about GMs? X or Y wouldn't do this!") and left to rot.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of being disrespected, and I'm tired of being told that my reasons are automatically wrong just because they're being defined as meta. And I am absolutely, bloody tired of getting dismissed with bad arguments that don't bother to look at what I'm actually advocating, or the particularity of the games being cited.

Aren't you?

Is anyone else?

Edited to swap 'vote distributions' for 'role distributions', which is what I meant, in the fourth-last paragraph.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Kasimir

[+Lotus she/her]

20 minutes ago, TJ Shade said:

Hold on, wait what? The score was 3-3. Why would you remove a vote from Pyro? That would get you lynched? 

Excuse, me, sorry, I removed a vote from myself. 

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

Did you add a vote to anyone, though?

Yes and no. I didn't add a vote to anybody, but my vote was assigned to someone random. I was hoping that if I removed a vote from myself (Which also removed a vote from Pyro due to my vote no longer being on there) and my vote was re-assigned, that would increase the chances I wouldn't be lynched.

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

Edit: @Lotus I'm sure someone will go "Kas, how is it you can write this but are too busy to analyse?" To which, I am guilty as charged - I just genuinely felt compelled to respond because I've had these arguments with a few players on and off, and at some point, I just had to say something as someone who used to study human reasoning from a normative perspective for a living.

My mother loves psychology, so I grew up knowing far more about human behavior then any reasonable 6-year-old should. I still love it, its one of the collage majors I've considered.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Lotus

[Kasimir he/him]

14 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Yes and no. I didn't add a vote to anybody, but my vote was assigned to someone random. I was hoping that if I removed a vote from myself (Which also removed a vote from Pyro due to my vote no longer being on there) and my vote was re-assigned, that would increase the chances I wouldn't be lynched.

Makes sense to me, and also clears things up in terms of analysis. I'll take a look.

Psychology is wonderful indeed  Philosophers paying more attention to it has been good for the profession.

Edited to add: I'm not really interested in further engaging in this debate at this point, at the cost of derailing the thread. (Sorry El and GMs.) I've defended my arguments and Illwei's (to a much lesser extent), and anyone else can @ me or fight me elsewhere (my PMs are open.) 

@Lotus: Apologies, but specifically whose vote did you target? 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Kasimir

[|TJ| he/him]

26 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

But ultimately, my point continues to be: there has been a continuous tendency in SE to wave off players who want to appeal to meta factors in their reasoning. If you think that this is not okay, what about Teft's activity? What about overriding any evidence of you or me playing suspiciously with the knowledge we are busy? This is directly overriding analysis-based reasoning with meta-information. What about reasoning about role distributions, i.e. the likelihood of three Village role-blockers? El considers that meta. Would you? You certainly were okay with using it as a factor in considering Mat suspicious. What about the likelihood of every vote manipulator being Village? You claimed it would upset game balance. That's an argument from game design. It is a meta-argument that does not work off analysis.

Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't disagreeing with you when you told meta-reasoning shouldn't be used brushed-off or considered individually weaker than analysis. In fact, I have used meta-reasoning were frequently. We caught Ventyl in LG66 because 2 Village Leechers were dead, and he was another outed Leecher, and I meta-reasoned there couldn't be 3 Village Leechers. So yes, I agree with you that meta-reasoning is useful and shouldn't be frowned upon. Many a times I have held myself back from providing suspicions based on meta-reasoning as I was aware of the dismissive/frowned upon approach others take on such reasoning. 

Edited August 8, 2020 by TJ Shade

[+Lotus she/her]

17 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

@Lotus: Apologies, but specifically whose vote did you target? 

Illwei. I was rushed for time and they were the person I definetly remember as having voted for me.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Lotus

[Gears]

@Lotus, since you targeted Illwei, your vote was randomly strewn about the players. However, since you voted on Pyro, this could not have caused Pyro's increased vote count. As there is not an unaccounted vote addition [Kas and unknown person made extra votes], Lotus's vote must have been thrown back on Pyro and someone else must have increased Pyro's vote. Considering that Pyro had vote manip powers as well, there could be a great quantity of unaccounted for vote manips cancelling each other out like virtual particles.

[+Lotus she/her]

1 minute ago, Gears said:

@Lotus, since you targeted Illwei, your vote was randomly strewn about the players. However, since you voted on Pyro, this could not have caused Pyro's increased vote count. As there is not an unaccounted vote addition [Kas and unknown person made extra votes], Lotus's vote must have been thrown back on Pyro and someone else must have increased Pyro's vote. Considering that Pyro had vote manip powers as well, there could be a great quantity of unaccounted for vote manips cancelling each other out like virtual particles.

