S41E03 comments

[Questor]

Here's a placeholder post for comments on the third episode.

I don't have much to say about it. The early episodes are something of
a blur for me; I'm still trying to remember all the players, and if there are
significant strategy moves being made that will effect the game later
we don't know what they are because we don't know the outcome yet.

I will say, "poor Brad!" He lucked out somewhat finding the advantages,
yet he broke what I think is one of the cardinal rules of Survivor -- never
tell *anyone* -- even your alliance -- about idols or advantages you've found
unless you have to. (J.D. was following this rule, but he was sloppy. Note
that Brad buried his advantage.) I think he was also a victim of being
older than the rest of the tribe.

It's interesting that the producers have included an actual Prisoner's Dilemma
into the game, since so many other elements already have a similar dynamic.
The classic version is just two prisoners, and I think the dilemma gets diluted
as more are added. Consider if it was fifty, or even a hundred people. It's
almost impossible that everyone would agree, so a split choice is all but
guarenteed. So as you add more people, the chance of a split decision is
increased. Three people might be the reasonable maximum number to have
any expectation of unanimity; if it was four or five the chances of that are too
slight.

[zeppo]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 10:48:01 PM UTC-7, Questor wrote:

> I will say, "poor Brad!" He lucked out somewhat finding the advantages,
> yet he broke what I think is one of the cardinal rules of Survivor -- never
> tell *anyone* -- even your alliance -- about idols or advantages you've found
> unless you have to. (J.D. was following this rule, but he was sloppy. Note
> that Brad buried his advantage.) I think he was also a victim of being
> older than the rest of the tribe.

I agree. Brad may have gotten away with telling only the woman with the nose ring
about the things that he had found. But, IMO, telling the mafia pastor was a big
mistake. He seemed to be under the impression that she, nose ring woman, and him
were an alliance of three, while the edit had not shown that to be the case.
I'm assuming that Probst will instruct somebody on the crew to leave a new parchment
in plain sight at Green Tribe's camp in order to keep the three way immunity idol in
play. My feeling is that if this element was abandoned due to Brad's dismissal, the
references to it would have been removed from the final edit.

[Brian Smith]

As soon as Brad told the mafia pastor I knew she would stab him in the back.

I agree that production will do whatever it takes to activate this three-way advantage. I wish they had thought through the dynamics of it a lot more as the risk involved in opening the note is way too much. Being at the mercy of what happens on two other tribes is way too much given the benefit of the advantage. They should let the people who open these notes keep their votes and come up with another way to "penalize" them.

--
Brian

[Questor]

On Sat, 9 Oct 2021 19:56:26 -0700 (PDT), Brian Smith <dcg_...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>I agree that production will do whatever it takes to activate this three-way
>advantage. I wish they had thought through the dynamics of it a lot more
>as the risk involved in opening the note is way too much. Being at the mercy
>of what happens on two other tribes is way too much given the benefit of
>the advantage. They should let the people who open these notes keep their
>votes and come up with another way to "penalize" them.

What else can they do? They're already taking away the flint, and they don't
have any food to take away. Deny them drinking water? Make them sleep
on a bed of rocks?

"If you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose."