this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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If I say, "Damn him!" about someone, and it turns out that Hell is real and that saying that actually causes people to be sent to Hell, am I morally culpable for that? Let's say I attempt to hex someone, knowing full well that it doesn't work, but just using it as a way to express my frustrations - but then it turns out hexes are real and I actually hexed them?
You can't read in a significant malicious intent if a person takes an action that they have every reason to believe is harmless.
I'd recommend reading some of The Illustrated Guide to Law which covers relevant concepts, albeit from a legal perspective rather than a moral one
:::spoiler spoiler
The intent is the important part, I think. When you say "damn him!" you (I imagine) aren't actually thinking of damning that person to hell, and seeing if it works.
It's more like pointing a gun you're pretty sure isn't loaded at someone's head and pulling the trigger. Even if you thought it wasn't loaded, you know exactly what you're doing if it happens to be.
No, that's completely different. Pointing an unloaded gun at someone is 1) a threat, because they might not know it's unloaded, 2) a violation of established rules and norms about firearm safety, which exist because 3) the gun may be loaded even if you believe it isn't, this is a fairly common cause of accidents.
What we're talking about with a Death Note is something so implausible that it could cause harm that no reasonable person would expect it to work. There's an enormous difference between "I thought the gun wasn't loaded but it was," and, "I thought magic wasn't real but it was.
I agree with someone in this thread who said you don't just get one freebie, but at least three. If I were on a jury and the prosecutor wanted to convince me that the defense knowingly killed people by writing names in a notebook, I imagine there is some finite number that would convince me, not only that it works, but that a reasonable person would expect it to work at the time they wrote the name - but that number might be like a dozen. It certainly wouldn't be one.