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## [RT] [D] On the Death Note and Conditional Statements
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* Author: u/Alden_ *
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* URL: https://justlustplus.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/on-the-death-note-and-conditional-statements/
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* Score: 24
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* Created: 2017-08-22T01:49:08
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### Post:
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[Link to content](https://justlustplus.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/on-the-death-note-and-conditional-statements/)
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### Comments:
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> **u/Hormel_Chavez** [+26] (41 minutes later)
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>
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> It's really interesting but I don't think it's right.
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>
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> Rule #1: "The human whose name is written in this Note **shall die**."
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>
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> Rule #2: "This Note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected."
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>
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> That's it. If your name is written while Light is thinking of your face, you die. No matter what. You can't use "if" statements the way you're describing. The only conditional statements Light can use are things like "Hideki Ryuga [performs this action] and then dies [at this time] and [in this manner]." Ryuga dies no matter what: If any of these conditions are impossible, Ryuga simply dies of a heart attack. Writing "Hideki Ryuga dies if [statement] is true," would just kill Ryuga.
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>
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> I also get the idea the Note uses information from its user's and victim's minds only. Before the FBI stunt, Light tests the Note on prisoners to determine the extent of his control. He is able to make them write phrases and perform actions of his choosing, but he is not able, for example, to have them travel to Paris or draw a picture of L's face. As the prisoners lack the information or ability to perform these actions, they die of heart attacks. If the Note is all-knowing and this information was being introduced, the prisoner would've drawn a face.
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>
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> In "Encounter," L is actually being pretty sharp, introducing himself as someone so well known that the user of the Note would have trouble NOT picturing his face as he wrote the name (like introducing himself as "Tom Cruise"). Light is smart enough not to try; he knows he will probably accidentally picture the actor and kill him, immediately revealing himself as Kira.
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>
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> That was more than I meant to write. Sorry, this is by far my favorite anime and manga and I've read/watched it dozens of times. I know it pretty well and would love to argue about it more!
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>> **u/696e6372656469626c65** [+12] *I think, therefore I am pretentious.* (57 minutes later)
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>>
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>> > That's it. If your name is written while Light is thinking of your face, you die. No matter what. You can't use "if" statements the way you're describing. The only conditional statements Light can use are things like "Hideki Ryuga [performs this action] and then dies [at this time] and [in this manner]." Ryuga dies no matter what: If any of these conditions are impossible, Ryuga simply dies of a heart attack. Writing "Hideki Ryuga dies if [statement] is true," would just kill Ryuga.
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>>
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>> This is pretty easily fixed a la [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6v7ubi/rt_d_on_the_death_note_and_conditional_statements/dly9b45/) (man, we've got some link-ception going on here); all you have to do is vary the *method* of death rather than the death itself.
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>>> **u/Alden_** [+6] (an hour later)
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>>>
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>>> That's true. Damn, Yudkowsky sure is thorough. I didn't even consider that possibility of using cause of death instead of mortality.
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>>> **u/ghost-pacman4** [+4] (12 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> This could work, but only if the methods of death did not include the default method of heart attack. There is always the possibility of the Death Note just defaulting to heart attack if it doesn't understand the conditional statement or can't possibly figure it out.
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>>>
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>>> For instance, someones writes this in a death note "Bob dies in a car accident if the Goldbach Conjecture is true, or Bob dies of a stroke if the Goldbach Conjecture is false." Bob then dies...of a heart attack. A non-answer, that would have been a false positive or negative if heart attack was used for one of the options.
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>> **u/Alden_** [+1] (an hour later)
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>>
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>> > Rule #1: "The human whose name is written in this Note shall die."
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>>
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>> I would think that 'shall' means 'may', which would mean that the death note is open to the use of conditionals. Granted, the use of 'shall' could also only be because (as you state) the Note is unable to make targets perform certain actions.
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>>
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>> While it may be true that the Note *uses information from the user's and victims mind only*, I think that the condition would only be applicable to the performance of actions that result in the victim's cause of death. The use of conditional statements does not test the victim's or users mind since it is not related to their cause of death but rather to the circumstances by which the death occurs (from a death note casual perspective). I suspect then that what those statements would test would be the mind of higher powers like the shinigami king who is supposedly in charge of all the death notes and their shinigami, who I assume is privy to such information.
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>>
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>> Whether the Note only uses information from the user's mind as you have raised is indeed problematic, but I think I can show that the note does have the ability to use information that is not held by both parties. For example, when Light wrote down Kiichiro Osoreda's name (ep. 4), he specified the condition that it would be an accidental death after conducting the kidnapping. The result was that he died by a traffic accident (car collision). I would think that the fuzzy language here suggests that the Note has the ability to *decide and execute* the most probable cause of death independent from the thoughts of both the victim or the user, since 'accidental death' could mean a range of possible things. It also suggests that the Note is capable of influencing individuals unrelated to the victim or the user, i.e. the driver of the car. This opens the floor to whether or not the note contains some form of omniscience that could be accessible via conditional statements.
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>>
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>> Yudkowsky also captures this sense well in his [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/29qonq/q_what_would_you_ask_about_the_death_note/cioylzf/)
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>> >Can the Death Note ensure that the past (from before the command was written) is in conformance with the required result? What if I write that in 30 seconds someone will die from atherosclerosis or an advanced brain cancer? This doesn't distinguish well between the atherosclerosis having been retroactively added, or just magically materialized, but there may be other ways to check.
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>>> **u/MagicWeasel** [+9] *Cheela Astronaut* (5 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> > I would think that 'shall' means 'may',
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>>>
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>>> Shall doesn't mean may. I remember being in a one day contracts course stating that "shall" is a good word to use in contracts because it means that doing it is required, whereas "may" is optional.
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>>>
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>>> (The Death Note rules were written in English in the original manga, weren't they?)
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>>>
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>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will goes into some more detail and it turns out that the whole Shall thing is pretty contentious, but the following passage seems most relevant to *Death Note* to me:
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>>>
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>>> > In statements, shall has the specific use of expressing an order or instruction, normally in elevated or formal register.
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>>>> **u/Kinoite** [+2] (17 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Not just contracts. Internet specs have some very, very explicit notes on "SHALL" versus "MAY"
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>>>>
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>>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119
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> **u/696e6372656469626c65** [+16] *I think, therefore I am pretentious.* (21 minutes later)
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>
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> > Can the Death Note reveal facts via its operation? What are the limits of what it can reveal? E.g, "Bob dies of a heart attack if the Goldbach Conjecture is true, or Bob dies of a stroke if the Goldbach Conjecture is false." "Bob dies after jotting down a critical insight into proving the Riemann Hypothesis."
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>
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> [-Eliezer Yudkowsky](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/29qonq/q_what_would_you_ask_about_the_death_note/cioylzf/)
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>> **u/Alden_** [+5] (an hour later)
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>>
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>> Damnit. I'm 3 years too slow.
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> **u/Alden_** [+7] (a minute later)
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>
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> Just came up with this. I'm interested to find out what you guys would want to check for if this use of the death note was possible.
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>> **u/aeschenkarnos** [+5] (36 minutes later)
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>>
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>> It's a sound idea, for sure. Have to use people we'd want to get rid of anyway, of course. Fortunately they're not in short supply. On that note, it may be possible to algorithmically establish a utilitarian morality - if we're *wrong* about someone deserving to die, we'd want the Death Note for them to fail.
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>>
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>> "Alien lifeforms with human-level intelligence" is probably already covered as a "yes" by the Shinobi.
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>>
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>> Heart attacks are not a good choice of test death, since (1) while they're fairly rare, they have a non-zero chance of occurring anyway; (2) they're the default method specified if death can't occur any other way, it's like programming an error-finding subroutine to return a 0 if an error is found, it might return a 0 because there's an error in the subroutine.
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>>
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>> I wonder if "else" statements are permitted?
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>>
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>> Binary searches are also useful.
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>>
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>> I wonder if information can be sent backwards in time by subsequent Death Note writings, eg "<person> will die of rectal impalement on a cargo boat anchor iff the next question will not result in a death", then wait to see if he dies in the specified manner, then write something else.
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>>> **u/Alden_** [+2] (an hour later)
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>>>
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>>> > I wonder if information can be sent backwards in time by subsequent Death Note writings, eg "<person> will die of rectal impalement on a cargo boat anchor iff the next question will not result in a death", then wait to see if he dies in the specified manner, then write something else.
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>>>
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>>> I wouldn't think so, since this implies the Note's ability to—borrowing a term from Yuval Noah Harari—predict second order chaos (i.e. changes in the system resulting from the arrival of a prediction of the system itself).
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>>>
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>>> Unless what you mean is time travel, in which case if the note could do such a thing by those means then the note has just solved whether or not the world is deterministic.
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>>>
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>>> > Binary searches are also useful.
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>>>
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>>> What do you mean by this by the way? I'm sorry, I'm illiterate in computer science.
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>>>> **u/aeschenkarnos** [+3] (an hour later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Binary searches work like this: divide the data in half; determine whether the sought-after data point is in A or B; repeat.
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>>>>
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>>>> For example: "<person> dies of an oxytocin overdose iff the lost ruins of Atlantis are in the northern hemisphere." "<person> dies of spider bite iff the lost ruins of Atlantis are between 0 and 180 degrees West longitude." and so forth.
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>>>>
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>>>> Basically it's a round-about way of performing the ancient art of sacrificial divination. You could use it to determine Donald Trump's Twitter password character by character, or anything else you might want to know.
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>>>>> **u/Alden_** [+2] (2 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Ahhh! I see! Yes, that was what I was trying to get at when I said that we would need an infinite supply of human beings.
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>>>>>
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>>>>> > You could use it to determine Donald Trump's Twitter password character by character
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>>>>>
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>>>>> While I'm not american, wouldn't we all love to know... even only if it was to delete his account.
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>>>>>> **u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN** [+3] (13 hours later)
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> > While I'm not american, wouldn't we all love to know... even only if it was to delete his account.
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> Don't be ridiculous - you use it to post hilarious yet insane comments. What's Trump going to do, call it fake news again? He's lost all credibility in that regard.
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>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+3] (3 hours later)
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>>
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>> Omniscience via the usage of death notes, with 1 human death needed per bit? @_@ This will need a lot of deaths. I want the code for a friendly super intelligent AI that will solve all our problems, but that will probably need more than 7 billion bits...
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>>
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>> Ok, step one would be to use a relatively smaller amount of Death Note kills to figure out how to crank up the birth rates of humans really high so we can kill them off for more data... so asking things like the formulas for optimal fertility drugs... which we then force-feed people to make them make more babies... which we then murder with the Death Note as soon as possible...
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>>
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>> No wait, make that step two instead. Step one would be the figure out how to conquer the world and force humanity into slavery to stop them from trying to kill us to stop us from forcefully breeding them and killing them for data... and various mind-control/paralytic drugs to stop them from killing themselves...
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>>
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>> Erm... I think my soul is turning black. Help.
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>>> **u/aeschenkarnos** [+1] (8 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> Not one death per bit, one death per binary division of the search space. For comparison, the Earth's surface is ~510.1 trillion m². That's a bit more than 2^49 which means that 49, maybe 50, people *at most* would need to be sacrificed to establish a location accuracy of 1 m². (Assuming you use no logic or common sense *at all* to narrow it down further, like "sea or land", "urban or rural", etc.)
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>>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+2] (8 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> I suppose you could compress the code of a Friendly AI as much as possible (which makes the number of deaths needed as small as possible), but even then, going under 7 billion deaths seems unlikely.
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>>>>
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>>>> This is also fairly dangerous, seeing as the difference between a friendly AI and an unfriendly one could be as small as a single incorrect bit. Considering an unfriendly one could potentially wipe out all life in the multiverse, you really want to be careful here and put as much redundancy in your questions as possible.
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>>>> **u/ZeroNihilist** [+2] (13 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> But each bit of a string of code (or bits as in bits of entropy) represents a doubling of the number of possibilities, so halving the search space with every death still means the number of bits maps one-to-one to the number of deaths required.
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>>>>
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>>>> This would mean it would require a lot of deaths to produce complex output even if you could make the death note do so.
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>>>>
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>>>> If the first two paragraphs of this comment were represented in ASCII (i.e. 7 bits per character) it would come out to 2,555 bits, meaning 2,555 people would have to die to encode that portion uncompressed.
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>>>>
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>>>> As you can probably tell, this is not a particularly profound or worthy comment. Something that is profound and worthy is likely to either be much, much longer, or require us to ask a specific question (and obtaining that question is probably beyond the scope of a death note or just as complex as the answer would have been).
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>>>>> **u/aeschenkarnos** [+1] (18 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> If the message has internal coherency and makes some sense, as a written message normally would, it can be identified out of much less data than the whole message. For example, the first two or three letters would normally be enough to identify a well-known English quote.
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>>>>>
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>>>>> "Fo sc an se ye ag, ou fa br fo on th co" and you don't even need the rest.
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>>>>>
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>>>>> "Ma ha a li la, li la, li la" - informational compression can get quite efficient, that's just evoked a few whole paragraphs of text *and* a musical melody in your minds.
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>>>> **u/ADHD_Broductions** [+1] (7 days later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Why are we restricted by binary division? There are a lot of ways to die, and each one of those would allow for further division per death.
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>>>>
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>>>> Ex: Person dies in manner A if statement 1 is true, manner B if statement 2 is true, manner C if statement 3 is true, etc.
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>>>>
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>>>> We can also narrow it down further with variations. Manner A could be a car accident, but we could refine this further with Manner A1 being as a driver, A2 a motorcyclist, A3 a bicyclist, and A4 a pedestrian.
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>>>>
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>>>> We want to maximize information gained per death, right?
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> **u/ShannonAlther** [+7] (2 hours later)
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>
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> Unfortunately, the complete rules for the Death Note ([read here](http://deathnote.wikia.com/wiki/Rules_of_the_Death_Note)) more or less rule out variable causes of death based on impossible things. So using different types of death as an n-ary answer system only works for things that are sort of plausible. Finding out whether intelligent aliens exist is right out. However, something like "Bob dies in six minutes, suicide by gunshot, just after writing down a proof of the Goldbach Conjecture," would plausibly work if a) the Goldbach conjecture can be proven true and b) Bob is theoretically capable of doing so, i.e. he's a mathematician whose mental corpus is sufficient to assemble a proof, plus the proof can be written in the time allotted before he's slated to die.
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>> **u/LupoCani** [+6] (5 hours later)
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>>
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>> It's not quite that simple. Victims can be made to do even more unlikely things than spell out L's name. For example, write out a whole letter to L from Kira. And, the death note does seem to have unlimited knowledge for determining whether something is possible.
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>>
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>> For example, if the Goldbach conjecture is true, it is possible to die while the Goldbach conjecture is true. If it is not true, it is impossible to die while it is. Then, "dies by suicide while the Goldbach conjecture is true" will result in suicide if it is true, or default to a heart attack if it's false.
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> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+5] (2 hours later)
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>
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> Before that, there's one rule of the Death Note that really bothers me:
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>
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> If the death of the target causes more people to die (because of the extra conditions of death you wrote), the target simply dies of a heart attack (without causing those extra deaths).
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>
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> That makes no sense to me because of the butterfly effect. The slightest change anywhere is extremely likely to cause a tons of deaths, way down the line. And death is a pretty massive change, since you are literally truncating the timeline of some person. Every thing they would have done after the specified time, all erased. This is the plot of basically every time travel story, you go back and just kill Hitler, and suddenly Nazis own the white house, or Stalin takes over the world, etc etc. Unless the target person is utterly insignificant, like a hermit living in the middle of nowhere, you just can't kill them without causing a lot of additional deaths.
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>
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> Unless of course... the Death Note has some kind of fate-like power that determines destiny, wiping out the butterfly effect. This might actually be true, after all, owners of death god eyes can see people's lifespans. If Death Notes don't have destiny power, Misa should be seeing the lifespans of people wildly fluctuating all the time, especially when she uses the Death Note. Since she makes no such observation, I assume the Death Note strictly keeps the lifespans of non-targeted humans exactly the same, even if circumstances around them change. They will live even if subjected to lethal conditions and die even if kept on life support and with artificial hearts pumping blood through their bodies.
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>
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> This brings us to another way of abusing the Death Note, which actually doesn't even need the note, just the eyes: making people with long lifespans do the impossible. For example, you can send someone with a long lifespan on a one-way rocket to Mars with only small supplies of food and oxygen. Since they can't die before their lifespan is up, and the Death Note's destiny power ensures their lifespans don't change, they will inexplicably find food and oxygen on Mars. Maybe by meeting aliens. Maybe by unearthing an underground biome. Don't pack parachutes in the rocket, and make sure to surround the rocket with lots of fragile unprotected humans with long lifespans. That way the rocket can't explode without killing them all, which is impossible since the Death Note's destiny power says they still have lifespan left.
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>> **u/xavion** [+3] (5 hours later)
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>>
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>> Or that path would lead to early deaths, so something goes wrong preventing your plan to send to Mars from ever succeeding. Your assumption is that you can force the person with a long lifespan into a scenario where the seemingly impossible would happen to keep them alive, but it's very possible things go wrong first to prevent that scenario arising under these rules.
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>>
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>> It's also possible that since death notes can cut someone off early in a setup where they manipulate things to preserve lifespans they might have a different death note become responsible for killing you in order to prevent these scenarios.
