Newbie Mini XII - Page 8

On May 07 2012 18:37 FirmTofu wrote:
I'd just like to shed some light on what Gummy did.

It all started when Claw claimed medic and I claimed Detective right afterwards. Gummy did not want to attack into either of the two roles because the risk of a heal going through was too great. He saw my plan's potential and had to figure out some way to discredit it(and me) before it could come to fruition.

Here's the critical part. He saw a hole in my logic and by extension in Claw's logic that he could exploit IF AND ONLY IF he could convince everyone that the mafia were going to play optimally. He used his game theory calculations as a veil to cover up the fact that he was basing everything on this primary underlying assumption--Mafia would act in their best possible interest.

But would mafia really always act in their best possible interest, or would they be swayed by emotions and what they perceive the actions of others to be? Is this a numbers game, as Gummy asserts, or it is more psychological?

I'll be the first to admit it. Gummy's logic wasn't fabricated. The problem was the underlying assumption. The assumption that should not have been assumed because the mafia:
1) May know anything about game theory (Information deficiency)
2) Could be Gummy himself, which he failed to acknowledge as a possibility. Which only supports my position as being medic
3) May choose their actions based upon suboptimal play because of WIFOM. If Gummy can predict optimal play, then supoptimal play BECOMES optimal, does it not? Suboptimal play does NOT become optimal even under WIFOM. If there is a mixed strategy solution, which in pretending to be Mafia during day play does not contain
No mafia wants their night actions predicted by a town member, and if they are forced to play suboptimally to circumvent that, they that suboptimal play becomes optimal because it turns into the best course of action. Being unpredictable is only sometimes helpful. You play to maximize expectation. A medic cannot save himself, and the probability of a second save is less than 50%. A kill on me first night, assuming Claw was scum, would've been optimal regardless of predictability. Since he was not scum and merely trolling, my explanation for why I was the optimal target for mafia first night was correct. This provides no evidence that I am Mafia.

So why did Gummy claim medic?

A short-sighted plan for a new guy who thinks he knows everything there is to know about mafia. He wanted to prove to everyone on this site that he was a force to be reckoned with and his deceptive skills in the art of persuasion were top-notch. A pretentious douchebag? Perhaps. I wouldn't go that far. I'd say he was looking to prove himself and made a critical blunder that overlooked basic logic in favor of making a spectacle of himself.

For all his knowledge of game theory, he couldn't run run a simple cost-benefit analysis to predict the repercussions of his actions.

What should have gone through Gummy's brain on Day 1:
+ Show Spoiler +


There is no accusation until here. I am assumed to be Mafia and then this logic furthers the point that my play so far would have been highly suboptimal if I were scum. Nowhere does he give any evidence that I am scum.

Remember that flip-flop thing he did on Day 1? That was your scum tell. I initially didn't believe it because I thought it was too obvious, and Gummy seemed like an intelligent guy, but that was my mistake. That was not a scum tell. This is a medic tell. That was entirely consistent with getting rid of a Mafia. As I had said many times before, I thought of this action as a separating equilibrium. If you filter through my post history you will see me saying over and over again "a medic for a scum is a good trade." If you're going to question my intelligence, at least pick an issue I didn't explicitly already account for.

I thought Gummy was town only because I assumed that he was logical enough not to make such a serious blunder. Claiming medic as mafia on Day is poor play by any standards because it invites your eventual death. This is an obvious contradiction against what he said in the previous paragraph. There is nothing but rhetorical jujitsu here. Up until this point he has yet to give a shred of evidence that I am Mafia but has repeated that I am Mafia. This is "proof by repetition" at its most classic.

Hopefully the last mafia can keep this game interesting, but we are definitely far ahead at this point. We've only lost 3 vanillas in exchange for half of the mafia team. The medic is still safely hidden so if he survives one more night without me dying, we be able to safely investigate the rest of the town and clinch victory. This analysis is mathematically incorrect, even if it assumed certainty about my alignment. 4v1 is far from a "far ahead" situation for the Mafia. 3v1 without any additional Host-provided information or medic is a worst case 67% win rate for Mafia (2/3 chance of lynching a townie. Nobody will no-lynch since no-lynch is autoloss). With medic it becomes 50/50. (1/3 chance of autowin by lynching medic. 1/3 chance of 50% guess on medic, 1/3 chance of autoloss by lynch = 50%)