scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2r83pd.md

What would you do if you had the ability to kill off certain people?

Post:

You are allowed to pick one name (boy or girl) and completely eliminate anyone and everyone who ever existed with that name. What name do you choose to get rid of?

Credit: I stumbled on this question from /r/askreddit

Comments:

• u/xamueljones:

  For generations after The Reaping, no parent dared to name their child with the Name.
  
  To use the Name meant to become "unborn". If parents ever named their child with the Name, the child would die without warning to a different cause every time.
  
  It became wild-spread policy to give ones child a name in secret at birth and to give them a different name for public use. Some would live their entire lives without ever knowing their birth name. To know someone's birth name meant to become part of their family. To call others by the Name, whether or not they already had a name, meant they were cast out of the world, out of society; they were less than a ghost, less than memory, undeserving of even a thought, kind or cruel.
  
  The Word is synonymous with loss and the void of forgetfulness. Over time, the Word would pass out of memory, only to reappear in different eras, cultures, civilizations, as a nonsense pattern of syllables with the power to kill a person.
  
  The Word is ____.
  

  • u/Gurkenglas:

    Kaplowey?
    

• u/ajuc:

  Does it works in the womb if parents give name to a child before birth?
  
  I would choose a name that doesn't exist yet, keep it secret as long as possible and sell instant painless no-complications untraceable abortion technique to parents all over the world.
  
  Inevitably someone will spill and it will become free, but in the meantime I'll get rich.
  

• u/Kishoto:

  And, for me, I wouldn't use this power. The unforeseen sideffects could be huge (although limited, as our phonetic romanized language is only so old, so it's not like I'll be taking out anything too important, biologically speaking) and completely shift development. But, as I do live comfortably in our current state, I am obviously biased towards keeping it this way. For all I know, this is the darkest timeline, and only seems good relatively. Maybe if I took out all "Johns", we'd have had world peace by 1122? 
  
  Too unpredictable for my personal tastes. I don't think I would cause the end of the world, or anything similar, but I do think I could easily shift the current human condition. And that's not something I want to do randomly.
  
  EDIT: minor change to what I mean by language.
  

• u/xamueljones:

  Ideas off the top of my head:
  
  Using the power to eliminate mass-murderers from history such as Hitler, Kim, Nero, etc... Although, my [previous post](http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2r7r5f/when_people_are_given_awesome_power_they_dont/) seems to imply that killing Hitler is a bad idea. Also can you save more people than the ones they kill?
  
  Change history by saving an important person such as the JFK assassination (horrible president by today's standards by the way) or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria which sparked off WWII.
  
  As a form of population control by eliminating people who are the ancestor of a large number of the world's current population. such as [Genghis Khan](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html) who has about 16 million descendents today. And those are just the male descendents that we can check; Genghis definitely had more descendents who are female.
  
  An alternate form of population control is to pick extremely common modern-day names such as John (Caucasian), Muhammad (Muslim), Kim (Korean), Lee (Chinese), and so on.
  
  EDIT: Oops, some of the names aren't just modern-day names. I doubt the Muslims would be happy with me killing off their Prophet. I'll still leave it in though, since Muhammad is *the* most common name in the world.
  
  Both population control suggestions are a bad way to go about reducing the human population since there is no name universally common among all cultures, therefore some ethnic groups will have more people killed off than others.
  
  Final idea is to simply not use the power.
  
  Further EDIT: I wonder how many cases of stillborn children and parents being unable to conceive are due to the child (in some alternate timeline) being unfortunately named?
  

• u/Kishoto:

  In addition, names are a convention in and of themselves. They don't phsyically exist. They're placeholders. So the method by which this occurred would be heavily rationalized out by all of us, I presume, if this were a possibility.
  
  For example, if I choose John, does history fate each child named John (specifically John. I choose to believe that derivatives won't be affected) with being stillborn? If so, this will easily be noticed a few thousand years ago, and we will just all know to not call our children John. Aside from any butterfly effects (although we can't discount these, either), I presume things would proceed in much the same manner, albeit with a varying devotion to studying why this specific act occurs, especially by scientists. I am also certain various religions will form based around this occurrence.
  
   I could go on, but I'm feeling lazy.
  

---