Ninth law of worker entropy: Difference between revisions

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Briefly stated, however anal it may be to add qualifications, clarifications, [[for the avoidance of doubt]]s, [[without limitation]]s and other forensic {{f|celery}} and {{tag|flannel}}, once these additions have been added, it is even ''more'' anal to request their removal again, seeing as, [[Q.E.D.]], it would make no difference to the legal or economic substance of the agreement if you did. So, inevitably, one doesn’t [[I’m not going to die in a ditch about it|die in a ditch about it]], however appealing by comparison that might, to a [[prose stylist]], seem.
Briefly stated, however anal it may be to add qualifications, clarifications, [[for the avoidance of doubt]]s, [[without limitation]]s and other forensic {{f|celery}} and {{tag|flannel}}, once these additions have been added, it is even ''more'' anal to request their removal again, seeing as, [[Q.E.D.]], it would make no difference to the legal or economic substance of the agreement if you did. So, inevitably, one doesn’t [[I’m not going to die in a ditch about it|die in a ditch about it]], however appealing by comparison that might, to a [[prose stylist]], seem.


There is a threshold (the “[[Schwarzschild radius of document comprehension]]”) beyond which the {{tag|contract}} passes irreversibly into a kind of [[heat death]] of ennui and unintelligibility. An [[Mediocre lawyer|Earth-bound lawyer]] crossing that threshold passes a point of no return: {{Sex|she}} will be unable to resist the fascination of trying to understand the contract, will hold out hope of rescuing it from semantic oblivion, and will eventually be consumed by the colossal forces of gravitational tedium, eventually being regurgitated into a parallel universe as an [[exchange-traded derivatives]] specialist.
{{Schwarzschild radius of document comprehension}}
 
 


{{plainenglish}}
{{plainenglish}}

Revision as of 18:13, 25 January 2017

The anal paradox is a theory of negotiation. It proposes that as the number of people involved in negotiating a contract increases the contract’s brevity, and comprehensibility and utility decreases. The anal paradox predicts that the longer a negotiation continues, the more complicated the agreement will become, even though its meaningful content will stay constant or, more likely, decline.

Briefly stated, however anal it may be to add qualifications, clarifications, for the avoidance of doubts, without limitations and other forensic celery and flannel, once these additions have been added, it is even more anal to request their removal again, seeing as, Q.E.D., it would make no difference to the legal or economic substance of the agreement if you did. So, inevitably, one doesn’t die in a ditch about it, however appealing by comparison that might, to a prose stylist, seem.

A negotiation’s “event horizon[1] is the threshold beyond which, through serial “clarifications” from disparate lawyers, para-legals, negotiators and documentation specialists, the legal contract passes irreversibly into a heat death of pure ennui. An Earth-bound lawyer crossing that threshold passes a point of no return: she will be unable to resist the fascination of trying to understand and even further “improve” the contract, will hold out hope of rescuing it from semantic oblivion, but will eventually be crushed utterly by the colossal forces of gravitational tedium, whence her only hope is to be regurgitated into a parallel universe as a transverse spume of pure cosmic energy (known in some markets as an exchange-traded derivatives specialist).

This came close to happening in September 2008 during the finalisation of the 2008 ISDA Master Agreement, a catastrophic spacio-legal dislocation of Euclidian space-time that almost destroyed global finance as we know it.

Plain English Anatomy Noun | Verb | Adjective | Adverb | Preposition | Conjunction | Latin | Germany | Flannel | Legal triplicate | Nominalisation | Murder your darlings

  1. also its “Schwarzschild radius