View source for Mina on Faking Guilty Results as Town

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The following article was posted by [[Mina]] in Mafia Discussion on the 6th of January 2014.

==When should I fake a guilty investigation result as town?==
Never.

==When can I fake a guilty without everyone breaking my limbs in the postgame?==
# If you're an information role with a positive investigation result (such as a gunsmith guilty) and think claiming a different role and result (like a cop guilty or a track to the nightkill victim) will catch the Mafia in a lie or trick them into making suboptimal night actions. Prepare to out a useful power role if whatever you claimed is also in the game.
# As a lame reaction test that you retract long before the object of your "guilty" is even close to a lynch. That means your retraction should come within twenty-four hours of your claim, or within twenty-four minutes if you're playing a dramonic game. Even then, expect to draw suspicion unless you're an innocent child, in which case people will just bitch at you for wasting their time with something so stupid.
# If you're not town and can't read the thread title. You're in the wrong place. Go find a handy FAQ on Faking Cop Guilties as Mafia, Lynchers, and Jesters instead.

==What other good reasons are there to fake a guilty?==
# You feel like committing account suicide.
# Getting blacklisted and trashing your reputation on this site sound like your thing, since faking a guilty is just about the fastest way for a respected player to do that.
# You've hacked mafiascum and know everyone's alignment, in which case we appreciate the help in making your cheating more obvious.

==When should I not fake a guilty?==
Pretty much always.

==When should I REALLY not fake a guilty?==
# As an excuse to policy-lynch someone you don't like.
# To "shake things up" because the town is playing terribly.
# After someone has come forward with information making it impossible for your claim to be true.
# Above all...when you're just sooooo confident in your target's guilt that you're terrified the player will slip away from you if you don't lie to the town for its own good.

==But if I think he's scum, why is it a bad thing for the town to lynch him?==
Firstly, anyone has a roughly 25% chance of being scum. You could argue someone you want lynched has a better shot, but don't you think towns would have a much higher win rate if scumreads were accurate enough to make confidently risking the game on a single suspicion at a snapshot in time a viable strategy?

But even if you attach a statistically meaningless number like 40% to a player's odds of guilt, then that's a 40% chance you're right and a player who would have probably been lynched down the line dies today--with less discussion, and fewer links to the scumteam. And you might get nightkilled (which anyone halfway competent can achieve without a fakeclaim), or maybe draw the roleblocker.

On the 60% chance you're wrong...you've chained two guaranteed mislynches together, scum can coast for weeks, what little discussion there is for two game days is based on false assumptions, you potentially out the cop, you kill town's enjoyment and morale by destroying everything they've worked for on a selfish whim, causing them to throw their hands up and say, "Fuck this game!", the town's collective rage triggers multiple coronaries, aneurysms, and hospital trips, and everyone hates you and responds to any post you make from now on with, "Oh, look, it's the cancer to this site." The risk isn't worth the reward.

Secondly, your target doesn't really have a 25% chance of being scum. In fact, it's much lower. Why?

If you are faking a guilty, then you are incompetent and therefore wrong.

===What? That's unfair! I'm offended that you just called me incompetent.===
Sorry. I'm sure you're a lovely person with lots of redeeming qualities, but it was time someone broke the news to you.

===I don't believe you. I'm awesome! Look at this game where I carried the town hardcore.===
I could check, but I don't actually need to read it to guess that you weren't competent there. It's a proven scientific fact that someone who fakes cop guilties doesn't have the necessary critical faculties to identify objectively "good" play, particularly not their own. (Look, I even have a citation!) Odds are the town either lynched you for being a jackass, you had no effect on the final result, or you're cherry-picking a game where you happened to be on two scum wagons while in the rest of them you were either dead weight or an active obstruction to your win condition.

===But Mina, I've never faked a guilty before.===
That doesn't matter. Giving serious consideration to faking one is enough to invalidate your judgment.

===What if I'm a serious, reasonable, mostly sane poster? People add me to their twelve-players-and-a-mod lists in GTKAS. No one has ever called me a cancer to this site after playing with me. This one time, someone even nominated me for the prestigious Best Town Performance Scummie, and another person seconded it. I think it's safe to say I'm at least competent. So doesn't that mean I can fake a guilty, just this once?===
Sorry, but you're asking me that question. That's proof in itself you're not competent. Whether it's because you were never competent and it finally manifested itself or just because you're having a psychotic break is a question best left for the philosophers.

===Wait, remember the time this one dude called that other dude scum, but then the first dude was nightkilled, everyone forgot about him, and the second dude was Mafia and coasted to a win? Imagine how differently that game would have gone IF THE FIRST DUDE HAD FAKED A GUILTY. Wouldn't that have been awesome?===
Yes, but read the first dude in isolation. Was he right about every person he called scum? Even if he was voting correctly 70% of the time he was alive, he'd have fucked himself over by claiming a guilty during that 30% window.

On a site as large as mafiascum, finding instances of players who are right about something (even in a game that's a scum steamroll) isn't a challenge. That doesn't change that the probability of a fake guilty gambit having disastrous consequences is much higher than that of gaining a moderate reward.

Besides, those players who were ignored despite nailing a scumbag for all the right reasons were competent players. That's why they did not fake guilty investigation results. You are not a competent player. Haven't we already established this?

===That's bullshit. This one time, I faked a guilty on someone who was actually guilty!===
How many times have you faked guilties on people who were innocent?

===Only six.===
Go away.

===Screw you. I'll develop a meta of always faking guilties. This way, I won't get lynched for them.===
Good luck with that. It won't help, because the people who know you do this will refuse to play with you.

===Then I'll just poison the entire site's meta so that multiple people in the same game will wind up nightkilled despite getting innocents lynched through fake investigation results.===
Then either town will never win a game again or all roleclaims will be ignored and treated like gambits.

==Okay, fine. I admit it. I'm incompetent. But can't incompetent people still be right sometimes? Look at all the VIs whose accurate reads get laughed at because no one's persuaded by "our benevolent alien overlords interfered with the government's mind control rays to transmit a message that we should lynch Mina." No one will listen to me unless I lie.==
Faking a guilty takes a special kind of incompetence, less to do with lack of charisma or of intelligible thought processes than with your brain creating an illusion of accuracy. There's a reason confirmation bias is called a bias. If you're confident enough to fake a guilty even though doing so is really, really stupid, then you should recheck your work, because the source of that confidence probably isn't rationtal.

==Wow! Thanks to your guidance and verbal abuse (not to mention radiance, intelligence, and incomparable beauty), I have seen the error of my ways. So now that I don't want to fake a guilty anymore, can I still be competent?==
Depends. Are you using this as an excuse to rationalize going through with your gambit anyway?

===...Maybe?===
Nice try.

==Fine, you win. I just deleted my post with the fake roleclaim that I'd been about to submit. What should I do now, Mina?==
The person you were going to fake a guilty on is confirmed town. Treat him as such for the rest of the game.