The morality of using the Death Note

TheHedoMinimalist

For those who are unfamiliar with the anime series The Death Note; a death note is a magical notebook that can kill anyone you would like killed by simply writing down their name while imagining their face. In addition, you can write down and determine when, where, and how they die. If you simply write down their name then the default option is to have the person die of a heart attack 40 seconds after you wrote their name down. In the anime series, the protagonist uses the notebook to kill criminals and other types of malevolent people in an attempt to obtain justice for the victims and make the world a better. Some police detectives didn't agree with his moral philosophy so they tried to get him arrested. The problem was that they didn't know who was responsible for the killings. The protagonist started killing some of the detectives who were trying to figure out his identity. The problem for him though was that he didn't know the name of the best detective in the world who was trying to capture him. And so the show consists of the protagonist trying to figure out the name of the detective and the detective trying to figure out who was killing the criminals.
Now that I explained the concept behind the Death Note. I would like to list some potentially justified reasons for using it:

1. Seeking justice and retribution for others.(Killing people who got away with wronging others)

2. Getting rid of malevolent people who are currently active in their malevolent activities.(like active terrorists, serial killers, and dictators too powerful to be arrested)

3. Providing assisted suicide.(The Death Note could be used to allow people to die painlessly in their sleep).

4. Providing relief from suffering that is undesired by the suffering person in question.(Far more morally questionable. I think there's no reason why it would even be practical to euthanize people against their will since I imagine there would be plenty of volunteers for the euthanasia. But perhaps in cases of extreme suffering where you can't ask the person for permission, some people would think it is permissible.)

5. Ethical slaughtering of animals.(Although, I don't think the Death Note works on animals since they don't have names. But we can imagine that it works as long as you name every cow you slaughter lol.)

6. Providing abortions for women who don't have access to them.(The Death Note from the anime series cannot do this though because it cannot kill infants that are too young or fetuses. But, we can imagine a different death note that has that power)

7. Eugenics and killing those who are a burden to society(eg. the disabled, the mentality ill, prisoners(but not for retributive purposes), the homeless, and so on). This one is definitely one of the most controversial ones but I suppose some people might try to justify it.

8. Killing well-intentioned individuals who are producing a bad outcome.(For example, killing a well-intentioned president of a country for making bad policy decisions). This is also extremely controversial, but you might be able to imagine circumstances under which this would be warranted.

Out of these 8 reasons, I think only the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th reasons could be morally justified. Only the 2nd and 3rd reason can be considered morally virtuous. What reasons do you think are morally justified for using the death note if any? What reasons are morally virtuous, if any?

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Πετροκότσυφας

So, you wouldn't be willing to use it to kill someone like Kim Jong Un?

All sight

We're thrown into a game, a life, that we don't even know the rules or limits of. I didn't find it that compelling, in that Light held all of the cards, and knew exactly what was happening, how it all worked, and what the rules were, and he still almost lost to someone that had to figure all those incredibly unlikely details out, through inference, and tricking Light into revealing as much as he could. L was so expletive smart, that his intuition told him that Light was the one from the moment he saw him, he just could never prove it to himself explicitly.

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Πετροκότσυφας

I don't understand how your objection is relevant to my question. One could think it is permissible to kill a malevolent dictator to save and improve the lives of the people he oppresses, without thinking it's ok to murder someone because of their race, religion, or nationality. I feel like you're making a slippery slope argument here

All sight

I think that a slippery slope argument is possible. You imagine having an incredible power in your back pocket, but just using it completely justly and legitimately that one time, and then never again? It wouldn't be the case that using it would be easier each time, requiring less legitimacy, until you'd be exercising it because you can, it's easy, and you have nothing better to do.

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Πετροκότσυφας

So, are you afraid that you would abuse that power yourself or do you think that you should abstain from using it to ensure that no one would find out about the power so we could avoid the possibility of someone stealing the notebook from you and using it for their malevolent purposes?

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Πετροκότσυφας

Ok, so it sounds to me like your objection to using the death note is that we should treat something as deadly as the death note like we would treat a nuclear bomb. That is to say, that even if there are advantages to building nuclear bombs(let's say they might of prevented the Cold War from turning hot, for example), the disadvantages of having the existential threat that nuclear bombs pose makes the advantages not worth it. Therefore, it would be better if nuclear bombs didn't exist. Similarly, if you destroy the death note than you would prevent it from existing and that would avoid the existential threat that it poses.
Although I emphasize with this argument and I think it makes a good point, I think if the death note were to be used by the most enlightened and responsible people, the benefit might be worth the risk. Having said that, I think there might be a real danger in assuming that I am that enlightened or responsible person. That's why I don't know if I would use the notebook myself. There's also what I call the Raskolnikov Problem with using the notebook. This problem points out that the harm of murder is not only done to the person murdered but also the murderer.

