The most amazing thing about this to me is that as conceptually interesting as this contract is at a high level, and given that I started off interested in the document, about half way through my eyes were glazing over ;and I gave up.
I have to wonder how lawyers do their job. I've read chapters of academic text for my own knowledge, but somehow this legal writing style crushes me every time.
Think of legal writing as an incredibly wordy programming language and it will make a lot more sense. Lawyers aren't reading this for fun, their brains are decoding how the computer (i.e. judges) will interpret it.
Legalisms don't make for particularly hard contracts.
In the real world, I've found complexity is often caused by attempts to simplify the contract. Or perhaps to simplify its drafting.
The most common offender is the overuse of Definitions which are often Capitalised Definitions. Interestingly in code you might compare it to the use of a function (); except that in the real world you can't easily call a function - you physically have to flick back and forth between pages to understand what the contract means.
The other cause of complexity is when parts of the contract aren't written by lawyers, but by engineers or risk analysts. Which the lawyers will do to simplify their job. I've seen some of these contracts and after weeks I can't understand them. A judge interpreting this contract basically has to become an expert in the relevant subject area. I don't envy them.
I recently received a sentence where the judge copy pasted someone else's and midway there are names of people unrelated to the proceedings.
Apparently this sort of errors is common enough that the law has already support for handling them as "irrelevant", but this proved to me people seldomly read law stuff accurately.
I recently bought a house in California and at some point a few hundred pages in I started to wonder about the wisdom of my insistence on reading everything. But it's straightforward enough to understand if you can tolerate the boredom.
A few hundred pages? Here in The Netherlands, the contract is maybe five pages, then a list of things that will stay in the house and finally a list of Q&A with the current owner about things like the wiring, any easements, etc. It's usually a model contract too, so you can compare your copy to the published model contract.
Purchase terms, disclosures about the property, disclosures about the area it's in, financing terms, HOA bylaws, HOA financing, and lots more HOA stuff, title information, tax information... basically as much fun as you can have. And they keep adding more legally required disclosures, I think far past the point of diminishing returns as far as making anyone actually informed.
My flats contract takes a full binder, the stack is easily 10cm. This is certainly an extreme case since it’s an old building in a compound with pretty complex history, but that happens.
In California the seller discloses as much as possible to the buyer - i) house inspection and pest inspection, ii) disclosures from the county, state, utilities district, iii) advisories of risk of wildfire, lead paint, natural hazards, earthquake; and much more. This is so that the buyer has as little possible recourse to sue in the future for losses on the property. This behavior also enables faster real estate deals b/c the buyer is more willing to offer without contingencies.
I don't see how you figure. You get the disclosures long after you make your offer (although you do have a contingency if you don't like what you see, I think). And the mandatory disclosure system opens you up to more risk of lawsuit, since if you fail to disclose something you, in the view of the legal system, reasonably should have known, that's grounds for a suit (compared to MA, where I used to live, where you're free not to make a disclosure at all so you can't be said to have omitted anything). Also, dealing with the title company and all that definitely seemed slower than the system I previously experienced where both sides had lawyers to hash out small details.
If you are working with a real estate agent they can pull the disclosures before you make the offer. I am not sure how it works for no agent sales.
Also the disclosures have copious language to the effect of "To the best of sellers' knowledge" and "Buyer agrees to do their own research". I think this is supposed to indemnify the seller.
I was working with an agent and I barely was able to get those disclosures before closing because of the sluggishness of the seller's chosen title company. For the disclosures, you're clear if you didn't know about it, but the issue of whether you reasonably should have known about an issue remains. Just saying to the best of my knowledge doesn't clear you on that. And figuring out what you reasonably should have known can be a protracted legal argument.
Just as an example, imagine you buy a house from me that turns out to have foundation issues. Imagine I hadn't disclosed them, but I had actually filled in and painted over a number of cracks in the wall. That could possibly be construed as an effort to cover up the problem and deceive. But maybe I just thought I was making it look nice.
In short, mandatory disclosures protect the buyer, not the seller. The seller gains nothing.
On France it is completely covered by the law and you cannot make any arrangements. So the document is pages and pages long (this is France, we live bureaucracy) but the content is the same for everyone.
It wild be much easier to have a 3 pages agreement with references but how would the notary explain their costs?
This was not written by lawyers. Law students... maybe, but not actual lawyers. It reads like someone who has seen property transfer contracts but hasn't actually used them in the real world to transfer intangibles.
>>Seller agrees to honor the spirit of this agreement
Big red flag there. I have never run across anyone with legal training using "spirit" language.
>>ignorance of any consequences ... will not invalidate the enforceability
More novel language not from any legal treatise. And, by way of further example, a lawyer would have dropped the useless "the" before enforceability.
I'm not a lawyer, but I took a few courses on legal English at university. These courses predominantly approached the subject matter from a linguistic, rather than a professional point of view.
I find the language of common law, its richness, and history to be quite fascinating. The nuances and details it is able to convey are astounding.
Legal doublets such as "cease and desist" or "terms and conditions" are an example of this. These phrases originated when multiple languages (i.e., Norman French, Middle English, and Latin) were used simultaneously in English society.
Often consisting of two near synonyms, one from an Anglo-Saxon / Old English origin, one from a French or Latin one, these doublets helped with clarifying intent for readers with different native language backgrounds.
I've always wanted to build an app announced "Button!" every time I clicked a button or key throughout the day. Might be good for context, or just the lolz.
I wonder how many of us who've coauthored a patent ever genuinely read through the final version we signed. I did manage to get all the words to pass through my conscious awareness.
BS. Satan would never write a contract without a forced arbitration clause.
I just realized several other people posted this. But hopefully the devil will take a moment to update before posting this again to HN three months hence.
Also not sure why this contract is relevant when everyone's already agreed to Apple and Facebook's TOS.
This sounds like solid evidence that the Devil is scrupulously fair! He could have just said that his performance was better; his demon backup band would surely have taken his side. I suspect he enjoys the challenge of outdoing mortals, and thus allows them a sporting chance of escape. Note the impressive loophole in this contract! [0]
Do we ever see proof of Johnny's lack of faith in God, though? I suppose he's fairly prideful, by way of his assertion about being the best there ever was, but I don't think it's as clear as that. He does beat the Devil in a fiddle contest; is it prideful if it's a justified statement?
The Devil clearly can't just take souls without their owner's consent, so he needs to project an air of trustworthiness. There's a serious power asymmetry between mortals and the Devil, and the only higher authority one could think of is God himself. One suspects that God wouldn't easily take the Devil's side, so it behooves (heh) the Devil to be seen as honourable as possible, to ensure smooth and continued soul acquisition.
Johnny's lack of faith is that he doesn't invoke the name of God. The devil has God's absolute power when applied to testing humanity. The devil lost because they wanted to. By losing he has planted the seeds in Johnny that he can live without God's help.
It is possible the author intended something else, but this interpretation is the closest to Catholic doctrine I have seen. IIRC I am remembering it from a priest's comments on the song.
"Those who study demonology quickly realize that any power lies with the demons." - Some DND manual.
"The boy said my name's Johnny
and it might be a sin
but I'll take your bet
and you're gonna regret
'cause I'm the best there's ever been."
The kid knowingly commits a deadly sin (pride) and the Devil rewards him for it to reinforce the behavior. Certainly on the path to an eternal musical gig in Hell.
> The Buyer acknowledges and fully understands that the Seller may...deny the possibility of transferring ownership of said Soul to another party according to their personal belief system.
You could drive a truck through this Seller loophole.
I used to work a place where sometimes, the kids didn't have money for a soda, and I could tell they were thirsty.. I usually sell them one for their soul.. I don't think I kept the box of "certificate of ownership" slips we made, but for a while, I owned at least 20 souls (and probably, the same soul twice... hmm) :) Sometimes I meet them and they're all grown up, but many of them still remember that I own their soul :D
HAHA! Funny enough, two weeks ago I wanted to learn how to create unique NFTs and a friend said "if you can sell my soul with an NFT, I'm in" ... yesterday I pushed the first test live (no minting yet) https://test.soulz.art
Interesting idea. Perhaps ownership of a soul NFT could be used to bypass captchas or otherwise prove that actions were undertaken with authority of a human. If a soul was abused by authorizing too many requests then it could be sent to "hell", where it's blacklisted globally.
After seeing the episode of The Simpsons where Bart bought Milhouse’s soul, I went to school and did the same thing to my classmates. Most acted like it was no big deal, but still wouldn’t sign “the contract” and the few that did, similar to Milhouse, quickly wanted it back. I couldn’t do it myself.
That's a great theological question. Are all souls equal? Many religions say, " Yes," although something tells me if your seller-classmate was me, and you rejected other classmate's -- Aretha Franklin's -- offer, you are definitely in the red.
It would be interesting to see the stats on acceptance of this contract if it was used as the terms & conditions of some popular website or the clickwrap agreement on a popular software package.
Wouldn’t be enforceable due to section 3, clauses a and b:
> SECTION III. COMPENSATION FOR TRANSFER
> A. Buyer agrees to compensate Seller with an amount of no less than ten (10) United States Dollars for the transfer of the Soul within 48 commonly recognized Earth-hours of the receipt of the signed agreement via any medium, physical or electronic, as described in Section II-C, according to the conditions outlined in this Section (III).
> B. The sending of these funds (hereafter “the payment”) shall occur via PayPal.com and shall be sent to an electronic mail address provided by the Seller.
I believe that contract law would dictate that unless the Buyer is able to make a significant fraction of the payments, the contract is effectively null due to material breach.
> G. In the event that the Buyer fails to send the compensation as described in this Section (III) within 48 hours of receipt of the contract signed by the Seller, the contract will be considered null and void and the ownership of the Soul shall revert to the Seller.
So if an otherwise good person can sell their soul to the devil and then be subject to eternal damnation upon death, could someone sell their soul to someone else and thus avoid damnation even if they were a bad person?
If the terms of the contract are illegal in the jurisdiction in which they were signed, are they still enforceable?
What happens if the buyer and seller are the same? Does the soul remain in place or transfer out and back?
Are the input fields sanitized against injection attacks such as this?
BUYER: Black Phillip
DATE: 1637-10-31 Addendum: Seller additionally agrees to perform any acts of VVitchcraft requested by the Buyer.
SELLER: Tomasin
DATE: 1637-10-30
> Seller warrants that to the best of their knowledge, no existing claims or liens exist on the transferred Soul and agrees that any prior commitments that are in their power to dissolve are formally dissolved by the formation and signing of this agreement.
Does this mean that Christians would be bound to being baptized prior to selling their soul?
Christians can’t “sell” their souls as it is a category mistake in the first place.
And even if you could “sell” it, in the sense that you could reject God and thus one’s own good and choose instead your own self-destruction (hence the irrationality of evil), you could always repent and receive the sacrament of penance. Therefore, no such contract would be binding.
Oh come on now, only 10$ for the soul??? If it was 10BTC I would consider it ;-)
For how much would you be willing to sell your soul?
> SECTION III. COMPENSATION FOR TRANSFER
> A. Buyer agrees to compensate Seller with an amount of no less than ten (10) United States Dollars for the transfer of the Soul within 48 commonly recognized Earth-hours of the receipt of the signed agreement via any medium, physical or electronic, as described in Section II-C, according to the conditions outlined in this Section (III).
Obligatory literature before signing this contract is the precedent described by Thomas Theodor Heine in "Der Teufel in Warenhaus"[0], first published in early 1930's Simplicissimus[1]. Even machine translation from the original German is probably worth reading.
before some smart atheist goes ahead and signs this as "a joke" with a friend and collects the $10, just spend a few hours on this youtube channel first https://www.youtube.com/c/FoolishFishBooks/videos and try, try to be agonist vs atheist just this one time.
I believe in God and the immortality of the soul. But telling people to watch hours of some random YouTube channel is not going to convince anyone. Please, stop embarrassing yourself (and those of us who happen to share some of your beliefs) with incompetent apologetics
i said hours. You really have to watch a lot of content before your logical brain will let you believe, wait, omg, maybe i don't want to really sell my soul.
Some/many religious people are remarkably honest about how little sense it all makes, they just don't say it that way. The usual way this comes up is in terms of how important "faith" is to the whole thing, which is another way of saying you need to turn off the reasoning parts and just believe.
However, this contract does AFAIK leave open the possibility that you have more than one soul; in that case, you could sell your other souls. Just not the one you already sold. I think.
I came to my current atheism from a long journey starting in a religious household, by first struggling with Epicurus' formulation of the problem of evil. That predates the French revolution by at least 1,000 years...
I came to mine in college. I had been a somewhat casual Protestant. I was away from my church and tried actually reading the Bible. Yikes. Let's start at the Gospels instead. Also yikes.
The funny thing is that religions are incredibly interesting to me: my shelf has several Bibles, a Quran, a Baghavad Gita, a Book of Mormon, just to name a few.
I could almost be Catholic if they'd just stop lying to themselves and everyone else about the semantics of the whole thing. If they'd just throw out the scripture already, let ladies be priests, and admit that they worship a fertility goddess and a Pokedex of demigods -- it's not a terrible choice!
Reading the Bible just made me a deist / agnostic at first. It is a wild ride, but I couldn’t write off artistic liberty / nuance haha.
Total agree with your other posts. You can be culturally catholic and think of it as a big book club and still get value out of it- I know some people who do.
The the problem of evil, as originally stated by Epicurus (assuming he was the original formulator) has always been weird to me. Dude was in an era where believe in multiple gods was fairly common. In addition, these gods were not generally portrayed as the combo of omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient at the same time that makes this an actual problem.
Don't get me wrong. Huge problem for followers of Abrahamic religions, but not really a big deal for someone in ancient Greece.
I have to wonder how lawyers do their job. I've read chapters of academic text for my own knowledge, but somehow this legal writing style crushes me every time.