If I strongly town read you I’d push against it. But in the position of “I can see him being town but I’m wary” it’s hard to right off the back of the most recent game double down again. I already got people telling me I never learn, and I know that shouldn’t matter but it does bother me.
It’s not even who I’d rather lose to. It’s more of I don’t want to look like more of an idiot than I already am.
That is, more or less, the same principle. You consider the prospect of being misled by Scum Ratchet again to be a source of embarrassment, and naturally, the idea that "other people make fun of me for always falling for it/I make people angry for falling for it" comes to mind. Of course, it's perhaps difficult to see right now, but that creates it's own bias, because then you are naturally going to be positioning yourself against supporting my position. It's all well and good in Day 1 because if I catch scum you can tell yourself that me catching scum means it won't be the same story this time around. When I don't, and you see other people push the idea, you're more likely/willing to push your own read of the slot away to favour other's, even if their read is objectively poorer, and considers.
I understand how you think Prof because we have similar thought processes. It's why I push back on people who make fun of you like Ekko did earlier in the game for "never learning" - they don't understand your thought processes half as well. It's not the only reason I push back, but I think there is a general assumption that I do it because I'm some sort of beneficiary, and it has never been the case. It's simply because I understand it. And as a point of optimism, eventually in a game I am going to be scum and you are going to be able to deconstruct my play entirely. None of the people who mock you for being wrong are capable of doing that, purely because their thought patterns are not compatible enough to do so. I don't know about you, but to me, that's what I strive for when catching scum. I don't want to catch scum from one thing they do, I want to completely and totally capture their thought process for the game.
I'm digressing from the point at hand here, so I'll bring us back to it. If you have reservations with parts of my play then I need to be able to respond to them, and I can't do that if they're unsaid. I consider pretty much every point made that's actually a point to have been addressed this game - none of what has been ascribed to me being scum has struck me as a particularly impressive piece of deduction, simply because it lacks any stress testing. I know you're not the one making the arguments, but if you're going to be swayed by them, you should at least have my defence on record. If nothing else, to know where it went wrong after I'm flipped.