Alicornutopia

Kappa wrote:I mean, he never swore not to act against Visser Two's goals.

Ehhh. I guess it depends on how you read "I will act towards your goals". I can naturally read that as "all of my actions will be directed towards your goals", or maybe "all of my actions will either be directed towards your goals or neutral with respect to them." Less natural but still potentially acceptable to me is "my actions will on net act to benefit your goals." I have a lot of trouble reading it as "I will take at least some actions directed towards your goals."

If the oath had instead been "I will take actions towards your goals" instead, then that last reading seems much more natural to me, but *that* oath seems like the sort of thing Visser Two would have been suspicious of (for precisely the reason that it seems to allow a much broader class of behaviour).

Also, with that reading the loophole seems too big--if Midnight hadn't been constrained at least to some extent not to act against Visser Two's goals, then he would have been able to kill him whenever he felt like it, without the need to go through the whole demon-summoning rigmarole.

Could also be that there was a distinction between acting and speaking/thinking, or some fuzzy combination of those things...

"I swear not to act against your goals" is way tighter than "I swear to act towards your goals" but both of them, because of the plural and the lack of specification about how to handle tradeoffs between goals, allow a fair bit of latitude. (By contrast, "I swear to share your goals" will just give you the same preferences about tradeoffs between goals that the person themself would make as far as you know.) "to act towards" also lets you think whatever you want, though Midnight did not in fact think about plans past 'get out from under the oath' lest he settle on ones that would make it harder to get out from under the oath.

"I swear to act towards your goals" means you have to be taking lots of actions which advance the person's goals, but permits you to advance your own goals alongside theirs and lets you trade off some of their goals against others of their goals; Midnight couldn't have murdered the Yeerks while sworn to help them advance their goals, but he could, like, give them the second-most desirable territory while resettling his own people in the most desirable territory, and he could decide that 'have the negotiation with the demon go off smoothly' was a goal to pursue at the expense of 'keep Midnight bound by his oath'. If he'd let Issiak suggest a phrasing Issiak would doubtless have suggested a tighter one; offering one up instantly was meant as a signal of good faith, more than a comprehensive assurance that even if he meant to betray them he couldn't, and was taken as such, and therefore let him regard 'keeping the oath in place' as a fairly low-priority goal to pursue.

All of that makes sense, thanks! I'm just still confused about how, once Midnight got to the point of summoning the demon and starting to negotiate with it, he was able to think to the demon about the terms of the deal, and then accept the deal. Both of those seem like acts which didn't advance Visser Two's goals alongside Midnight's, especially the second, which should definitely count as a performative utterance and thus an act. (Even if keeping the oath in place is a low-priority goal, it *is* a goal.) Was Midnight conceptualizing them as advancing some other of Visser Two's goals that I'm missing?

No, he was advancing none of Visser Two's goals, but the oath never said that was all he could ever do. Plus he could finagle something about how this would make the deal work more smoothly.

Also, he swore a positive oath, not a negative one, and those can be resisted.

If it still doesn’t feel right, suppose he had instead sworn “I promise to act on your orders”. Presumably he would not then need to be ordered to breathe, maintain his biochemistry, or eat when necessary. He could do whatever he wanted as long as it included following orders. If he were to ensure no more orders, such as by teleporting a bunch of caramel into Visser Two’s (host’s) mouth, then this would be perfectly allowed.

This is the same sort of thing the Fëanorians do with their Oath. They swore to kill anybody who hides, hoards, holds, keeps, or throws away* a Silmaril. But before they do that they ask “hey, have you considered getting rid of the Silmaril so that you are no longer doing any of those things?”. It never works, but if it did that would make it so they no longer had to deal the sworn-to death and woe.

* Do I really understand the “afar casteth” clause right? It seems to mean that I can’t get the Silmaril far away from me either, even if I throw it right into a Fëanorian city.

I've always parsed the afar casteth clause as 'if you put the Silmaril in a black hole we fuck you up' - so, afar casteth relative to their ability to get their hands on it, not relative to distance from the thrower. If you give it back to them you're definitely fine.

And yeah, you can do things that are not goal-pursuit, that's all there is to it. It's not even a stunningly clever loophole (I tried to get Midnight to consider addressing his oath to Ehtelion rather than Visser Two, which would have been more stunningly clever - 'your' can't usually do that but for two people in the same body it totally can - but Midnight thought he could slip this phrasing by and while I am motivated to create maximum cleverness he was just motivated to get a teleport and not get a Yeerk.)

I never know how much to expect oaths to interfere with attempts to ditch them. It seemed to be a big problem for Miriel.