Yes, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. We must have had at least one other vote manip, probably more.

[Kasimir he/him]

Me at the amount of vote manipulation apparently going on this game:

Spoiler

 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

Well, my guesses for what vote manipulation we had going on were very very off.

So, it looks like there were...4 instances of vote manipulation? The added vote to Lahilt, Kas adding a vote to Sart, Lotus removing a vote from themself and their vote ending up on Pyro again, and someone adding a vote to Pyro.

@Elkanah @The_God_King Can someone’s randomly redirected vote end up where it started? Just wanna confirm that this is indeed a possibility.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

2 hours ago, Kasimir said:

The whole point of being a community is we have to tolerate each other. We have to allow for diversity in playstyles.

I just want to echo this, and apologize if I seemed too aggressive towards anyone. Said aggressiveness is just bleeding out of my playstyle into my opinions on other things, which I clearly didn’t express very well. I think most of what I said was meant to be directed at the GM PM stuff, which is against SE rules possibly for some of the reasons I mentioned. I may make a post in the game meta thread that is worded a little more carefully. 

[Kasimir he/him]

37 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I just want to echo this, and apologize if I seemed too aggressive towards anyone. Said aggressiveness is just bleeding out of my playstyle into my opinions on other things, which I clearly didn’t express very well. I think most of what I said was meant to be directed at the GM PM stuff, which is against SE rules possibly for some of the reasons I mentioned. I may make a post in the game meta thread that is worded a little more carefully. 

Echoing this as well and apologising if anyone has been distressed by my arguments/posts  I think the rest of this is best left for the meta, but I'm largely not interested in defending the GM PM stuff. Minimally, I'm interested in excavating a space for meta-arguments to be harnessed as simply another source of evidence. Maximally, I'm arguing there is a distinction on several fronts between using GM PM phrasing, and recognising that a player was making a distinctive Village-seeming roleclaim, which is nonetheless defeasible (which is what was relevant to this game, and being done here.)

Edited to add: Now, the part where this blurs is that some players may take the GM PM stuff to be all the same. So the part where I attempt to draw the distinction and to defend it as part of a multi-modal system of reasoning would be the direct game-related part here  

Edited August 8, 2020 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

1 hour ago, TJ Shade said:

Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't disagreeing with you when you told meta-reasoning shouldn't be used brushed-off or considered individually weaker than analysis. In fact, I have used meta-reasoning were frequently. We caught Ventyl in LG66 because 2 Village Leechers were dead, and he was another outed Leecher, and I meta-reasoned there couldn't be 3 Village Leechers. So yes, I agree with you that meta-reasoning is useful and shouldn't be frowned upon. Many a times I have held myself back from providing suspicions based on meta-reasoning as I was aware of the dismissive/frowned upon approach others take on such reasoning. 

*Coughs expectantly*

 

Seeing as diseases spread through unknown vectors, role-dispersion analysis is likely not going to be very helpful. 

Sart's +1 vote is from Kas, Lotus -1 vote is from Lotus, and Lotus's extra vote landed on Lahilt or Pyro. Pyro could have Soothed a vote from himself only to have Lotus's or his own secret vote end up on himself, but doesn't explain where the last +1 on Pyro or Lahilt came from.

One interesting thing: there's no voter overlap on Mist's lynch and Pyro's. Nobody who voted Mist D1 ended with a vote on Pyro D2.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

@Illwei, if you're a villager, your judgement is better than the average player's. If you're willing to vote once for someone, feel free to vote twice and then tell people you did so the following turn. To confirm, one of your votes has to be in thread, correct? It couldn't be the case that the person who added a vote to Lahilt also added a vote to Pyro? If that's true, we either have a fourth double voter or a third type of vote manipulation.

@The Young Pyromancer, I think of your villager playstyle as trying to make things happen, either by coordinating things in PM(QF46), or actively pushing vote discussion(LG67). In this game, you didn't have too many PMs for fear of catching diseases but didn't transfer your time into thread as much, having one poke vote and no stated suspicions. I guess your time went into trying to solve the game mechanics instead.

4 hours ago, Lotus said:

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.

It didn't really increase your odds of survival as you removed a vote from yourself and the person you were tied with and your vote easily could have ended up on you. How long have you had this disease? Did you have PMs with anyone who claimed the same disease?

3 hours ago, TJ Shade said:

Me and Matrim actually. Lesions is correct, and since no one mentioned our disease in-thread, you must have it (or you got the info through some other means, but I won't get into that now. 

