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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't answer the question, because the point of the two halves is that they are independently recording the contract.

If we use a split stick to record how much money you owe me, and I simply add more marks to mine, to pretend you owe me more, it's obvious that I'm cheating. But if I simply split a brand-new stick and add marks on it, then our sticks won't match up at all. How will a court know which is the original?

Presumably they had some way to sign them? After all, that's why both parties sign both contracts today. If you go change yours, I still have your signature on mine.

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Let's say we cut notches perpedicular to where the split will be, and then split through the notches. If you cut more notches in your side of the wood, it will be obvious that you've done so - the two sides will fit together perfectly in shape and in grain, but one side will have extra notches. It's not like I could have filled in the notches on my piece.

Right. That's what I said in my middle paragraph.

But if I simply throw away my half and make a new half, a court will have no way of knowing which was the original. (Unless each half was signed by both parties.)

> But if I simply throw away my half and make a new half

Your new half would not match together in the "split" part of the stick, so one could tell that /someone/ made a new half, but not necessarily which party was the forger.

Right. As I've been saying from the start of the thread.

You could split wood more than 2 ways, then register one of the pieces. Or a system of splitting multiple pieces of wood, leaving some for registration. No idea if this is what anyone has done.

Signing makes sense.

But if you have a system where you can register the stick then why do you need the stick? Just register the contract with this, apparently trusted, 3rd party.

The third party and the registered stick slice aren't required to add marks to the outstanding sticks.

Splitting more tallies from one stick was done on certain occasions, especially if intentional fraud was a concern.

I dont understand. Its straight up told that the party giving the money had the longer stick, meaning the party with most to lose had to match the longer stick

If I give you $100, and we mark it on a stick, and then split it and give me the longer one, and then I throw away my half and split a new one that says you owe me $200, how do we resolve it when the halves come together and don't match? I say you made a new half-stick, and you say I did.

Both parties in a contract can have an incentive to lie.

You have to give both parties incentive to produce the original stick. So if they don’t match then you both lose.

I don’t think all contracts have an obvious both losing state though.

I think in this case one of the recipients has a monopoly on violence and doesn't care how much money you think they owe you.

> I don't understand

Think about two situations:

Firstly, if I lend you money, we split sticks, then I throw away my stick and get a new stick that says I lent you more money.

Secondly, if you lend me money, we split sticks, then I throw away my stick and get a new stick that says you lent me less money.

In both cases you're claiming my stick is clearly counterfeit because it doesn't match yours and I'm (falsely, but nobody knows that except the other party) claiming your stick is clearly counterfeit because it doesn't match mine.

What happens next? We're no better off than if we only had a verbal record and were disagreeing. So what is the point in the sticks?

Understand?

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