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>>
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>> Generally just don't assume your plans will work, and don't assume the incredibly powerful pseudo-sentient device can't get mad at you for trying to abuse it.
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>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+2] (8 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> > Or that path would lead to early deaths, so something goes wrong preventing your plan to send to Mars from ever succeeding. Your assumption is that you can force the person with a long lifespan into a scenario where the seemingly impossible would happen to keep them alive, but it's very possible things go wrong first to prevent that scenario arising under these rules.
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>>>
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>>> Hmm, this actually sounds like an interesting experiment. You could engineer situations where the only possible way for a participant with a long lifespan to survive is for one of two highly improbable events to occur, and look at which event occurs. Presumably, the one that is more probable should happen.
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>>>
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>>> In this manner, you could check the probability of various improbable outcomes, like finding life on Mars, by pitting them against other improbable outcomes, like a continuous series of non-lethal rocket failures.
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>>>
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>>> > Generally just don't assume your plans will work, and don't assume the incredibly powerful pseudo-sentient device can't get mad at you for trying to abuse it.
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>>>
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>>> Sound advice, but if we take this into consideration, then this entire thread is moot since any suggested usage of the Death Note would be countered by saying the Death Note kills you for trying to use it that way.
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>>>> **u/xavion** [+4] (10 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Edit: This seems like it gets a little long, I blame having written it on my phone making judging the length of my half rant half musings hard.
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>>>>
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>>>> Who says it has to make it that far? If it's manipulating fate at a global scale I was thinking you'd be dealing with more subtle problems. Financial difficulties, manufacturing problems, stubborn politicians failing to approve things, manned flights to mars would take a lot of steps. Hell, it might just end up swept out of control and actually meeting safety standards so nothing has to go wrong and you don't need anything crazy happening. Stop you from arranging the situation with an incredibly improbable method of survival in the first place, or someone else writes their name in a death note so they can die anyway.
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>>>>
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>>>> It doesn't inherently counter things to need caution, but it does need delaying. Plus there's how the Death Note seems to have an awful lot of rules, and don't forget we know there is actually beings behind the whole thing with the shinigami, and if it's similar with something like Ryuk doing this for entertainment? Well then the death note being potentially dangerous is abused isn't really the problem, it's keeping Ryuk appeased. Shouldn't be too hard, but Ryuk is perfectly capable of writing your name in a death note if they decide they don't want you alive anymore.
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>>>>
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>>>> It's a tricky problem, but it's the kind of thing that should be looked at, the conditions and circumstances surrounding it make it more interesting in my opinion. Knowing that you don't have the only death note, that there are a race of spiritual beings that created them and only they know all the rules to their usage. Your only knowledge of the rules comes from someone that is doing this for their own entertainment, and who will kill you if they think the situation deserves it. This means you've got to take a totally different approach from the simplistic omniscient wish granting device without any baggage, it makes for a better story too. A story of someone trying incrementally larger and more complex experiments to try and break open reality is going to be limited, you need the antagonizing force, and it's too easy to perform untraceable deaths. Anyone you know the name and face of? Social media and public obituaries break the challenge, the face is only an identifying system too so old images shouldn't matter. Get your hands on a yearbook and there's hundreds if not thousands of potential people with no link to you, of course killing of random people runs into ethical and moral issues but it does lead to trains of thought realizing just how easy it is to get info. Just choose your line for how far is too far and run with it, conflict based off the character murdering others for knowledge is going to harshly limit any story, even a real scenario that's going to be the primary conflict. Well that and trying to decipher the rules and loopholes in them.
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>> **u/None** [+2] (4 hours later)
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>>
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>> I don't think that follows. Remember, if someone is supposed to do something implausible with the Death Note, like hitch a ride on an ICBM, they just die of a heart attack. I suspect the same would be true of trying to force impossible conditions: if there is no plausible way for a person to survive, they die of a heart attack.
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>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+2] (8 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> To clarify, I wouldn't be using the Death Note to make them do the impossible. So the "heart attack if impossible" rule doesn't apply, they haven't been marked for death. I would be using normal, mundane methods, to make people do the impossible. In this scenario, there are two possible outcomes:
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>>>
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>>> 1) Their lifespan changes. This seems unlikely, because if lifespans could change based on mundane actions, then their very concept is meaningless since they would be fluctuating all the time from all the mundane choices that people make and all the butterfly effects from them.
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>>>
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>>> 2) They do the impossible without dying, since they still have lifespan remaining.
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>>>> **u/None** [+1] (8 hours later)
|
||
>>>>
|
||
>>>> I know, but I'm suggesting 1) happens, under the assumption that normal lifespans work the same way Death Note-defined lifespans do. So that is to say, people would die at that time, unless conditions were such that it is implausible that they survive until their designated death date, in which case they die then.
|
||
|
||
>>>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+2] (8 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>
|
||
>>>>> I consider (1) to be unlikely, because it renders the very concept of lifespans meaningless if they are so easily changed. They would either fluctuate wildly or not display the actual time of death for a person.
|
||
>>>>>
|
||
>>>>> Plus, there is evidence that suggests people's lifespans don't change when they get put into lethal situations. Instead, those lethal situations are taken into account far in advance. Case in point: Misa's original lifespan. There was a Death god stalking her for ages in advance, noting her lifespan and wondering why she would die so young. Turns out, Misa was suddenly put in a lethal situation right before the end of her original lifespan. This lethal situation was not premeditated: the human stalker didn't intend to kill Misa until Misa rejected him. Yet the lifespan counter didn't change at the moment the human stalker decided to kill Misa, it stayed exactly the same.
|
||
>>>>>
|
||
>>>>> Now, it is conceivable, that there were underlying factors that would have influenced the human stalker to kill Misa anyway, so her lifespan counter may have changed when those underlying causes arose, rather than when the immediate cause appeared. But, by that logic, the lifespan counter should change at the moment I decide to begin hunting for people with long lifespans anyway: that would be the primary underlying factor as I would be planning to put them in lethal situations.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>> **u/696e6372656469626c65** [+2] *I think, therefore I am pretentious.* (15 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> > I consider (1) to be unlikely, because it renders the very concept of lifespans meaningless if they are so easily changed. They would either fluctuate wildly or not display the actual time of death for a person.
