Edit: I intentionally put “bad people” in the title in order to provoke. 😊
If you don’t know what I’m talking about:
Black Mirror - Hated in the Nation
I’m not sure how to limit the scope of this discussion, since it touches upon so many areas of morale:
- the value of life
- the right to kill
- vengeance/revenge
- crime
- good and evil
So I encourage you to be articulate and to follow some structure: “what(thesis) - why(evidence) - what (thesis)”. Other easy to follow variations, such as “why(background + evidence) - what(thesis)” or “what - why - what - by the way(discussion)” or just a simple “what” are of course good too. I’m not trying exclude comments, and I won’t, just encouraging an easy to read discussion. As for me:
I would not kill using a Death Note, unless for some utterly personal vendetta. I would also not kill those that did, if we were talking about some sort of society wide phenomenon. I believe that taking action against human life on the macro scale, such as a nation state against another or such as one confined justice system against one of its subjects (state versus an individual, for instance) or in the fictive case of the above mentioned media, is wrong. This is because I don’t believe it right to through politics or legislation qualify or quantify the value of a human life, such as is done in jurisdictions that allow capital punishment. While I’m against such “marco actions” on human life, I for some reason have less of a problem empathizing with the individual victims involved, which is to say, I don’t think I’d rage against, say, a grieving mother avenging her murdered child by killing the murderer. But then again, not all individuals have the ability or the capacity to exact revenge and maybe they have to rely on their nation state for some kind of restitution? My opinion is probably logical mess, full of contradictions, but there it is. Feel free to poke holes, in a kind manner!
I’ve already thought about all the names of specific leaders and billionaires I’d write down in that book, close it up and go to sleep with a smile on my face.
I mean if I had a magic gun that, when fired, put a bullet into the brain of every trump supporter, I’d empty the clip.
So… yeah, I’d use the death note.
plus on billionaires. hoarding ill-gotten capital while buying politicians to ensure you remain at the top is violence. Dismantling institutions for the poor, crafting an america with income inequality at it’s worse since the great depression, 70,000 americans die every year due to lack of access to health care. That is violence, perpetrated against us all, by republicans, and by corporate capitalists. They let you rot and melingure in poverty, dying in shame for having nothing, that’s akin to torture. A swift death via death note is almost too kind for them.
why stop with bad people?
Gaia has spoken. Noice.
I have thought about if I had a Death Note and the one thing that I would be deeply fascinated by is if it could cause things like people suddenly having Song of Saya style meat vision. If it could do things like that, then I’d probably be a little sadistic by making a few billionaires become “cursed” as a warning from “God” to get rid of their greed by getting rid of their wealth. That’s also presuming I would be also allowed to basically plant voices in their heads as well.
Feel like I could just get away with killing people who are like clinically brain dead and can’t be allowed to die due to religious or legal reasons.
I can barely be trusted with that, but I feel like that’s a limit I could stick to and spend the rest of my time just making sure the book doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
There’s still moral implications to being an angel of death and it could go wrong really easily but it feels much less tricky than deciding some dude fits my personal criteria of evil and thus deserves death.
I would 100% go mad with power. Fully convince myself that I knew what was best for humanity and try to sculpt the world through deletion.
I feel like I would kind of have to, the potential upside is just way too big
Yes.
However, in the long run the DeathNote would make me a corrupt PoS. I genuinely believe no one should have such power (DeathNote, Geass, Makima’s Control etc).
No. I know its probably a minority opinion, but killing people doesn’t really solve anything. If anything, killing often makes things worse. Eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind type thing.
Killing is the morally correct thing to do in acts of self defense
Billionaires, just by hoarding the wealth that they have and using it to run this system, are an everyday threat to the lives of the most vulnerable people in society
That’s who I would go for without hesitation, especially since they are also completely above the law and nothing else will happen to them
First I would rip out like 50 pages and give them to one of my closest friends to use as he sees fit. I trust him entirely.
Second I would write my own name in the deathnote, that I will die a peaceful death of natural causes at 100 years old. This will prevent anyone from writing my name in a deathnote since I don’t know how many others could be out there, and once someone’s name is written it cannot be written again.
But how would I use it? Tough question. You kill one dictator and an even worse one takes their place. There will always be wealthy people. Killing the top 1% just means there’s new people who are considered the top 1%. It would have to be some type of behavioral conditioning. Where everyone in the world is aware of some kind of super natural killer, but they only kill those who cause consistent and deliberate harm to others. I guess kind of like what Light wanted to do. Except I’d ignore the police entirely. Some dude named “Lind L. Taylor” is talking shit about me on TV? Cool.
Light’s biggest weakness was his ego. Too easily goaded into making mistakes. I’m fully aware I would be “giving up my humanity”. But instead of thinking about myself as a “God” I’d treat myself more as a “steward”. Someone doing out of some kind of obligation. I have the power to affect real change in the world, I’d be remissed if I didn’t at least TRY to do something.
Second I would write my own name in the deathnote, that I will die a peaceful death of natural causes at 100 years old
At least in the anime, you couldn’t write in a time of death more than 26 days in advance
From a strict utilitarian perspective, it’s easy to look at this as a trolley problem. I can easily think of a few monsters at the very top whose deaths would definitely save far more lives in exchange.
But the harder question I’d struggle with is, where to stop? I can start with the most obvious targets and feel no remorse, but how long do I keep going down the list for? What would really keep me up at night is wondering what’s worse: using it too much or not using it enough?
I’d do the eye deal so that I could take out bad drivers. Just have sheets and sheets of “___ pulls over safely, parks, and turns off the car, then has a heart attack.” with a mount so that I could fill in the names as I go.
I have no idea what I would do, but I know it would destroy me, either from guilt due to inaction or guilt due to action.
killing the top 1% wealthiest world solve like 99% of issues
That’s 1-in-100 people worldwide, likely including you.
If they make less than $450k USD annually, then they’re not in the top 1% of just the US. In order to be part of the global top 1% then they’d need even more than that, likely quite a bit more.
Not to make assumptions about someone I don’t know but I’d put it at about 1% odds that they make that much.
What kind of mathematically illiterate nonsense is that. You think to be in the global 1% takes MORE MONEY than being in the US 1%???
You understand that requires the global average wealth to be HIGHER than the US right?
Besides the top 1% of the 1% (billionaire class) are a lot more problematic than someone who makes 450k/yr… That’s just a good doctor in the west. Plus Forbes publishes a billionaire list.

These were my numbers last time I took the test. Adding my wife’s income, and my zero income, we’re in the 8%. It take very little to land in the 1%.
You have it exactly backwards. Compare yourself against worldwide, as I said.








