If you murdered every murderer, you should get enough points to go to The Good Place, right?
Hypothetically speaking of course. I’m obliged by lemmy.world rules to state that I do not condone murder. 😉
Of we’re talking points, then you’re rolling the dice. If they’ve already murdered, you’re not preventing those, so you’ve done no good. If they’re going to murder at least two more people, you should net out positive, by preventing those murders. But you can’t know they’ll murder more people; maybe their murderin’ days are over, and they’ve given it up; maybe they’ll get hit by a bus before they can kill anyone else; maybe they’ll get caught and imprisoned before they can kill again. If you murder them, but they’d never have killed again anyway, you’re pretty well net negative.
Very mild spoilers if you haven't seen Season 1 of The Good Place
Although, The Good Place is ambiguous about how intention impacts points. Take Tahani: she’s there because, despite all the good she did, she did it all for the wrong reasons. OTOH, take Doug, from S03E08. He did everything he did because he had an epiphany that told him exactly how the system worked, so everything he did was to maximize his points. By the Tahani rule - and by the plot device of several other episodes - having that knowledge taints your actions and prevents you from gaining points from good deeds. Yet Michael pretty clearly believes Doug is the template for how to get to the Good Place - a direct contradiction of - if not Tahani - than other episodes where the characters are doomed because of their knowledge of the system.
I’ve only watched through season 3, so if there are any other spoilers below, they’re purely accidental.
So: while The Good Place is somewhat ambiguous about the question of Doing the Wrong Thing for the Right Reason, I think in balance it’d weigh against you. You should have tried other things first - like tipping off the police. If all you’re trying to do is get into the Good Place, your best bet is to try and reform thre person. Even if they killed you - maybe especially if they killed you - self-sacrifice in a good cause is clearly a lot of points.
“Thou shalt not kill” is a pretty straightforward commandment. No qualifiers, no exceptions. No “go ahead and kill if you believe you’re justified”.
Per the New testament so long as you accept Jesus afterward and repent you should be fine though.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.
Murder as punishment? Bad.
Killing someone who has killed before, who is known to commit more murders, to prevent them from committing more murders? Generally bad, too, unless the system is totally broken.
Kill 1 person its a tragedy, Kill 10000 its a statistic.
Lets change the statistics of billionaires?
If you murder a murderer, you don’t reduce the total number of murderers. You have to murder more than one, but then you’re a serial killer, which is arguably worse. If you’re a serial killer who only kills serial killers, then you are starting to maximize the offset. But once you fuck up and get close to being caught, so your serial killer girlfriend blows up Doakes to keep your secret safe and you pin all your murders on him, you’ve gone too far.
Yeah but how do you know the murderer you murdered wasn’t just murdering other murderers like your murderering MO? You could still have a net sum of 0 murderers removed from society🫠
When you get to the end. You’ll need a Murderer who Murders [Murders who Murders Murderers]
🫠
Then you’ll have one evil Murderer, and all other evils are gone.
Wait, Yagami Light? Is that you?
gets heart attack
“Kir…a”
dies
Murdering them reduces the number of murderers in the world and does not undo their murders, so it’s a win win.
I learned from the new Dexter show that you have to kill three times to become a serial killer. So, it seems like two is the optimum number here, reducing the number of murderers by one and increasing the number of serial killers by none.
What if you are not a serial killer, but a parallel killer?
That’s a spree killer.
I miss Doakes. 😭
Surprise motherfucker!
Nah, fuck that guy.
Last but not least, don’t forget to kill your serial killer girlfriend to tie up loose ends, and maintain superiority over other killers.
you get eight seasons and three spin-offs.
You get a place that’s not a Good place, not a Bad place, not even a Medium place, but a Luigi’s Mansion.