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> Alternatively, lifespans remain unaltered by the actions of any *ordinary* human... but it is in fact possible for a human with the *Shinigami Eyes* (i.e. the eyes that let people see other people's lifespans in the DN universe) to alter lifespans using their actions, the same way it's possible for someone using the Death Note to inadvertently alter the lifespans of other people. (In story terms, people with Death Notes and/or Shinigami Eyes are no longer NPCs, and can change the plot.)
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> This actually does make sense from a meta-perspective: unless we're postulating some kind of Time-Turner-esque consistency-enforcing ability for the Shinigami Eyes, there ought to be no way they can predict the outcomes of their *own actions*, or else you could use them as [outcome pumps](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ld/the_hidden_complexity_of_wishes/). (In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what your original comment was trying to do!) It's doubtful that *Death Gods* have *time*-related powers, so I'm pretty sure this is most likely the case.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>> **u/None** [+1] (9 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> Based on what we know about how Death Note deaths work, the time of death is very "sticky", but not infinitely so. So for example, while it would have been physically possible for the convict to get to Paris in that timeframe (the military decides to put him in a Mach 20 fighter jet, for example), the circumstances are so unlikely that the override the designated time of death.
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> So I would say the same thing is applicable to natural deaths. If you shoot someone whose designated time of death is 20 years later in the head, they'll probably survive, because people sometimes survive headshots, but if you detonate a nuclear weapon in the same room as them, they won't, because there is no plausible way that a human could survive the situation.
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> On the other hand, no one can ever survive past their designated time of death. If you prevent the circumstances which would have naturally killed them, they just die of a heart attack.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>>> **u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN** [+2] (13 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> >
|
||
>>>>>>> >
|
||
>>>>>>> > On the other hand, no one can ever survive past their designated time of death. If you prevent the circumstances which would have naturally killed them, they just die of a heart attack.
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> Misa.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>>>> **u/MagicWeasel** [+2] *Cheela Astronaut* (23 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> Misa was a special case; a death god saved her and in doing so died, giving the rest of his life span to her.
|
||
|
||
>> **u/MagicWeasel** [+2] *Cheela Astronaut* (5 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> > making people with long lifespans do the impossible
|
||
>>
|
||
>> Unfortunately the series states that the lifespan numbers are incomprehensible to humans, so unfortunately you cannot determine who has a long lifespan or not (they are all effectively random)
|
||
|
||
>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+3] (8 hours later)
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> Hmm, but surely there's some way to decipher them? In the anime, the lifespan of a human is just a short sequence of numerical digits floating above their head. While yes, that isn't in a nice year/month/day format, it shouldn't be too difficult to experiment and crack the code when there seems to only be about 100 million different permutations (8 digits seems to be the most anyone has above their head).
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> Seeing as you can literally set a person's lifespan to a specific number (within the 23 day limit) using your death note, it shouldn't take too many experiments before patterns emerge that let you approximate the amount of lifespan people have left, for some small group whose lifespan numbers luckily match the codes you have deciphered.
|
||
|
||
>>>> **u/MagicWeasel** [+2] *Cheela Astronaut* (8 hours later)
|
||
>>>>
|
||
>>>> I suppose it depends how complex the code is; perhaps it incorporates the subject's blood type and astrological sign into the calculations somehow. But it would definitely be worth some experimentation. (If you're willing to part with half of your life span!!!)
|
||
|
||
>>>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+3] (9 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>
|
||
>>>>> > (If you're willing to part with half of your life span!!!)
|
||
>>>>>
|
||
>>>>> Eh, Light had the right idea here: get minions to take the eye deal for you. It wouldn't even be hard, plenty of people around would gladly trade half their lifespans for all kinds of goals. Go around orphanages, talking to kids and seeing if any of them are obsessed with vengeance against their parents' murderers. Offer them a chance to use your Death Note to kill those murderers, and they will likely be your loyal minions for life.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>> **u/tonytwostep** [+1] (15 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> Note that this could only work if you have multiple Death Notes. Per the rules, only the actual owner of the DN can trade for more lifespan. And of course, you can't just give up ownership temporarily, because you'll lose all DN-related memories the instant you do.
|
||
>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>> Even if you *do* have multiple Death Notes, giving one to some vengeful orphan basically means trusting that said orphan will mindlessly obey you, will never betray you (especially since, unlike you, they've got the eyes), and will never get caught and reveal your secrets. I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone I'd trust in all those respects, and I especially wouldn't trust some random bloodthirsty orphan to that extent.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+2] (16 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> > And of course, you can't just give up ownership temporarily, because you'll lose all DN-related memories the instant you do.
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> Just get them to pass it back to you immediately?
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> > giving one to some vengeful orphan basically means trusting that said orphan will mindlessly obey you, will never betray you (especially since, unlike you, they've got the eyes), and will never get caught and reveal your secrets
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> Which is why you take the Death Note back immediately. Don't risk letting them write your name in a Death Note. One way to do this is to set up a secure room with bombs everywhere, set up to soon explode if you don't stop them with some method/password only you know (you keep memories not related to the Death Note). Transfer the Death Note to your minion inside this room, with strict orders for him to return it, otherwise your bombs explode and kill you both.
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> Or better yet, don't even meet your minion face to face. You lose memories when you give up a Death Note, but your circumstances don't change. So you can easily write a bunch of instructions/knowledge/memories for yourself then give up your memories and follow those instructions. (Assuming your non-Death Note possessed self is willing to follow those instructions.)
