So, here I am in shiny modern Vancouver, gearing up for the long flight home this evening.

Our ADR Group session on Mediation at the Sharp End at the International Bar Association annual conference went well, with a joint presentation on the diplomatic, legal, negotiating and psychological issues arising from ‘extreme’ negotiating contexts such as hostages kidnapped by pirates. One of my co-panellists was Duncan Jarrett, a formidable British expert on hostage negotiations and anti-terrorist work.

In my own presentation I quoted the magnificent line from the Joker:

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying …Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos…

Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!

This is in effect the Negotiation going on between (a) civilisation and (b) Islamist terrorists and pirates and suchlike. The latter aim to drag us on to a more random, unpredictable place where order, rules and values do not apply.

Update: bang on cue:

"Faisal Shahzad is a remorseless terrorist who betrayed his adopted country and today was rightly sentenced to spend the rest of his life in federal prison," US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

In the courtroom in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, about 2.5 miles (4km) south of Times Square, Shahzad warned Americans to "brace themselves" for a war with Islam.

"We don’t accept your democracy or your freedom," he said, adding that he rejected the court’s authority because "Muslims don’t abide by human laws".

People like him prey upon our very restraint, our respect for process, our valuing of human life. The Sanction of the Victim. From their point of view, chaos is indeed ‘fair’ – it gives them a chance to win they otherwise would never have and do not deserve. Responding to this wisely is the far-reaching philosophical problem of our times.

One of the other speakers made an interesting proposition about the role of time in hostage negotiations. Better to slow things down, to try to de-dramatise the situation, to ‘reframe’ the kidnappers’ demands in much less threatening and violent terms so as to engage with them on a different psychological level where reason has a better chance of prevailing.

The problem here and in many other negotiating contexts is that people are impatient: time is seen as scarce. Better a quick ‘good enough’ outcome than a more patient, better one

This is part of a wider key issue in all negotiation. Is it better to create complexity for your opponent, to give pause for thought, to generate a sense of uncertainty as to what the best outcome is? That may suggest using more time.

Or rather should you aim to create simplicity – ‘let’s face it, it all boils down to this’ – to strip away detail and instead try to focus both sides on what you think ‘really’ matters? Perhaps quicker?

It turns out that there are all sorts of processes going on inside different parts of our brains emphasising varying combinations of logical and emotional responses to what we see and hear. Clever negotiators can use that scientific information to evoke different responses in the opposite side.

Good stuff. At least some of the audience of lawyers from around the world who usually deal in commercial work seemed impressed by the breadth and insight of the team presentation.

Plenty to follow up. After that grisly flight home.