TheHedoMinimalist

Kind of, but a death note is worse. It's a far more detached way of doing something as significant as killing, which makes it more likely to be abused. And if people are willing to engage in so much bloodshed in ways that require getting your hands and your heart dirty, imagine how willing many would be to use the notebook. — Πετροκότσυφας

I think there are ways in which the notebook is better though. One thing to consider is that there would only be one notebook(belonging to you) and that you could destroy it after just killing a couple of people. Nuclear bombs, on the other hand, cannot be disarmed easily.

To me, someone who's willing to have absolute power over another or to grant absolute power to another is disconnected from reality and thus, by definition, neither responsible nor enlightened. — Πετροκότσυφας

Well, I don't think we should judge a person as unenlightened simply because they disagree with us on a particular issue. I imagine that there's probably at least a billion people who would be willing to use the notebook in the world. To say that all of them are unenlightened would be statistically unlikely. I imagine that there's at least one person who you would judge to be very enlightened prior to knowing about their opinion about the death note. I also would like to point out that it's inaccurate to say that the death note grants you absolute power over another. You can kill someone with the notebook and manipulate their actions before their death to some extent, but beyond that you are powerless. I suppose you could also use it to intimidate people into doing what you want but that might put you at risk for being taken down.

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Πετροκότσυφας

I was interested in having a mature and polite conversation with you about this topic. You have demonstrated an unwillingness to engage me on this topic in a polite and respectful manner. I don't think I could have a pleasant or productive conversation with you on this topic so I think I'll seek someone else to have a conversation with instead.

Benkei

↪TheHedoMinimalist

What part wasn't mature or polite?

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Benkei

well, the part where he(or she) called anyone he(or she) disagreed with "terminally illiterate" was the most impolite part. Also calling people he(or she) disagreed with "disconnected from reality" and "by definition irresponsible". These are unnecessary remarks for him(or her) to use when demonstrating his(or her) point and it shows his(or her) unwillingness to emphasize with those he(or she) disagrees with and actually ask them questions and listen before making preconceived judgements. I'm not trying to say he(or she) is especially impolite or immature since the type of discourse he(or she) is displaying is extremely common and it's easy for us to get desensitized to it and assume that this is an acceptable way of having a philosophical conversation. I also think he(or she) was being vague in his(or her) responses in the beginning especially and not giving me much to work with. Maybe I'm being too hard on him(or her), but I've had much better conversations than that on this forum in my brief time here and I don't want to get bogged down having a conversation with someone who doesn't seem to want to explore different possibilities or elaborate enough on his(or her) position.

TheHedoMinimalist

I think that a slippery slope argument is possible. You imagine having an incredible power in your back pocket, but just using it completely justly and legitimately that one time, and then never again? It wouldn't be the case that using it would be easier each time, requiring less legitimacy, until you'd be exercising it because you can, it's easy, and you have nothing better to do. — All sight

I think that it's a fair critique you are making. Perhaps there is a real concern here about it leading to worse consequences. But, I also find it hard to believe that every person who uses the notebook would inevitably abuse it's power and that it would always lead to a major catastrophe. I do think that if you use the notebook for any purpose, you should write a constitution of sorts that describes rules that you must follow in order to ethically use the notebook. You also want to make this constitution known to the public so that the public opinion could hold you accountable to some extent. Maybe you could have some type of symbolic impeachment process too lol. You might think that writing a constitution would just be an empty promise but I believe it would have a powerful psychological effect. That is because when you promise not to do something, it is very painful to break that promise. So, here's a draft copy of what my death note constitution might look like:

1. Kira shall not kill those who are not currently a threat to others or suffering immensely themselves.(so no killing benign criminals in prison or suicidal emo kids)

2. Kira shall only kill people painlessly in their sleep.

3. Among the suicidal people, Kira will only euthanize those who are dying of terminal illnesses.

4. Kira will only kill people without consent with the permission of the international courts and United Nations.(that way the people killed are indisputably a current threat to other people's lives and well being. They are also all breaking international law)

5. Kira will give a public warning to the malevolent people he is about to kill. He will give a 3 day notice before killing them which will allow the malevolent people to turn themselves in to the lawful authorities.

I know I probably left some things out in that constitution but it's late at night and I'm kinda drunk right now lol. This is the best I can do for now.

andrewk

One could think it is permissible to kill a malevolent dictator to save and improve the lives of the people he oppresses — TheHedoMinimalist

Did the lives of Iraqis improve when they killed Saddam Hussein?