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> Your instructions would be to tell your minion to enter the room full of explosives and cameras. Pick up the Death Note you left on the ground in the middle of the room. Get the Eye deal. Put the Note back on the ground without writing anything in it. Go to another distant and explosive-filled room and wait. If they try anything funny, explode the bombs. Wait, actually that might destroy the Death Note. Better plan: Poison gas instead of bombs.
|
||
>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>> Now that they are safely far away in another room, you can enter the first room and retrieve your Death Note. Now you have a minion who, even if disloyal, knows nothing about your name or face, and so can never write your name in a Death Note. If you limit your interactions with your minions, they won't even have any useful information about you to betray you with. At best, they might try to report the wrong lifespan, but this can be resolved by having multiple independent minions, all checking the lifespan of the target and reporting it to you without talking to the other minions.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>>>> **u/tonytwostep** [+2] (19 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> I think there are too many points of failure with this plan...
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> First, you're assuming you can find a vengeful orphan who's willing to trust a nameless, faceless stranger so far as to willingly walk into a room of poison gas, give up half their lifespan, and then leave, all the while knowing that if they betray you you'll kill them. They could also go to the police and put them on your trail (even without a name/face, I can't imagine that creating a room of cameras and gas wouldn't leave any sort of trail, and you'd need to keep in frequent contact with the kid to use their eye powers), so you'd presumably need to commit hefty resources to monitoring this minion-child for the rest of their life.
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> I'm not sure any orphans fitting those requirements even exist in the real world, but assuming they did, somehow tracking down an orphan with such a specific disposition, without leaving any trail, seems nigh impossible.
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> > Assuming your non-Death Note possessed self is willing to follow those instructions.
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> To me, that's also a huge assumption. You wake up unsure of where you are, with a list of instructions that included:
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> * Look at these camera feeds. If a small child appears and does anything besides pick up this random notebook, say something, put it down, and leave...kill them, and retrieve the notebook.
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> * Once the child is gone (either by voluntarily leaving, or by murder), enter this mysterious kill-chamber yourself, and claim the notebook.
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> You know nothing about a notebook that can kill people. Even if you leave signals that the instructions are from you (including passwords, facts, etc that only you could know), would you still really trust it enough to murder a child you don't know? Or, if you didn't know that pressing this big red button would gas a child (say, you leave that out of the instructions), once you did it and unknowingly *killed a child*, would you really *continue to follow those instructions*?
|
||
>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>> All this to say, if you only have one Death Note and you need the eyes, I think it's way less risky to part with half your lifespan, than to attempt such a convoluted method of minion-accrual.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>>>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+1] (20 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> Well, that's simple enough, we can address all those points of failure.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> > First, you're assuming you can find a vengeful orphan who's willing to trust a nameless, faceless stranger so far as to willingly walk into a room of poison gas, give up half their lifespan, and then leave, all the while knowing that if they betray you you'll kill them.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> Trust is easily bought. Find an orphan with vengeance against multiple parent-murderers. Tell him that you will kill one of them as a freebie, and let him specify the details of death so you can prove that you killed the murderer. Tell him that if he wants the rest of them dead, he now has to give up his lifespan and obey your orders.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> You can pass yourself off as a great wizard with multiple supernatural artifacts. Get the orphan to sign a (fake) blood contract of loyalty before even letting him get the Death Note.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> > so you'd presumably need to commit hefty resources to monitoring this minion-child for the rest of their life.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> Well yes, but getting resources is really really easy with a Death Note. Invest in companies, kill off rival companies. Write "X dies in a completely unsuspicious manner".
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> > I'm not sure any orphans fitting those requirements even exist in the real world, but assuming they did, somehow tracking down an orphan with such a specific disposition, without leaving any trail, seems nigh impossible.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> I don't think it's that hard, vengeance is kind of a big human motivator... but assuming it is, you could always make those orphans. Kill their parents yourself (with the Death Note of course), setting up a bunch of other people. Write "X dies in circumstances that make it seem like Y killed X, but not actually provide enough evidence for Y to be convicted."
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> > > Assuming your non-Death Note possessed self is willing to follow those instructions.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> > To me, that's also a huge assumption.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> Do you have a recognition code? Like "Recognition code 927, I am a potato"? It's kinda handy so if you ever return from the future or have your memories wiped, you can give yourself messages that you know are from yourself.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>> Barring that, you could always take your own self hostage. You "wake up" in a room full of explosives. Or wearing a bunch of explosives. Instructions tell you to obey or the explosives go boom. If you aren't selfish enough to care about your own life, take more hostages, show them on camera. Tell yourself to obey or hostages die. It doesn't even have to be real. Fake camera footage is probably safer.
|
||
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> **u/tonytwostep** [+2] (21 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> > I don't think it's that hard, vengeance is kind of a big human motivator...
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> I mean...there's no orphan backstory search engine, AFAIK. How would you actually go about this search? In-person interviews? Interview via proxies (in which case, you've now got even more loose ends)?
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> > ... but assuming it is, you could always make those orphans.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> Well, that's true. You've probably lost any claims of the moral high ground at this point, but if that's not a worry, then this may work (although there's always at least some chance the orphan-minion finds out, in which case he's now *highly motivated* to find a way to take you down).
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> > Do you have a recognition code? Like "Recognition code 927, I am a potato"?