If you murder a murderer,
then you are a murderer murderer.A murderer murderer is
still a murderer.If you only kill one murderer the number of murderers stays the same, if you kill 20…
The number of bad murderers changes tho
This was actually a huge problem in medieval times. The people back then adhered to the existence of the death penalty, but they also didn’t see it as anything aside from a kind of state sanctioned murder rather than how you’d expect many people to see execution. Executioners were thus highly stigmatized, to the point where we have that stereotype today of medieval executioners having that black veil over their heads to conceal their identity, and out of necessity, the role of executioner was inherited like that of a monarch rather than acquired, since often nobody would’ve otherwise sought the job. Executioners were considered so much of an outcast and felt so little incentive to be executioners that it was medieval law that they would get a lifetime supply of free food in order to reduce the burden of the job. They were considered a hesitant necessary “evil” that put a cap on other “evils”, like adultery (oh the horror). Or so they say.
Times have evolved though, and I go by a different school of thought (schools of thought where it’s much more difficult to get to the bad place and stay there if your intentions are good). I cannot help you out of legal issues should something happen, but I have faith that doing what you consider to be a favor won’t be eternally punished.
You would get more points if you manage to capture them and get them a fair trial that allows society to reflect on the issues that made them the way they are and maybe reduce the chance that more will appear in the future.
Knowing is half the battle.
GI JOE!
Ah the old Schrodingers Dexter X The Good Place Crossover Episode Gambit, a decent argument. However I think it can be disproven through the axioms suggested through Zenos Jurrasic Park III X Terminator Clause.
So you’re only a net positive if you murder more than 1 murderer. Because if you murder a murderer then you become a murderer and we’re net 0 on murderers. But the more murderers you murder, the more negative that murder number becomes.
You know they say “2 wrongs don’t make a right” – yes – but maybe a dozen wrongs could.
If you murder someone who’s about to commit murder, wouldn’t it be safe to say you just save a life?
I think that means it evens out and doesn’t count against you. Loophole!
Murdering murderers makes one a murderer. If one is going to ignore any context and mitigating factors, no, murdering murderers does not result in net good.
E.g., people who have killed in self defense have been tagged as murderers. Murdering them is not at all a good thing (in my moral framework, at least).
E.g. #2, murdering one person for Reasons does not necessarily mean a murderer is going to murder again. So murdering them adds to the overall murder tally without necessarily preventing any additional murders.
There has to be some element of preventing future murders, not just retribution of past murders, for this to even be a debate, IMO. And then there’s the bar of simply locking them up being insufficient to prevent them murdering in the future.
Murder is the unlawful or unjustifiable killing of another person. If you kill someone in legitimate self-defense, you are not a murderer.
This, of course, doesn’t stop a lot of murderers from falsely claiming self-defense.
Murdering all murderers can’t conceivably be “self-defense”, making it unlawful.
I was simply responding to his assertion that “people who have killed in self defense have been tagged as murderers”.
And how would one know with 100% certainly a person killed in self-defense despite being labeled a murderer by the applicable legal system?
It assumes an impossible perfect knowledge. Or if not perfect knowledge, some percentage of error, making the murderer of murderers guilty of occasionally murdering an innocent self-defense killer.
unjustifiable
What if its justifiable but illegal?
Then you become an enemy of the state and get perp walked on the news for something that happens in major cities every day.
After Cain killed Abel god said not to kill Cain
why would I give a fuck what god thinks?
OP’s question specifically mentions a “good place” and a “bad place.” This implies some higher power or powers. If they exist; and if there is indeed an eternal afterlife; and if the difference is existing in eternally pleasure or existing in eternal torment; then you’d be a deranged fool to not care what god thinks.
Pascal’s Wager says that the rational decision is to be devout. The flaw in his logic is that there are a great many religions, and you can apply the same wager to Islam, to Buddhism, to Thelema*, and by Pascal’s own logic the only reasonable decision is to be devout to all of them at once, which is impossible.
- Thelema might be the exception here, because Satanism has very few rules that penalize you for breaking them. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” allows you to be a Mormon, if you want. The best hope for most of us is that Thelema is the One True Religion.
I am already an ordained dudeist priestess, I think it suits me just fine.
Really? Howdy! I’m an ordained priest in the Church of Bacon. I’ve performed two weddings as such, even; I didn’t get ordained for no reason. Both marriages are still holding, so I count those as wins.
I’m also an ordained Discordian priest, but that happened back in the 80’s and I don’t think I have any record of it. There may have been a number of pharmaceuticals involved.
