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 The correct answer, which will rarely issue from the lips of a [[legal eagle]], is, “well, why in God’s name are you asking ''me''? Shouldn’t you ask your ''client''?”
-For, really, what possible use can a clause your legal teams hammered out 10 years ago be in getting to the heart of the matter? If, now, your client would not like you to behave in this way, what difference does it make, to your ongoing relationship, that a 10-year-old document says that you ''can''? Or, for that matter,''vice versa''?<ref>Much more likely will be that it ''won’t'' say that you ''can’t'', which doesn’t really help anyone.</ref> In any case, isn’t that kind of doubt creative; on opportunity for a client conversation and who knows where it will lead? In any case, surfeit of certainly in your contract a decade ago leads to two bad outcomes: either a legally correct but commercially damaging decision to disregard your client’s expectations, or an expensive, slow and clumsy way of getting permission (via the [[legal eagle]]s) where a quick phone call might have done the job and, who knows, led to other opportunities.<ref>Note here, recent efforts by the English courts to entrench the lawyer’s role in commercial negotiations through [[no oral modification]] clauses.</ref>
+For, really, what possible use can a clause your legal teams hammered out 10 years ago be in getting to the heart of the matter? If, now, your client would not like you to behave in this way, what difference does it make, to your ongoing relationship, that a 10-year-old document says that you ''can''? Or, for that matter, ''vice versa''?<ref>Much more likely will be that it ''won’t'' say that you ''can’t'', which doesn’t really help anyone.</ref>
+In any case, isn’t that kind of doubt ''creative''; an opportunity for business folk to have a constructive conversation which might lead who knows where? Here a ''surfeit'' of [[certainty]] leads to two bad outcomes: either a (legally correct but nevertheless) commercially damaging decision to disregard your client’s expectations, or an expensive, slow and clumsy way of seeking it's permission (via the [[legal eagle]]s papering and amendment: expect your client’s risk team to be suspicious of ''any'' amendment, however benign to your minds it may be, especially if, as inevitably they will, your legal team concoct five pages of boilerplate to articulate it) where a quick phone call might have done the job and, who knows, led to other opportunities.<ref>Note here, recent efforts by the English courts to entrench the lawyer’s role in commercial negotiations through [[no oral modification]] clauses.</ref>
+Ultimately where there is trust between the counterparties, and their relationship stays healthy, all you should need is a [[cocktail napkin]]. Really robust legal advice should be designed to keep things, to the greatest extent, so that neither party feels the need for anything more.
+===The [[complexity]]-appropriateness of doubt===
+We can state this one found cleanly. [[Certainty]] is an appropriate stance to adopt towards a [[simple]] system. Certainty is the stuff of algorithm; or formal logic, of ''if this then tgat'' scenarios. Where you are ''certain'' you can deploy [[playbook]]s and [[runbook]]s; machines run on autopilot. A contract is a [[service level agreement]] little more than a schedule of works. This is that twilight world of diminishing margins, where our machine collects ever scarcer pennies before the same entropic steamroller. As technology develops the pennies vanish sooner and sooner.
+But a world where conundrums are solved is one where ''no-one wants to play the game anymore''. This is easy to understand for noughts and crosses; but the same will eventually apply to [[chess]] and [[go]]. But if at any point on the board there is an optimal move — and in a zero-sum game, there must be — then that includes the first move. In which case, there is no longer a point in playing. There is an answer. It becomes not a competition of wits, but of memory and data processing. That’s certainty, and it isn’t interesting.
+If we take it that [[truth]] is a property of a sentence, not of the world<ref>Richard Rorty: {{br|Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity}}.</ref> and a sentence is an artefact of a language, then language would have to be a closed logical system, to which both (or all) parties to that truth were fully conversant. Not only, typically, are they not — languages are quite loose things and hard to draw boundaries — but languages are ''not closed logical systems''. This we owe to [[Goedel]]. We can, with our wordgames, minimise indeterminacy ([[legal language]] is a good example of where we do this, by convention eliminating [[metaphor]], avoiding slang and informal construction and where, even after that, there is potential ambiguity, minimising it with [[definitions]], but even there, the best we can hope for is that our static document can describe the order, state and function of a simple, or complex system. It cannot describe a complex system (essentially one where individual agents with conflicting interests and language structures interact. But commerce occurs in exactly that type of environment.
 ==={{t|Epistemology}} of [[certainty]]===
 May we take [[Descartes]] as read? It gets more interesting a little later on.
-*'''[[certainty]] in the sense of being solved''': if you have solved the puzzle ''no-one wants to play the game''. This is trivial to understand for noughts and crosses; we fancy we can get there with checkers, but  [[chess]] and [[go]] while, technically capable of being solved, have not got there yet. But if at any point on the board there is an optimal move — and in a zero-sum game, there must be — then that includes the first move. In which case, there is no longer a point in playing. It becomes not a competition of wits, but of memory and data processing. That’s no longer interesting.
 *'''[[certainty]] in the sense of utter truth''': If there is a single truth and it is deductible, then any inconsistent view is at best sub-optimal: wasteful and possibly dangerous. There are ''objective'' grounds for suppressing any views other than the true one.
-*'''[[certainty]] in the sense of favouring the paper over the relationship''': A contract, remember is a second-order derivative account of a business relationship. We hope, once it is inked, one will not have to look at it again. A sense of [[certainty]] about the contents of the contract disincentives proactive management of a relationship which, being a relationship, and all, is a dynamic thing. Hence how retrograde the idea of a [[no oral modification]] clause: this is to afford a static written memorial priority over a living, organic relationship.
-*'''[[certainty]] as a function of a simple system''': If we take it that [[truth]] is a property of a sentence, not of the world<ref>Richard Rorty: {{br|Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity}}.</ref> and a sentence is an artefact of a language, then language would have to be a closed logical system, to which both (or all) parties to that truth were fully conversant. Not only, typically, are they not — languages are quite loose things and hard to draw boundaries — but languages are ''not closed logical systems''. This we owe to [[Goedel]]. We can, with our wordgames, minimise indeterminacy ([[legal language]] is a good example of where we do this, by convention eliminating [[metaphor]], avoiding slang and informal construction and where, even after that, there is potential ambiguity, minimising it with [[definitions]], but even there, the best we can hope for is that our static document can describe the order, state and function of a simple, or complex system. It cannot describe a complex system (essentially one where individual agents with conflicting interests and language structures interact. But commerce occurs in exactly that type of environment.
 {{sa}}