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Contract and identity law updated for forks

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Thu, 2011-03-10 15:17

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

Contract and identity law updated for forks

Arenamontanus wrote:
A key problem with multiple alphas is contract law - and that includes marriage, property ownership and voting in a sense. If I can become two persons, who has the right to my shuttle or husband? Who is responsible for living up to what I promised in that contract? Worse, legal culpability becomes messy: if I commit a crime and fork, are both forks now equally culpable, or is it enough to punish one of them? These are problems law people can solve (and they love coming up with principles for handling things like this), but the solution used in the inner system is to not update the laws surrounding personal identity too profoundly and instead have people keep to one constant identity. Very much a transitional economy thing. Note that having backups is legal, and I think there was a mention that if a really old version of you comes online it is not regarded as an alpha in the eyes of the law (I assume it is now regarded as a possession, which it might not like). Allowing full alpha-forking opens amazing cans of worms. Which means some people are very busy promoting it, of course. An economic singularity is just what the doctor ordered, right? What could possibly go wrong with banyans, copyrations and clades of heavily interlinked forks?

Is anyone interested in trying to poke at this idea, and see how many reasonable solutions can be come up with? For example, here's one possible view, derived from certain aspects of present-day law: In several jurisdictions, when Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones marry, they form a sort of corporate entity, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", in which some aspects of property and responsibility are jointly shared between them. If there is no specific pre-nup or marriage contract, then local law sets certain default parameters about this corporate-entity, such as how it may be dissolved and the assets split between the members. Local law also sets certain parameters that are specific to such agreements, such as priority of visitation rights. Imagine that, whenever someone makes an alpha fork, or a backup that can potentially become a backup fork, then part of the process includes the creation of a contract between the 'original' and the 'fork' specifically to cover such issues - and if no such contract exists, then local law acts as if a contract with certain parameters is made anyway. Thus, if DPR.0 creates an alpha fork, DPR.1, then either by default or explicitly, a 'contract' is made - most likely involving the creation of a similar corporate entity, in which the property owned by DPR.0 is now owned jointly by both DPR.0 and DPR.1, and setting the parameters by which that joint-ownership system can be dissolved so that DPR.0 and DPR.1 each have separate bank-accounts, property, and full identities. How criminal law treats forks depends on the assumptions behind the law system. For example, let's say DPR commits a crime, and then forks into DPR.0 and DPR.1. If a primary consideration is restoring a victim to their pre-crime status, as best as possible, then it doesn't matter /which/ DPR pays restitution, or if each pays half, as long as full restitution is paid; in this sense, the two DPRs have joint responsibility for the debt. (This would also seem to be the most sensical general approach for many civil contracts in which DPR ends up owing a debt.) However, if the basis for the legal system in question is protection of the citizenry from demonstrably-dangerous criminals, or the prevention of future crimes by inflicting unpleasant punishment on convicted criminals, then it would seem likely that /each/ DPR would be required to endure the sentence in full. Both of these criminal approaches would seem to imply that if DPR.1 commits a crime /after/ forking, then DPR.0 wouldn't necessarily be liable for it, anymore than a wife is responsible should her husband jaywalk. (Ie, depending on the details of the joint-property-ownership of the marriage, the fine may be deducted from their shared property, but she wouldn't be sentenced to jail.) This further suggests that it's in the DPR's best interests to keep as accurate records as possible about which DPRs fork from which other DPRs, and when, so that they /can/ keep track of which DPRs would be liable for what, and, more importantly, which DPRs /aren't/ responsible and liable for debts incurred by other DPRs. Of course, I haven't even /touched/ yet on how to figure out which DPRs would be entitled to vote, among other thorny issues. :) So... what do you think?

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Thank you for your time,

Thu, 2011-03-10 16:14

Neuntöter

Re: Contract and identity law updated for forks

Well, calling all that just a can of worms is understating it in a rather epical way. No wonder most of the system goes with the just-don't-do-it coupled with the honor system. Even under the current law of the system there are a lot of hidden mind-fucks. Suppose there is an ego that is restored from a back-up because the original has not checked in with the ego bank for a sufficiently long time and the back-up thus is, sort-of, officially accepted as the new original. Now suppose that the former original was not dead but simply incapacitated for that timeframe. And now resurfaces on the scene. Who the hell is the "original" now? And if one of them decides to solve this ...identity crisis by completely destroying the other ego, is that murder or suicide? ...come to think of it, that is a rather intriguing if maybe somewhat evil plot idea to creep your players out.

Thu, 2011-03-10 16:33

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

Re: Contract and identity law updated for forks

Neuntöter wrote:
Who the hell is the "original" now?

One solution: neither is. :) Once forking exists, then in order to deal with it in any sane way, a lot of current assumptions about the nature of identity will have to be discarded, or else paradoxes like that will just keep on cropping up, such as defining one copy as an 'original' compared to others. But with a little forethought, they can be dealt with in at least somewhat of a reasonable manner. Eg: Before the backing-up, there was, say, DPR.1. When the backup was made and stored, then one of the two copies got called DPR.1.1, and the other DPR.1.2 - perhaps by random selection, maybe by some particular process. Even if the backup was never expected to be activated, arrangements were made /beforehand/ to establish that both DPR.1.1 and DPR.1.2 had joint ownership of DPR.1's assets and debts; and particular circumstances were written out by which the copy that was stored inactively would be activated, and granted access to the accounts. When the missing-and-presumed-dead DPR returns, then the both of them have joint ownership, and get to hash out between themselves whether to try merging their forks into a single individual who inherits the lot, to continue as parallel forks and maintain joint ownership, or to split up the china and linen and go their separate ways.