Pussycat

Benkei

↪TheHedoMinimalist

From my reading of this:

my conception of being responsible, so whoever engages in it, is by definition irresponsible. — Πετροκότσυφας

I thought it wasn't about you but about what it means to be responsible. If you could argue against his persuasive definition of responsible, then you'd probably open up the discussion again. He actually invites you to do that in the next sentence.

It reads a bit like your intention is a fail safe system to administer death penalties. You are skipping whether the death penalty is moral in itself and if so for what sort of crimes. Human justice, however, is fallible and any penalty system will invariable punish innocents. For that reason alone we should never impose the death penalty because it is irreversible and cannot in some sense be renumerated financially.

Additionally, you cannot take life when a life has been lost; that's revenge, not justice.

Finally, it is ineffective as a deterrent. Deterrence is a consequence of the likelihood of being caught and punished. In other words, I don't think there's a good case for the death penalty to begin with.

TheHedoMinimalist

I thought it wasn't about you but about what it means to be responsible. If you could argue against his persuasive definition of responsible, then you'd probably open up the discussion again. He actually invites you to do that in the next sentence. — Benkei

It was a mistake on my part. I misunderstood his intention and that caused me judge him as rude too quickly. We have privately resolved things and I would be open to having a discussion with him again.

It reads a bit like your intention is a fail safe system to administer death penalties. You are skipping whether the death penalty is moral in itself and if so for what sort of crimes. Human justice, however, is fallible and any penalty system will invariable punish innocents. For that reason alone we should never impose the death penalty because it is irreversible and cannot in some sense be renumerated financially.

Additionally, you cannot take life when a life has been lost; that's revenge, not justice. — Benkei

Well, I'm assuming you might not have read my Death Note constitution post. It is not the case that my intention was to provide a death sentence. The first amendment of my Death Note constitution prohibits that. My intention was to stop people who are currently a serious threat to other people's lives and well being from harming people again. I'm not interested in killing bad people who were already captured but rather to kill mostly active terrorists. We are currently trying to kill active terrorists with drone strikes and air strikes which causes a lot of collateral damage to innocent civilians. I think the death note would be a better tool for taking out those terrorists. I also included in my constitution a requirement for permission from the United Nation to kill each criminal and a trial to determine the eligibility of each criminal killed. In addition, there is a 3 day warning to the criminal to allow them an opportunity to turn themselves in instead of being murdered.

TheHedoMinimalist

Did the lives of Iraqis improve when they killed Saddam Hussein? — andrewk

No, they have not. But, the death note bypasses many of the problems that the old fashioned ways of overthrowing a dictator possesses. For one thing, you can simply threaten to kill the dictator if he violates some international law again. This would still keep the dictator in power but would provide him with an incentive to behave better towards his people. Another option is that you can kill the dictator and threaten to kill any leader that violates human rights that comes in his place. Thereby causing the country to become at least somewhat of a republic. There are several problems that it cannot address though:
1. If there is a dictator who keeps his identity secret, he would pose a challenge for Kira.
2. If a dictator possesses nuclear weapons, he could threaten to use them if he gets killed. This would make killing him a foolish decision.

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Πετροκότσυφας

I would like to publicly apologize for misunderstanding your intentions with our conversation. Now that I know that you were not trying to be rude, I feel better about having future conversations with you. I would like to invite you to continue the discussion if you still want to continue it.

Recently, I had attempted to address the problem that you posed with using the death note by suggesting that a good Kira should write a Death note constitution which describes the conditions under which Kira is allowed to kill. I believe this would serve as a psychological deterrent for Kira and would hold him somewhat accountable to public opinion. The draft copy of my Death Note Constitution goes as follows:

1. Kira shall not kill those who are not currently a threat to others or suffering immensely themselves.(so no killing benign criminals in prison or suicidal emo kids)

2. Kira shall only kill people painlessly in their sleep.

3. Among the suicidal people, Kira will only euthanize those who are dying of terminal illnesses.

4. Kira will only kill people without consent with the permission of the international courts and the United Nations.(that way the people killed are indisputably a current threat to other people's lives and well being. They are also all breaking international law)

5. Kira will give a public warning to the malevolent people he is about to kill. He will give a 3 day notice before killing them which will allow the malevolent people to turn themselves in to the lawful authorities.

6. Kira shall only allow the United Nations to amend his constitution.

I know that this doesn't completely mitigate the risks of the death note but it certainly lowers it quite a bit. I also think that the Death Note would be a better way of killing terrorists than drone strikes which often cause a lot of collateral damage and involve the death of many innocent civilians.

Benkei

↪TheHedoMinimalist

I did read it and was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't proposing plain murder. You can guess when I have a problem with the death penalty already what I think about extra-judicial killings, sanctioned by an international body or not.

