Mafia
What is your favorite thing about mafia? What do you think it is about it that allures you?
Mafia is an infinite puzzle generator. I love analyzing complex systems, and I'm good at understanding people's nuanced communications and Mafia tests both of those skills. I also love tricking people, but am philosophically against even telling white lies in real life, so hidden role games are my only outlet for that. But my favorite part has to be pulling off an elaborate Xanatos gambit (once literally as Xanatos in Gargoyles Mafia),
How long have you been playing?
Hmm, I started in about 2006 I think? But took a 3 year break, so 11ish years?
If you could be Town X% of the time and Mafia X% of the time, what would be your ideal ratio?
As long as no one knew I had the choice I'd go 60% mafia. 20%indy 20%town
What is your favorite Town role and favorite Mafia role?
I haven't had much chance, but I bet innocent child or mason, so I have free license to be as scummy as I want. Mafia roles are usually pretty mild, but maybe framer? I'm often directing the mafia powers as mafia regardless of who on the team technically has them.
Will you host a game anytime in the near future?
I've been considering hosting "misspelling mafia", day phases would conclude by taking someone out to lunch, etc. Also, maybe "Rap Battle Mafia" where there would be spectators who would rank the quality of rapping done in thread and all powers would be more useful against targets lower on the secret rap rankings.
How would you best describe your process for reading people?
The most important thing is to get a baseline of how a player "should" act. I have a little mental model of each player and have expectations for what they would respond to each event as it comes up. When people deviate that raises red flags.
What do you think is the best way for people to read you? Are you aware of any secret tells about yourself?
If I was aware of it I'd have corrected it. I will say as scum I'll swerve the wagon away from scummates at the last minute, but I like to manipulate the wagons at EoD as town, so ¯\
(ツ)/¯ . My general advice is if I don't yeet scum by the end of D3 then I'm scum. I think I have very few legit town tells, but we'll have to see since I haven't played scum in over a year.
Who would you feature on an all-star scum team?
Fontisian, Me, Xivii
What's your favorite game of mafia you've played?
So many to choose from, but probably the aforementioned Gargoyles game. I was Xanatos, scum neighborizer. I, at one point, said in thread that I town read my scummate while saying in private chat that I scum read him but was lying publicly so he wouldn't NE me. It was a beautiful game with layers and layers of lies. Also, I'd been tracked to the NK target N1 and lived through endgame. Wam, the tracker, is still bitter.
What's your favorite move that has been made by a player in your time playing?
I must confess the sin of pride. That Xanatos one.
IRL
What do you do for work? I remember you mentioning something computer-science related in Crossover.
I think at the time of Crossover I was a Engineer supporting Sales of stainless steel tubing from the US to China. But since then I went to a coding bootcamp and am now rising through the ranks of Computer Programmers in Seattle.
What is your life like? You don't have to divulge anything too personal, but I'm genuinely curious.
My mother is a deeply introspective women who seriously lacks natural empathy but has put great effort to being conscientiously kind to others and taught me everything I know about how to be a caring person. My father is a whip smart businessman and an immature man-child. He taught me everything I know about negotiation, leadership and finances. And too much about how to use anger and intimidation to get what you want. I try to never use that forbidden power.
I lived in China for 8 years, and mafia was one of the ways to stay connected to English speakers in wildly different time zones. Now I'm living in Seattle, happily married, raising a child and have generally settled down. I'm contemplating what the next major life goal I want to pursue is. Either more children, because I love kids, and my daughter has been the most clearly successful project in my life, or possible working on something more widely helpful to the world.
How often do you watch movies or tv? Anything in particular that you enjoy?
Rarely (obviously more now with quarantine), but mostly just something to half pay attention to while cleaning the kitchen. TV is good for when you are exhausted and need a break from effort, but to be honest my life is pretty cushy, and I don't often need that. I'm currently enjoying The Boys, Taskmaster (British show available on youtube), and The Mandalorian. Top shows would probably be The Good Place, Avatar, and Transformers: Beast Wars. (I haven't re-watched it, it might be terrible now, but I remember Dino bot quoted shakespeare, and I cried when he died, so I'm pretty sure it was an amazing cartoon).
What is your favorite non-fiction book? What is your favorite fiction book? When is the last time you read a book?
I rarely finish a non-fiction book, I find self-help books too repetitive, history books tend to be dramatized so I'd rather just read wikipedia, and I've capped out my interest in most science. I guess I'd say Thinking fast and Slow even though I didn't finish reading it but found the ideas interesting and insightful. Top fiction would be Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by far. Other high picks are Discworld novels, Enders Game, and the Stormlight archives series.
