Why is it that when I say stuff like this it always gets downvoted?

It's a lot cheaper than involving lawyers, and it has the benefit of letting all participants work through their testosterone and adrenaline, so that after the match they can sit down and discuss the matter more amicably.

A proper refereed and organized fight is a pretty deep bonding experience, for guys anyway.

You're more likely to get, and give, a fair deal to someone that you've done something physical with - it's just how the human animal works.

It gets downvoted because if it's a joke it's not very funny and HN doesn't really like jokes anyway, and if it's not a joke it's a 19th-century kind of bonkers.

It's not a joke, and it works. A boxing match, or even a street fight in which there are no serious injuries, is a good way to bond, whoever wins.

You walk away thinking "This other person is willing to get into a fight with me, and fight fair". And the physicality of it does cause some amount of bonding.

Plus, the adrenaline in your system that builds up when you prepare to get into a negotiation and would otherwise have nowhere to go gets used up the way nature intended, which makes it easier to see things with equanimity afterwards.

That's an excellent starting point for any negotiation (assuming the fight was indeed fair).

We have evolved with physical fights as one of the cornerstones of our interactions with others -- you can repress it, be in denial about it, work against it, or work with it. What should a hacker do?

TLDR:

The point is not "who wins the fight wins the argument".

The point is "let's you and me fight, then afterwards, we can discuss the argument with more equanimity"

We (as a culture) have spent centuries stamping out trial by violence and duelling because as a dispute resolution mechanism it overwhelmingly favors young men with training.

We have in recent years marginalized boxing as it gets people killed or seriously injured, causes lasting brain damage even under controlled circumstances, and normalizes violent behavior.

Edit in reply to sibling: HN seems to have some anti-deep-thread mechanism which hides reply links. Maybe you should find someone to punch about that.

You're trolling right? Because settling legal disputes with Marquess of Queensbury rules is indeed 19th century bonkers.

Who would fight on UMG's behalf? They have enough money to bring any MMA fighter on as staff. Even if you restricted their pool of fighters to employees that they had before the duel was proposed, they have enough employees that they could probably still find somebody that could kick your ass.

To pjc50 to whom I can't seem to reply:

The point is not "who wins the fight wins the argument".

The point is "let's you and me fight, then afterwards, we can discuss the argument with more equanimity".

the problem is, UMG do have their own people for this. every little mom&pop shop has an army of lawyers, but some companies are so despised they need additional resources for challenges like those.

a lot of musicians and movie stars challenge their opponents to fist fights on a regular basis; and sometimes you get a mickey rourke or an uwe boll, brawlers who know what they're doing, or muscled rappers with a shady past and diamond rings on their fingers that aren't for show.

so UMG hires the biggest, meanest colombian war criminals, send them to fist fight college and employ those guys as "sekundanten" (sorry, no idea about the english term here - stand ins for duels).

poor bjorn lynne wouldn't stand a chance.

Didn't Notch tried that with Bethesda over the right to the word "scrolls"? I mean, he tried to try, because AFAIR Bethesda refused the Quake 3 match he proposed to resolve the issue.

And I somewhat agree with your sentiment. Today's process in the US is a huge resource wasting machine that serves only one group - lawyers.

http://www.themarysue.com/mojang-bethesda-settle-scrolls/