TheHedoMinimalist

↪Benkei

Well, sometimes extra judicial killing is necessary in times of war at least. If there's a member of ISIS hanging around in Iraq killing infidels and enslaving women, then the entire world has an interest in ensuring that he can't harm anyone else. Instead of killing that terrorist with a drone strike(which is what we are doing right now), it would be better to have an international trial(unfortunately without the terrorist present) in which we can give him a warning to turn himself in(so he can be given a proper trial) or risk getting killed painlessly in his sleep. This is more than fair in my opinion given that the terrorist is an active danger.

Benkei

You are equating things. You talk about war and terrorists but combating terrorists is something else than war where conscripted soldiers fight each other. The latter involves sovereign states and there's some form of sovereign authority providing legitimacy to the soldiers doing the killing.

In any case, nothing you've written deals with the problem I brought up before that this system will irrevocably kill innocents. This is all the more likely due to the absence of a due process, where the accused has a chance to defend himself and exarcebated by the fact the UN and its courts are political institutions.

TheMadFool

↪TheHedoMinimalist

The tool seems almost perfect but tools need people to use them and people are not perfect.

They have emotions and vices. Combine it with a powerful weapon and we invariably get a disaster on our hands.

Nuclear weapons seem a good example here. The threat of an apocalypse looms over humanity and we can do nothing about it. Right?

Just sayin'

TheHedoMinimalist

↪TheMadFool

I agree that there are dangers to using the Death Note but I don't think the analogy with nuclear bombs is entirely appropriate. That is because nuclear weapons could wipe out the entirety of humanity but it would take you too much time to write 7 billion names down(If I recall, it takes far more than a lifetime to even count to 7 billion. Also if we imagine a Death Note with a finite amount of pages, there's only so many people that could be killed with it). Death Notes are also more precise than most weapons are so we can take out the bad guys without any friendly fire or collateral damage to the innocent bystanders. I think this tool could solve many world problems like terrorism, organized crime, human rights violations, and it will provide us with the ability to actually enforce international laws. I think the risk is worth the benefit but I don't blame you for disagreeing though,

TheMadFool

↪TheHedoMinimalist

I don't know. If you look at literature I think you'll see a lot of stories that revolve around human imperfection. It's a cliche that can't be missed. Can we find a person who can weild such a powerful weapon?

Do we vote as in a democracy?

TheHedoMinimalist

↪TheMadFool

I would love to read some literature on the topic but I don't think it would be too easy to find. It would nice if you could send me some links to the relevant literature if you had managed to find some so I can read it for myself. As far as the question of whether or not we should have a democracy decide who will wield the notebook or perhaps have the public vote on who to execute. The latter would obviously be a bad idea since this can create a mob mentality. The former wouldn't be a super fabulous idea either. I wouldn't want the death note to fall into the hands of a Trump-like demagogue. This could lead to reckless killing and violating the rules described in my constitution. I think a good Kira would either use the notebook himself or give to someone who they can trust. It's extremely important that the notebook doesn't fall into the hands of someone with bad intentions. I honestly think that it's not power that corrupts the individual but it's the individual himself who was corrupt before the power but the power simply reveals the evil that has always been there in the individual. Having said that, I think there are few people who don't have that evil and we often aren't even aware of it and we are in denial of it. Because of that, I think that the holder of the death note should feel confident that his intentions are good or decide to destroy the notebook.

TheMadFool

↪TheHedoMinimalist

I haven't read much too but I believe the Greek Tragedies are full of demi-gods who are perfect except they have one little flaw.

Terrapin Station

Yeah, I'd be fine with 2, 3, 5 and 6. Not with the others. With 1, I'm not only not in favor of the death penalty, I'm not in favor of the prison system as it currently is instantiated. I agree there's a need to separate some people from mainstream society, if there's good reason to believe that they'd continue to perform particular acts of nonconsensual violence, but separation is all that I believe is warranted, not under prison conditions, and not if there's no reason to believe that they'd commit additional acts.

I enjoyed the 2017 Death Note film, by the way. That's the only version I've seen.

frank

The only reason we accept the death note premise for even a moment is that we think it's bad guys being killed.

So the monster has our sympathy until it turns on an innocent child.

There are few non-monsters among us.

TheHedoMinimalist

I enjoyed the 2017 Death Note film, by the way. That's the only version I've seen. — Terrapin Station

I would definitely recommend watching the anime series if you have the time for that(it has around 35 episodes that are about 30 minutes each). It's far more complex and elaborate than the film and it's very suspenseful and thought provoking

kurohime7511

i think now a days abnormal psychology like psychopathy and sociopathy is amusing to the teens and thus they enjoy animes like tokyo ghoul and death note

hachit

Would you be willing to kill what you think is evil if you lost your humanity in the process?
Even if you can justify murder, are you will to pay the price.

The morality of using the Death Note

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