Alicornutopia

Okay, after thinking about it for a while (not the entire time since my last post, but off and on since then), I find the arguments against Alphabeta less convincing than I did previously. I think y'all are falling prey to the fundamental attribution error. I find it probable that he was simply grumpy for non-game-related reasons at the time he made the posts people find so suspicious. If that is true, I should not find him any more suspicious than anyone else in the game.

If I instead assume that he made these posts suspicious-looking deliberately, and consider the circumstances that would have made him do so, I find it even *less* likely that he's mafia. Why? Alphabeta is a fairly gifted player, judging from last game--if he made these posts suspicious-looking deliberately (which, again, I think is unlikely to be the case), he did so because he *wants* people to be suspicious of him. I can think of 3 reasons that might be the case:
1. He can fulfill his win condition by dying. If this is the case we should not humor him. Even if he is not explicitly anti-Town his death puts the mafia (or serial killers, or whatever) one death closer to winning.
2. He has some power which protects him from being killed at the end of the day, and wants us to know it. In this case we would be giving up the possibility of killing mafia (or serial killers, etc.) on Day 1 in exchange for learning this fact. If you believe what people have said in this thread, wikis, etc, that recommend a zero-knowledge lynch of Day 1, this is not a good trade for us.
3. He is, in fact, mafia (serial killer bla bla bla), and is trying to play one level higher than us by making us run through the logic I just went through and conclude that he is not mafia. If this is the case he badly miscalculated, since I seem to be the first person to do this and even if he is does not "win" the vote today people will be suspicious of him.

I conclude, therefore, that Alphabeta is less likely than random chance to be mafia (etc) based on his behavior. Aestrix's defense, on the other hand, doesn't make me any more or less likely to believe she is mafia (etc) than I thought at the beginning of the game. Thus I can still treat her as chosen randomly by THE RNG. Given the premise that a random Day 1 kill is a Good Thing, I will therefore vote for Aestrix.

I find Alphabetas behaviour pretty consistent with what we saw last game. I have "Addy??" written on my notes, which seems..unlikely.
We have less hunches collected than I would like, but I does look like a pattern exists and I do think there's probably a reason for that.
I will therefore vote Alphabeta because even if we don't have solid evidence I do think he is more likely to be a killer than average.

Jalapenos points:
1. Unlikely. Having that goal at the start of the game wouldn't make for expectation on an enjoyable game. I don't think Alicorn would do that. I may be thown by unfamiliarity with Elcenia here. Does it deal with suicide prevention to significant decree? Does such a character exist?
2. Complexity penalty. Further, I think I would be willing to make that trade. Day 1 lynch is absolutely the right move, but losing the chance isn't super costly. The likelihood of hitting a killer instead is low even if we waste a lynch on Alphabetas shields. I would be willing to trade the small chance for such information. Also, if he has such shields and wants us to know, why wouldn't he say 'I have shields'?
3. Could be. I don't think such 'levels' are actually very clear cut in real life. He could be emulating his own behaviour from last game. It did get him pretty far and that way we wouldn't notice changes. Or it could just be his personality.

A quote comes to mind:
"Oh, I know it," said Hermione. She took another step back, her tired fingers tightening on the wand. "But the thing that people forget sometimes, is that even though appearances can be misleading, they're usually not."

I think we all still feel a bit bad about andais last game, though it's good he wasn't the cop after all.

Honestly, I just don't believe that strongly in freedom of information under all circumstances.

So, I'm being bandwagoned because of some disagreements on what is a good idea, one genuine mistake of procedure, and my fucking writing voice. I'm tempted to jump on Aestrix for the sake of survival, but I don't want to stoop that low considering that I don't actually have any clues as to her identity, so I'll go with no lynch. When I'm confirmed by the mods as town, I want you all to remember who bandwagoned onto me.

If there was someone who could confirm you as town, would you want them to do so?
Like, in the last game, you could have confirmed me as town to prevent me from being brought to misaimed mob justice, or Aestrix could have at least said that michaelblume was town even if she wouldn't say "michaelblume is Chris" because that would probably get him murdered at night.
And this game probably has some roles with some affiliation-detectors or role-detectors and one of them might be able to inspect you and say that you are town, so if you give permission, maybe one of them would say that you are town?

See, this is the problem with voting off of our intuitive suspicions on Day One. We don't have nearly enough information to go on, so our intuitive suspicions are based on things that don't actually matter. People are going to be inclined to vote for Alphabeta because he has a sketchy writing voice, but people will be less inclined to vote for, say, me, because my avatar is an adorable anime character and I apologize a lot and speak in Wobegonics (http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/prog ... GONICS.htm). We did this exact same thing with AndaisQ in the last game. This is why we did the random number generator in the first place. I think modrony's idea is a good one generally, but we should wait until it's more probable that our intuitive suspicions are based on real things.

Also, Kappa is kind of taking charge here, which is fine, because he has good ideas, but if she's a killer, we're in trouble. I would recommend any investigative templates tap him tonight.

I don't think Alphabeta is being that suspicious, and I'm not sure if I'm actually that good at forming useful intuitions about who is probably evil on the first day.
I think killing Alphabeta for his mistakes is probably a bad idea.
We've got about 6 hours left? For now I am voting no lynch but I might change to DanielH later because the second number generator and a lack of good alternatives.

BlueSkySprite wrote:If there was someone who could confirm you as town, would you want them to do so?
Like, in the last game, you could have confirmed me as town to prevent me from being brought to misaimed mob justice, or Aestrix could have at least said that michaelblume was town even if she wouldn't say "michaelblume is Chris" because that would probably get him murdered at night.
And this game probably has some roles with some affiliation-detectors or role-detectors and one of them might be able to inspect you and say that you are town, so if you give permission, maybe one of them would say that you are town?

Well, that'd be nice, but honestly I'd rather have investigative templates find some actual scum before they reveal themselves and get killed.