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Thank you for your time,

Fri, 2011-03-11 06:04

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Contract and identity law updated for forks

Here is the extropian approach I can imagine: Everything in the extropian system is about contracts. A contract is between two or more identifiable parts, so being able to identify people (and companies) is crucial. However, even this is regulated by the contracts, which specify how the parts are to be identified (usually by public key signatures, trusted third parties and various registries). Contracts can be written so that the two forks of an contractor are viewed as the same as the initial contractor and hence bound by the contract, or they can contain a forking clause that states how the contract will be changed in the case of forking. The latter is more common. Typically a contract for a service (say, my personal defense from Medusan Shield) stipulates that if I fork the contract goes to one 'prime' fork (determined by me, randomly, by a third party or MS, depending on the fine print), but the 'secondary' fork has a right to open an identical contract (the contract also forks). This means that now both prime and secondary have their own contracts with MS, and pay the monthly law fees to them. Ownership is also central to extropian life. Possessions must have an identifiable owner in order to be possessed. The standard solution is to make a forking statement/contract before forking stipulating what possessions go to what fork. It could be an even split, it could be some complex split, it could be the formation of a jointly owned company owning the possessions. To fork without having a forking contract is to invite lawsuits if you happen to be a litigious person ("See me in court!"). There are a few old, hard-to-change contracts that remain from before forking became an issue and hence have some loopholes. Typically such loopholes have either been exploited fully, usually rendering the contract void after draining it for all it is worth, or the parts do not wish to mess up a working relationship and they have chosen to do an ad hoc solution. Criminal law is relatively easy, since it is also contractual. Law enforcement companies state in their contracts or terms of usage how they handle crimes committed by later forked individuals. Typically Extropian law companies aims at restitution and protection, which means that liable forks are required to pay the plaintiff restitution - it does not matter which fork or both coughs up the money. If a forked individual with jointly owned corporate property attacks somebody and gets killed by enforcement of the victim: then the *company* gets sued for damages and expense by the victim's law company. If the attacker survives, then he gets sued (and can use his share in the company to pay). Since there is no voting per se in a pure anarchocapitalist system issues of forking and politics doesn't come up (you send political signals as a shareholder, by your market choices and by the informal reputational activities you do). Having more forks just allows you to talk more.

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Fri, 2011-03-11 12:08

DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture

Re: Contract and identity law updated for forks

Arenamontanus wrote:
Since there is no voting per se in a pure anarchocapitalist system issues of forking and politics doesn't come up (you send political signals as a shareholder

And this approach, perhaps, could allow for the derivation of a voting system in non-pure-anarchocapitalist systems. View a democratic/republican government as a form of corporate group, view bare citizenship (such as is possessed even by children) as possessing a non-voting share, and view the voting franchise as possessing a voting share... and we at least have the perspective to /consider/ how to deal with the difficulties of forking identities, if not necessarily all the data to /choose/ a particular solution. For an example, in one system, all sentient beings may be granted certain fundamental 'human' rights, such as the government attempting to catch anyone who kills them. Instead of today's system of citizenship by birth or immigration, they might have citizenship being granted automatically to any future fork of any present citizen, and to whatever immigration system they choose to have (ie, residency, passing a citizenship test, etc). Acquiring voting citizenship is another matter, and may have its own basic requirements (ie, minimum bank balance)... and, for instance, all forks of an individual may possess a single 'vote' between them, which either they have to vote amongst themselves how to use (ie, if 51% of forks vote to vote 'yea', then the full vote is 'yea'), or may simply be divided up amongst those forks in one way or another (ie, if 51% of forks vote 'yea', then 51% of the vote is 'yea'; or they may keep track of which forks descend from which, so that if DPR.1 forks into DPR.1.1 and DPR.1.2, and DPR.1.2 forks into DPR.1.2.1 and DPR.1.2.2, then DPR's vote is split to give 50% to DPR.1.1 and 50% to DPR.1.2, the latter of which is split to give 25% to DPR.1.2.1 and 25% to DPR.1.2.2). But the tricky part is deciding when to expand the voting pool - to create /new/ voting shares to add to the existing ones. For this, examining current corporate practices in regard to issuing new shares is probably worthwhile. A simple system might be to require a simple majority of existing voters to agree to the new issue; but even with muses to keep track of details, this could easily get overwhelming quite rapidly, so more likely, the main voting shareholders would quickly come up with some process that doesn't require their attention every time - such as the creation of a smaller subcommittee or bureaucratic ministry to handle the routine details, and which passes regular reports and combined-measures for the shareholders to consider and vote upon - eg, instead of voting for every individual case, voting for a set of rules by which applicants would ordinarily automatically be granted or denied. Of course, all of the above could be chucked in favour of an entirely different approach. :) My main point is that as long as some forethought is put into the matter, dealing with forks' votes doesn't have to be any more complex than in today's democracies.

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Thank you for your time,