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Contract for Sale of Soul
- noduerme 5y agoBS. 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.
- mindcrime 5y agoBS. Satan would never write a contract without a forced arbitration clause. I dunno, you are talking about someone who lost a golden fiddle to some hick kid from Georgia[1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh7BZf7D5Bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh7BZf7D5Bw
- mLuby 5y ago"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.
- causi 5y agoWhat makes the kid a hick?
- noduerme 5y agoIt's implied. Otherwise he'd be playing violin.
- revolvingocelot 5y agoThis 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] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29127547
- R0b0t1 5y agoAn alternative interpretation is that by losing, the devil offers the fiction that a human can succeed without faith in God, damning them.
- revolvingocelot 5y agoDo 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.
- R0b0t1 5y agoJohnny'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.
- notadev 5y agoAfter 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.
- chungy 5y agoYou actually have the roles reversed. Bart "sold" his soul to Milhouse.
- revolvingocelot 5y agoI sold my soul in grade school too, but shortly thereafter I bought someone else's and came out monetarily ahead. I'm good?
- recursiveturtle 5y agoThat'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.
- teeray 5y agoI’m surprised there’s no binding arbitration clause in here
- TheJoeMan 5y agoYou could say they’re pretty soul sucking
- stevespang 5y agoThis contract is most applicable to the entire country of Mexico - - where judges, police officers, most everyone is sold out to the drug cartels . . .
- jessaustin 5y agoTIL the devil prefers PayPal.
- andrewfromx 5y agobefore 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 https://www.youtube.com/c/FoolishFishBooks/videos and try, try to be agonist vs atheist just this one time.
- mattnewton 5y agoI clicked through, skimmed a video, and I am missing your point. What is your takeaway from this channel / hopeful takeaway for me?
- andrewfromx 5y agoi 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.
- andrewfromx 5y agoalso https://youtu.be/dAS-QzWvj8g?t=558 https://youtu.be/dAS-QzWvj8g?t=558 learn the history of the french revolution and how you came to be an atheist in the first place
- mattnewton 5y agoI 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...
- ByteJockey 5y agoOver 2000, actually. 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.
- analog31 5y agoMaybe Doctor Faustus invented the NFT.
- jdofaz 5y agoReminds me of the 1995 "Bart Sells His Soul" episode of The Simpsons
- riffraff 5y agoAlso in "The return of Don Camillo"[0] (1953). There it's a richer guy buying the soul from an atheist communist ("just in case") tho, rather than the devil. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Don_Camillo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Don_Camillo
- clejack 5y agoThe 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.
- abecedarius 5y agoI 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.
- curiousllama 5y agoPractice and context. Read nonsense everyday, and you'll get good at it. Assign meaning to the nonsense, and it'll be more palatable. How do we all just tap away at these buttons-with-letters all day?
- robbedpeter 5y agoI'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.
- couchand 5y agoThink 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.
- monkeydust 5y agoMakes me think of smart contracts.
- emodendroket 5y ago
- zrail 5y agoNo binding arbitration clause? Psh.
- crate_barre 5y agoAny tech companies have binding arbitration clauses we all just hit ‘accept’ on the TOS that we need to know about? If a person signs a contract that has a mandatory, binding arbitration agreement, he or she gives up the right to go to court. Lol. Sometimes the world truly is just hilarious.
- rsyring 5y agoIt 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.
- teeray 5y agoThis is in the iTunes terms and conditions
- distortedsignal 5y agoWouldn’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.
- scollet 5y agoYeah, where's the open soul software when you need it...
- chrismorgan 5y ago
- moeris 5y ago> 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?
- bobthechef 5y agoChristians 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.
- traverseda 5y agoPresumably if they got baptized after selling their soul you could sue them for damages...
- mcbishop 5y ago> 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.
- jxf 5y agoSouls are the original NFT.
- ssivark 5y agoExcept... horcruxes.
- mechanical_bear 5y agoI find this ridiculously improbable that no notarization is required, or at the very least a witness.
- renewiltord 5y agoMaking a zielverkoper’s job easy, though more literal, eh?
- NKosmatos 5y agoOh 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).
- markvdb 5y agoObligatory 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. [0] https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/heineth/maerchen/chap001.html https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/heineth/maerchen/chap001.h... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicissimus_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicissimus_(magazine)
- beermonster 5y agoReminds me of the website of the late 90's early 00's.. was it wewantyoursoul.com or something like that?
- thrower123 5y agoI wonder what she ever did with all the souls she bought last year...
- kubb 5y agoDoes anyone want to buy mine? I'll sell for 1.5 million dollars.
- thinkingemote 5y agoThat's only less than what you get working the length of term of the average job with a FAANG in silicon valley...
- lokimedes 5y agoJust make room for an addendum on including the souls of potential first-borns, and it will fit my VC investors just perfectly.
- avgcorrection 5y agoI think my soul should be inalienable.
- foxhop 5y agoIf you don't want to read dystopia, but rather utopia, checkout my latest essay on: https://unturf.com https://unturf.com
- kaetemi 5y agoOr mint your soul as an NFT.
- ur-whale 5y agoNow make an NFT for it!
- jccalhoun 5y agoSo 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?
- GDC7 5y agoThe Simpsons did it first.
- dusted 5y agoI 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
- deathspin 5y agoHAHA! 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 https://test.soulz.art
- pontifier 5y agoInteresting 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.
- Labo333 5y agoThere is a NFT listed on OpenSea: https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/595030977484634604299517327757463313037402804350499090596743301209408929793 https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200...
- mLuby 5y agoIf 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