What type of music do you enjoy?
I actually have a weird relationship with music and mostly only liked music with interesting lyrics, mostly comedy stuff like Tom Lehrer and Allen Sherman. I didn't like that catchy music would get stuck in my head, it fells like a mental mimetic virus occupying my thoughts. But recently since I've had to do more heads down focused but semi-boring work for programming I've learned to enjoy background music as long as it's has zero lyrics. I have a pandora list for programming where I downvote anything that catches my attention. It's mostly movie sound tracks and some daft punk. Oh, Jonathan Coltrane is good, guess I still like comedy music.
What are your hobbies outside of mafia?
LARPing! I love to go out in the woods, dress up as a monster and hit people with foam swords. It's realtime D&D, but with exercise!
What is the strangest thing that's ever happened to you?
I went on a school trip to Israel in highschool. I'm Jewish and grew up in a community that was 50% Jewish. I wasn't very religious but during the whole trip I had a weird feeling in my chest. It's hard to say what it was in retrospect, but at the time I felt it was the spiritual significance of the place. Also, one time when I was about ten my (christian) grandmother prayed that I would be given the gift of tongues. I babbled nonsensically for a while, but then later confessed to her that I'd only faked it to make her feel better.
Do you apply your telepathic abilities in your everyday life or just mafia? Do you make a conscious effort to see through other people's eyes or is it just something that more or less comes naturally?
It's constant and instinctive. I used to work in sales and it helped there, it also makes me a good mediator in disputes between siblings or friends. My daughter has no doubt greatly benefited from an eternally sympathetic father. It makes me a really good storyteller, which I use while playing RPGs or LARPing to make other people's games more enjoyable. I'm trying to build towards management in my career as that would make better use of my people skills.
Psyche & Philosophy
If a friend asked you to do something at the last minute, how likely are you to go along with it?
Very likely unless I have other obligations, but I almost always have other obligations.
If you could take a happiness pill that could make you permanently euphoric, would you take it? If no, how much money would it take for you to do so?
No, that would be basically suicide. How much money would it take for me to blow my brains out? Somewhere more then $100 million dollars and less then a billion dollars. If it just makes me very happy as a baseline but I can still be more and less happy so I don't lose all motivation to do anything then I'd say no, but yes for somewhere between 1-10 million dollars.
If you had one wish that could be granted as you intended, aside from any wish that results in more wishes, what would you wish for?
I wish for the wish that an omniscient being would make with the intent of making life as good as possible for all sentient life in the universe. Slightly smaller wish would be I wish to become immortal, omnipotent god emperor of mankind. Slightly smaller wish then that, in the actual spirit of the question would be, I wish for benevolent superintelligent AI to be invented immediately.
If you could have 25 billion dollars in exchange for your hearing (unable to be repaired by technology), would you take it? If no, what's the highest amount you would need in exchange? If yes, what's the lowest amount you would exchange it for? How about vision?
Yes, somewhere around 10 million. Vision, probably like 100 million. I have a high estimation of my ability to cope.
If society A has laws protecting children from harm and it is the custom in society B for the eldest child to enter into a gruesome death battle at a certain age for the glory of the family, is it the responsibility of society A to intervene with this custom?
That is a really hard question. My gut says yes, but the obvious followup is at what point is it not the responsibility to intervene. Much of the intervention would require destroying the culture of society B and I'm not sure where the trade off is between preserving a life and preserving a culture.
Where would you place yourself on the Dawkins Scale?
6.9 sounds about right. I can see how religions would have been invented and it is evident that the largest religions are the ones that have the best "mimetic reproduction". Therefore for God to exist He must have perfectly designed the universe to be identical to one where he doesn't exist. It would be cruel of that God to judge people for being skeptical but good people. Therefore the all loving Christian God described in the bible cannot exist.
Of course if any of these are too personal/uncomfortable feel free to ignore (or DM me)!
Bonus answer to a non-question: One of my other super powers is that I am nigh shameless. It is very hard to embarrass me, and I am not easily influenced by social pressure. I'm happy to talk about almost anything, and mostly limit myself by the consideration of what other people don't want to read about.
BoomFrog
#HBC | FrozeηFlame
Not a regular but a fan of the ideas that come out of that space. Starslate codex is good too. I don't read all of either, I just am like, friends with people who share the best bits of both.
