Forum - View topicLimitations of the Death Note (or, Kira goes to Vegas)
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BellosTheMighty
 Posts: 767 |
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This is probably the result of me thinking too hard about things...
Scenerio #1: Light Yagami, needing a break from the stressful life of an executioner, decides to take a trip to Vegas and apply his brilliant intellect to make some money at the tables. It works very well... until a casino regular cleans him out at the poker table with a combination of fair luck and foul play. Annoyed, Light calmly turns in for the night- but not before getting the man's name from another regular. Later in his room he gives the man a date with demise. Feeling for some reason more vicious then usual he writes down that the man "gambles the night away in his usual manner, but has a run of bad luck and loses every single bet he makes. In the early morning hours, depressed and dispairing, he goes up to the roof of the casino and commits suicide by jumping off." What Light doesn't know is that he's thwarted himself by writing down "in his usual manner." Like many gamblers, this man is a little superstitious. Whenever he goes on a losing streak that lasts more then 20 minutes, he tries to short circuit it by finding another patron with which he makes a side bet that he'll lose his next official bet. The terms Light has set out cover both bets- in effect the gambler will have to both lose and not lose his next official bet. Since this is impossible, the man will instead die the default death. Here's the question: Light's terms don't become impossible until the point the side bet is made. So, does the man drop dead after making the side bet, or does the Death Note predict the conditions becoming impossible the moment Light writes them in? If the latter, it implies that whatever force carries out the Death Note's will has either intelligence and knowledge enough to deduce future events, or that it is in some way prescient- either of which suggests it to be a conscious, though highly obedient entity. Scenerio #2: While Light mopes in his room, Ryuk gets bored and goes out for a fly around the city. While flying, he gets to thinking and can't remember the last time he wrote a name in his own Death Note. Deciding that safe is better than sorry, he stops over a bad part of town, picks out three humans with long and juicy lifespans, and arranges for them to die within the hour. However, Ryuk doesn't know humans all that well, nor the area he's hovering over. This is drug territory. One of those men was a dealer who had just decided to kill a rival in two days' time. Another had a lab and was going home to cook something up. In about a week, he would have sold that batch to a dealer, who would have in turn sold it to an addict who would have overdosed on it and died. The third was not involved in drugs, but had just been in the midst of a horrendous breakup that, which he would seeth over for years until finally deciding to murder his former lover and her child by a man she's not going to meet until a week from now. By killing these men, Ryuk unknowingly saved several lives. Now, the rules of the Shinigami world state that when a shinigami acts to prolong a human's life, his own life is forfiet. Ryuk has indeed saved lives tonight, but there was no imminent danger involved as there was in the case of Jealous. In the first event the murder plan would not be solidified for several hours at least, and carried out even later. In the second, the death would have technically occurred as a result of the addict's own actions, which were enabled by the dealer, which were enabled by the man Ryuk killed- and neither that man nor the dealer had any knowledge that said death would even occur. In the third case, the planned killing was far in the future, not even the murderer knows it's going to happen yet, and one of the victims doesn't even exist yet. So then, should Ryuk rightfully be dust at this point? Or, more accurately- where is the cutoff point? When is a shinigami determined to have saved a human's life directly by their actions? It's not hard to imagine that every time a Shinigami kills someone, they're unknowingly saving someone else's life. How far down the chain of events does one have to go before the shinigami becomes responsible for breaking the chain and allowing the person to live? Further, doesn't the fact that a distinction of some sort is necessary in the first place imply that whatever force obeys the Death Note has some faculty for making judgements? |
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Not a Jellyfish
 Posts: 539 Location: Boston, MA |
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I think the mere fact that it is a notebook that actually does the killing rather makes this moot, despite being an excellent point. The notebook itself is not intelligent or consious, it is given limited powers to carry out certain tasks, and if they contradict, it has a default. It's like a computer solving logic problems. The computer is not actually deducing, it is merely running it through logic circles to see what will work. As for scenario 2, I believe it was specifically stated that it was the INTENT to prolong someone's life. With Jealous, it was that he intentionally prolonged Misa's life. The imminent danger was just a coincidence. Ryun knows nothing of the future, the same as the people he is killing. However, he is not intentionally saving these people's lives. It's a result, but not a known and thus not an intended result. |
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BellosTheMighty
Posts: 767 |
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Just because the question is moot doesn't mean it can't be answered. If the man dies immediately, then that means information about future events can be accessed by the Death Note, which in turn means that said information exists. In other words, the universe of Death Note is one where life is predestined, at least until a shinigami intervenes. The Death Note could be acting on less-than-complete information, but that means that the Note itself is fallible, and that it might be possible to cheat death. On the other hand, if the man dies in twenty minutes, that means that the Death Note did not see it coming. Which implies the direct opposite- that there is no ultimate plan to the universe, or at least not when human free will enters the equation.
True. Which means that either the Death Note or some regulating force has the ability to correctly judge the motivations of sapient beings. Which requires either access to the minds of those beings, or an utterly complete understanding of how those minds work. This indicates that shinigami are ultimately pawns of fate- they are ordered around by a force which has complete understanding of them, and failure to comply with his strictures means death. It is possible that the regulating force has less-then-perfect knowledge, but this in turn means that the shinigami will die or not depending on, ultimately, whether or not he approves of them. |
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