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> Yea, in my comment I recognized that you could utilize some signal or recognition code (including one from HPMOR, if that's your preference). But personally, I don't think I could ever be 100% sure my code wasn't cracked or extracted from me, especially if I was missing large chunks of memories. I certainly could never be sure enough to willingly commit child murder.
|
||
>>>>>>>>>>
|
||
>>>>>>>>>> All in all, I agree with you in that you could probably find a method around any specific obstacle using the DN, especially if you're willing to murder non-criminals (including innocent parents and potentially innocent orphans) to achieve your goals. However, each new convoluted method of covering your tracks [potentially costs a high amount of anonymity](https://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20Anonymity), which to me is the most important factor in using the DN, far above acquiring a hopefully-obedient minion with death god eyes. But your priorities may differ.
|
||
|
||
>>>>> **u/Alden_** [+1] (16 hours later)
|
||
>>>>>
|
||
>>>>> More on this: If the value embedded in the code above their heads turns out to be a derived quantity, consisting other variables other than lifespan then decoding it would be impossible. Conversely, it could very well be the case that the value embedded is a fundamental quantity from which lifespan can be derived given other knowns, in which case breaking the code is also neigh impossible.
|
||
|
||
>> **u/LupoCani** [+1] (5 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> This is actually in HTU. Death note use can and does affect the life span of others. It just has to be indirect enough. When this happens, the original life span of the person is still shown to Shinigami eyes.
|
||
|
||
>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+3] (8 hours later)
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> > When this happens, the original life span of the person is still shown to Shinigami eyes.
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> What? Then why does this lifespan feature even exist? The Shinigami eyes would just be showing utter rubbish in the lifespan section, since people's lifespans could be arbitrarily far from their "original" lifespan after all the butterfly effects of the people killed by death notes.
|
||
|
||
>> **u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN** [+1] (13 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> > If the death of the target causes more people to die (because of the extra conditions of death you wrote), the target simply dies of a heart attack (without causing those extra deaths).
|
||
>>
|
||
>> Do you mean the *specific cause* of death (like, stroke vs heart attack), or just the death itself?
|
||
|
||
>>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+1] (16 hours later)
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> If I recall correctly, this rule is about the extra details of death that you write for your target. For example, if you write "X dies after getting a machine gun and shooting tons of people to death", X just dies of a heart attack because your written conditions cause other people to die as well. It's not very clear however, on what it means by "causes more people to die". Do underlying causes count? Can you write "X dies after getting a machine gun and shooting tons of people, who miraculously all survive but are now paralyzed from the neck down"? All more experiments Light really should have done.
|
||
|
||
>> **u/gamedori3** [+1] (14 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> There's an alternate solution, in which the experimenter dies before the rocket is built.
|
||
|
||
> **u/Noumero** [+5] *Self-Appointed Court Statistician* (11 hours later)
|
||
>
|
||
> A little late to the party, but I think I know another way to use the Death Note that no one mentioned^(1): steering the course of history through causes of death. u/ShiranaiWakaranai mentioned something similar, but focused on contradictory rules rather than practical applications.
|
||
>
|
||
> As everyone starting from Yudkowsky noticed, the ability to choose how someone dies is theoretically unlimitedly overpowered. It's limited by "physical impossibility" here, but what is "impossible" becomes less and less impossible as time passes.
|
||
>
|
||
> "Ryuga dies in two minutes of blunt force trauma caused by a hard drive containing the full code of a FAI falling on his head" leads to Ryuga dying of heart attack, because HDDs don't usually appear ex nihilo. Similarly, you can't have a Japanese prisoner dying in an hour in Paris. What you *can* do, I think, is have him die in Paris in a week. An ability to manipulate history to at least this extent opens many possibilities.
|
||
>
|
||
> If there's a plausible way for the history to go in such a way that what you want happens, then Death Note would allow you to force history into this.
|
||
>
|
||
> As easiest example, you could try writing, "John Doe dies in year 2430 of heart attack". If John Doe doesn't die in the next seven minutes, then you a) determined that there's a likely-enough way for him to survive until 2430s, and b) ensured that he will live until 2430s. You could add on conditionals, which become less and less unlikely depending on how far into the future you place his death. "... seconds before his mind is uploaded to a computer", "... on a business flight to Jupiter", "... in the capital of the eudemonic transhuman utopia", "... as FAI is taking control of humanity". If any of this is still "too implausible", you just add years. Year 2700? 3232? 5000? 10^(6)? Whatever works.
|
||
>
|
||
> The most useful way to manipulate this aspect of Death Note in short-to-middle-term is, I think, manipulating future statistics and news. "Y dies in year 2031, of heart attack after looking at truthful mortality and crime rate statistics which said [include desirable numbers]". "Z dies after reading news about political party S issuing statement A".
|
||
>
|
||
> And so on. As long as you write neither impossible nor implausible scenarios, you can do anything. It's still ludicrously powerful.
|
||
>
|
||
> ___
|
||
>
|
||
> ^(1. Man, the Death Note is sure exploitable.)
|
||
|
||
>> **u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN** [+4] (14 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> >
|
||
>> >
|
||
>> > As easiest example, you could try writing, "John Doe dies in year 2430 of heart attack". If John Doe doesn't die in the next seven minutes, then you a) determined that there's a likely-enough way for him to survive until 2430s, and b) ensured that he will live until 2430s. You could add on conditionals, which become less and less unlikely depending on how far into the future you place his death. "... seconds before his mind is uploaded to a computer", "... on a business flight to Jupiter", "... in the capital of the eudemonic transhuman utopia", "... as FAI is taking control of humanity". If any of this is still "too implausible", you just add years. Year 2700? 3232? 5000? 106? Whatever works.
|
||
>>
|
||
>> Death note can't have a death that's delayed by more than 23 days:
|
||
>> >How to Use: XXVII
|
||
>>
|
||
>> >If you write, die of disease for the cause of death, but only write a specific time of death without the actual name of disease, the human will die from an adequate disease. But the Death Note can only operate within 23 days (in the human calendar). This is called the 23 day rule.
|
||
|
||
>>> **u/Noumero** [+2] *Self-Appointed Court Statistician* (14 hours later)
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> I'd say "phooey", but the next rule contradicts that:
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> >*If you write die of disease like before with a specific disease's name, but without a specific time, if it takes more than 24 days for the human to die the 23 day rule will not take effect and the human will die at an adequate time depending on the disease.* — [How to Use: XXVIII](http://deathnote.wikia.com/wiki/Rules_of_the_Death_Note#How_to_Use:_XXVIII)
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> I'm not sure how to reconcile those... Oh, wait, I already had this discussion! u/696e6372656469626c65 previously [speculated](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/619fo1/d_friday_offtopic_thread/dfdd1lf/) that these rules mean the *cause* of the death must occur within 23 days, i.e. the Death Note can influence reality according to any given entry only within 23 days of this entry's writing.