Are we back to using specific wording from GM PMs to prove things? Is this also how you confirmed Matrim's role? Or Kas confirmed that he, Illwei, and X had the exact same disease? I guess we'll be able to check if Matrim/Sart are telling the truth by seeing if there are two roleblocks tonight, though supposedly people don't notice if they were roleblocked if they didn't submit an action.

 

[Vapor she/her]

5 hours ago, Kasimir said:

[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  

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:

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.

I just lost 5 minutes of my life to that. 

[Kasimir he/him]

2 minutes ago, Vapor said:

I just lost 5 minutes of my life to that. 

How many more are you making Illwei lose, since you pinged him?  

[Vapor she/her]

Wait, what? Does that work?

I'm sorry if it did

[Ashbringer he/him]

Vapor, why did you quote it...

Devotary, why did you @ someone who’s dead...

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

2 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Devotary, why did you @ someone who’s dead...

He asked, and I felt he deserved an answer.

[+Lotus she/her]

25 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

5 hours ago, Lotus said:

 

It didn't really increase your odds of survival as you removed a vote from yourself and the person you were tied with and your vote easily could have ended up on you. How long have you had this disease? Did you have PMs with anyone who claimed the same disease?

It felt good to do something though. And I think it increased the odds slightly, but it was still up in the air.

The only person I have PMd with is Kas. 

[Straw he/him]

23 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

How many more are you making Illwei lose, since you pinged him?

Do quotes ping?

Quote

@Straw test.

I was also kind of confused at Devotary pinging Pyro. What question were they answering?

[Kasimir he/him]

27 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Are we back to using specific wording from GM PMs to prove things? Is this also how you confirmed Matrim's role? Or Kas confirmed that he, Illwei, and X had the exact same disease? I guess we'll be able to check if Matrim/Sart are telling the truth by seeing if there are two roleblocks tonight, though supposedly people don't notice if they were roleblocked if they didn't submit an action.

Are we back to making paggro jabs at players? I thought SE was better than this. I am disappointed that we are not.

@Elbereth, because I'm rusting done with this. If we can't go a single Turn in this game without having to squabble over this, I request you mods make a decision by sheer fiat, and enforce it so that community members can decide if they can live with it, or to stay or go. If that's how you all want to play it, then so be it.

I can't speak in detail for what TJ did with Mat, but Illwei spoke to me on N1 about his disease. I asked for details and encouraged him to come forward in the thread. On D2, the GM PM I received matched Illwei's description. Later on, Player 3 told me they had the disease. I asked them to describe both the nature of the disease and the ability it conferred. In addition, I had already told Player 3 a detail about how the disease worked that had not been mentioned in thread. At no point were we interested in splitting hairs about what the GM PM actually said.

As far as I know, that's exactly what TJ did with Mat. There's a significant difference between saying, "My disease is leprosy" and saying what the disease I, Illwei, and Player X is called.

Is this specific wording from GM PMs for you?  You can decide. Or I guess @Elkanah and @The_God_King can decide, too.

@Elbereth I'm happy to be censured for this, if you like  

[Mat he/him]

I would just like to say scrolling through Vapor's quote on mobile is an absolute nightmare. Don't.

Anyway, @Lotus, there's something kinda strange I want to point out about your vote manip claim. You claimed you were roleless, back on D1 (on page 5, if anyone's interested in the context of the claim):

On 8/4/2020 at 7:14 AM, Lotus said:

That is quite interesting. I do not have any sort of disease (yet)

This begs the question: Were you lying, either here, or when you claimed? If you gained the disease either from PM's or some other means during N1/D2, did you somehow know this would happen? (Given the addition of the 'yet' in the D1 post this is something I'm considering you knew could happen, when considering how much we knew at the time you made this post.)

RP time. It's been awhile.

---

grumble. grumble. grumble.

Farns's mind was scrambled. This blasted internship was getting worse with every passing hour. Two problems with fire, accusations, and Farns himself was a target of conversation. His aged body and brain could hardly handle the stress. 

Well. That was untrue. He handled it just fine. He just didn't want any of this to be happening. How much easier would it be if everyone just blasted got along. More work certainly would get done. But with the clear presence of unwanted saboteurs, that wasn't going to be an action.

It was Farns's dearest hope he could pull himself and the other interns through this mess. Survive. Graduate. 

And investigate plants.

 

OOC Edit: The RP part about no one getting along has nothing to do with the meta discussion. Just thought I should make that clear...  

 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Matrim's Dice