Oh, and on the world dictators question, consider: Kim Jong Il, Osama bin Laden, and Fidel Castro are all extremely ill anyway, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if any of them died within the next year of completely natural causes. In what way would them dying right this moment be significantly better than them dying in a few months or so? Once they’re dead, then what?
Convited? Suspected? Only after all appeals are exhausted? Without omniscience as well I don’t see how you can reliably make these decisions (especially with no recourse if you mess up).
So you would offload the responsibility of deciding who should die to the government? How statist.
Any thoughts on the likely repercussions in those countries? In DPRK Kim’s son will most likely take over, and not be any better. Iran will still be run by the Ayatollah (or are you killing him too?). The African countries I don’t really know what the supporting power structure is like, and I’m not too sure anybody in the west really does.
Could you qualify “traitors” a bit more? Traitors to who, or what? And what traitorous acts, if you don’t mean all?
As to my answer to the OP - no, I would not use it. Without having both omniscience (to verify that my understanding of the target’s activities is accurate) and the ability to see the future repercussions of my actions I don’t see how this power can be used ethically other than in cases of self-defense.
Only those convicted of course.
Are you some sort of a Libertarian?
There are some signs that Kim’s son is more moderate and yes I will kill the Ayatollah too.
Not a Libertarian but my point is clear I think. Without super-human knowledge you cannot reasonably make these decisions. In both of these cases you are offloading that responsibility to a third party - either the court system or the State Department. I guess I have less faith in those institutions than you do in determining who in fact “deserves” to die.
And if Kim’s son is not more moderate I suppose you will kill him as well. At some point the bodies will get stacked a bit high, no?
So you’d have an out-loud Death Note?
On preview, I see I’ve been beaten to this.
So, this is purely an American power, then. Someone has to be rightfully convicted in a court of law (do the defendants still get their proper appeals, etc.?) … in the USA. Outside the USA, anyone can be killed simply because you don’t like them.
Bush has almost certainly caused the deaths of tens of thousands more people than Ahmadinejad, yet you don’t have him on your list. Would you have put him there, two years ago?
If you kill enough people, you are eventually guaranteed to get all the guilty parties. Of course when you’re done you will have killed innocents as well, making yourself similarly guilty, obligating you to complete the set.
Is there anyone else that thinks that the more times you used this thing, the inevitably more easy it will become to use it on more and more people?
I will if it works kill generally as possible. For instance I will think say “All members of Al-Qaeda” rather then specific indviduals.
Only to the point where I will save more lives then take more lives.
So you’re building some sort of intelligence into the power. You don’t actually need names. In that case you could just say “kill all people whose deaths will decrease the amount of suffering the world”. Of course if you say that I would guess that you might also be included in the list (especially if you had been using this power for awhile)…
Well I think this sums up the difference between why you would use this power and I would not - you think you can accurately determine this point from great remove and I do not.
Dunno. God forbid you become a very effective police sniper, are you a bad guy yourself?
The minute you use this skill without orders, yes.
Yes, there IS a certain Monkey’s Paw/deal with the Devil vibe in an entity showing up and granting such a power.
I recall a story where a guy had a power where he could give any command and have it obeyed, including “Drop dead!” and have the target die. He got so drunk with power that he shouted “DROP DEAD!” out in the countryside without care who would hear it and die; and was found the next day dead in a field miles from anyone else.
Don’t think small. If it works on nonhumans, use it to kill AIDS and the flu and the common cold and malaria and cancer cells. THAT would be an unquestionably moral use of the power.
But if they’ve already been convicted, why do they need to be killed? The courts have already decided their punishment–a fine, a prison term, life imprisonment, or death. Why do they need you to help out? Or do you think that the courts are too lenient, and they are imprisoning people who in a just world would be put to death? If the courts are that flawed from your point of view, why do you trust them to find the people deserving of death?
Another fun story on this theme: Lullaby
I’d use it. In hypothetical fantasyland.
yes. Self defence, and maybe defence of people I care about. Only if I’m sure inaction will result in death, and there is no other way to help. I would not, however, pretend that I was actually doing more good than harm, or that I had to, or was morally obligated to do it. It would just be me and my own human nature. I’m a pacifist, but only when I have the luxury of being a relatively safe one. 
Now that’s an interesting idea. If I could bring the dead back to life (assuming it’s not a vampire or zombie thing) I would actually start with Hitler. I just think it would help if the world saw that he wasn’t some kind of supernatural evil force (I suppose coming back from the dead might be a bit of a problem there ) but the point is he was just a man, doing what he believed was right, and honestly trying to make the world a better place. I think Curtis LeMay, Cesario, appleciders, Grumman, Locrian, Argent Towers, Der Trihs, and just about every world leader today, would benefit greatly from having the opportunity to sit down and chat with Hitler. When they saw how much of what he did was based on the same morality they themselves subscribe to, it might make them reconsider a few things.
I assume you mean it could be given to multiple people. If giving it away meant loosing it myself, the answer would obviously be nobody. I personally would give the power to as many people as I could, without wasting any time determining who was ‘worthy’. Sure, there’d be chaos at first, but eventually people would learn the twin lessons of 1)It’s better not to use it at all, and 2)In some situations, people are going to use it anyway, and it’s better to just let that go than try to stop it. Overall, I think people would, somewhat paradoxically, have less to fear if everyone had this ability.
:eek: Hmm, I suppose I should reconsider who I’d give the power to then. I’d have to at least make it difficult to single out and kill others with the power, and preferably myself as well.
If that’s the criteria, then you do realize the most effective person to kill first would be you yourself, right? It would save the lives of all those you intend to kill.
I was assuming that it only killed one target at a time, and killing a single AIDS virus or plague bacterium or whatever would be pretty well useless. Though something that could do that is certainly a plausible result that might come out of the research.
The OP posited the killing of all the members of Al Qaeda simultaneously, so killing all the AIDS viruses is within the power of this fantasy.
The OP does say it can do things like “kill all members of Al Qaeda”