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> I model it this way: each entry creates a death spirit capable of manipulating probability with 23-days long lifespan, and with utility function that implores it to carry out the entry.
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> If we generalize it like this, it should still be possible to implement part of my idea: after all, the drop in crime statistics could be caused by influencing future criminals right now, for them to not commit crimes years later, rather than directly influencing them before crimes are committed. And the roots of a FAI development could be put down within this month, by causing a few researches to come up with a few insights. The tricky part is tying each death to each cause, but it's possible.
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> But fine, let's assume it's impossible and the exception is only for diseases. I'm thinking we could lock a few people in sterile quarantined facilities, infect them with particular diseases, keep them alive, and stop medical treatment in the future iff certain conditions are met. We then write in the Death Note that these people die of disease, and watch conditions being met.
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> Would need rather strict precommitments and security systems, so that accidental death is less likely than the fulfilment of our wishes, but it's doable, I think.
|
||
>>>
|
||
>>> **Edit:** Hm, Rule LVII says that the date of death cannot be set after the victim's original lifespan. Okay, so history-manipulation could only be done within this century. It's sad, but it's not a deal-breaker. Also, Rule LVIII confirms that it's possible to lengthen lifespans of people other than the victim.
|
||
|
||
>> **u/ShiranaiWakaranai** [+3] (16 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> In other words, the Death Note may also allow you to reverse entropy XD.
|
||
>>
|
||
>> Currently, we are stuck in a universe where everything is going from "what is possible" to "what is probable": like sandcastles turning into a disorganized mess of sand. But the Death Note says that if the conditions of death are "possible", it will happen that way.
|
||
>>
|
||
>> The question then is, what's the most efficient way of killing people to reverse entropy? I don't think there's an actual limit, since you can write the conditions of death before the name itself, and you can write as many conditions as you want. So just write "X dies after the occurrence of the following improbable but possible events a, b, c, ...".
|
||
|
||
>> **u/696e6372656469626c65** [+2] *I think, therefore I am pretentious.* (15 hours later)
|
||
>>
|
||
>> > 1. Man, the Death Note is sure exploitable.
|
||
>>
|
||
>> Given the number of rules and restrictions there are, I'd assume the authors of *Death Note* much agree with you there!
|
||
>>
|
||
>> ***
|
||
>>
|
||
>> EDIT: What I mean is that of all the "munchkin this artifact" threads I've seen, the Death Note is the only one for which discussion consistently follows this pattern:
|
||
>>
|
||
>> > A: Let's try clever idea X!
|
||
>>
|
||
>> > B: Doesn't work; rule LXXVIII states that [something-integral-to-X] is disallowed.
|
||
>>
|
||
>> If that's not a compliment to the authors' anti-munchkinry instincts, I don't know what is.
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>>> **u/Noumero** [+1] *Self-Appointed Court Statistician* (15 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> Indeed. I do think these rules are too focused on the intricacies of how, in what order, how fast, and to what length the names and circumstances of deaths should be written, though. Also, what shinigami's sexual relations have to do with anything (XXXVI)?
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> **u/gwern** [+2] (21 hours later)
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>
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> I think this violates, like most of the ideas for extracting information using the DN, VI rule #5/6:
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>
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> > - The conditions for death will not be realized unless it is physically possible for that human or it is reasonably assumed to be carried out by that human.
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> > - The specific scope of the condition for death is not known to the gods of death, either. So, you must examine and find out.
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>
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> It is not reasonable to imagine a dying human reliably solving NP-hard problems at random or otherwise serving as an oracle, so the Note would be well within its rights to simply kill the victim with a normal heart attack or make them take random actions once the conditionals or instructions get difficult enough, and if you are foolish enough to use any of the 'answers' without checking, well, neither gods of death nor death notes "has no obligation to completely explain how to use the note or rules which will apply to the human who owns it".
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>> **u/696e6372656469626c65** [+2] *I think, therefore I am pretentious.* (21 hours later)
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>>
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>> Okay, real idea for munchkining the Death Note that might actually work (albeit a significantly less ambitious one than most of the attempts elsewhere in this comment section):
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>>
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>> The Death Note rules, page VII states that:
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>>
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>> > The instrument to write with can be anything, e.g. cosmetics, blood, etc. as long as it can write directly onto the note and remains as legible letters.
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>>
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>> Given the legibility requirement, one possible use might be to write someone's name down in the Death Note using invisible ink while visualizing their face. This would allow you to pull some deadman's switch-style tricks where you or someone else could then apply an agent to make the ink visible at a later date, thereby triggering the person's death.
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>>> **u/gwern** [+1] (23 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> That's a good one. It's also in the spirit of the series: if some paper ripped from a DN and squirreled away can later be used, why not time-delay writing? You could imagine multiple variants, like ripping a sheet in half and writing the first name/surname down the middle, it becoming only 'legible' to the reader as the name of a specific person when taped together.
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> **u/tokol** [+2] *The Greater Good* (6 days later)
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>
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> Quick fix: the link in the opening paragraph to Just Write's video analysis has a time stamp in it, so it goes straight to near the end.
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>
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> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvOIQbHx2Xc&t=486s -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvOIQbHx2Xc
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>> **u/Alden_** [+2] (6 days later)
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>>
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>> Oh shucks! Thanks!
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> **u/Galap** [+1] (6 days later)
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>
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> You could get a lot more information from just the behavioral influence, if the behavioral influence enables people to act on information that is known to neither you nor them.
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>
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> So you could write something like "X writes the correct answer to whether p=np, follwed by a correct proof, then dies."
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---
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