A fun thought experiment that has been brewing in my mind for a bit.. What do you guys think about rebirth story or isekai where the mc knows that the villain is going to hurt mc.. do you think it’s justified for them to try to rid of the person before the person has yet to it.. in the name of self defense. Say, you know the person is going to hurt you but he has yet to do it in this timeline.. will that be considered as he is already guilty and okay for you to hurt the person? (Imho if I say yes, then it brings up the question whether having intention is already a crime.. ) If, who we are today’s are forged based on our culmination of our past decisions.. can you even consider that person of this timeline and the previous timeline to be the same person if they did not or have yet to take the action? If you are placed in that scenario, what will your personal choice be? Personally I would find ways to escape and live a laid back life just cause I am a lazy person
this question already exist, it is the time traveler killing hitler scenario i mean there was a game made about this whole concept
As long as no one has the chance to decide whether it's justified or not (because it's secret) it doesn't matter. Deal with them however you can, but use your best judgement to decide what's going too far.
So, you want an MC that reincarnates back in the past as his/herself and instead of getting revenge and/or correcting the world to make it a better place, he/she must run away because they are too scared, lazy or got some screw looses and are worried because of some ethics? Something tells me you won't survive if you were put in such scenario, they are called villains for a reason you know
Now here is the real killer question. If you know a person is going to do some to hurt you or others around you, should you just outright kill them, sabotage their plans, or befriend them and try to dissuade them from doing it in the first place. First one makes you a criminal, the second could blow up in your face, and the last option doesn't preclude option one or two.
There is an inherent flaw in the argument. To put it in perspective let's look at a different scenario. You're a police officer, and you see someone waving a gun at a group of civilians. He yells he's going to shoot someone. Now, he hasn't actually shot anyone yet. Do you, as a police officer have the right to shoot him before he shoots some civilian? The correct answer is of course you do. You can take preemptive measures to ensure that harm doesn't happen. You also have the right to defend yourself. You don't have to wait for someone to shoot you, or stab you, or ruin you financially before you are allowed to act. Now you don't have to necessarily act in a lethal manner. In the scenario where you go back in time and you know someone is going to act against you or put you in a trap, or whatever, you can set a trap for them to derail whatever acts they are going to do against you. If you preemptively ruin them financially so they won't have the resources to attack you, it's okay. Just be aware of the trap of arrogance. Just because a time traveler has lived through X number of years doesn't mean they can predict what will happen next. The butterfly is flapping their wings pretty hard to make changes. The person you ruined financially might take a gun and in desperate revenge go shoot your family. Heh, bet you wish you pulled up that weed by the root now, right? He wouldn't have harmed your family if he was taking a dirt nap.
Minority Report. Despite Tom Cruise, still one of my faves. That and Gattica were my first iTunes purchases. I’d assassinate them. Before they kill me.
Really depends d on the situatio. And everyone's motives. if its something like I accidentally saw a mob hit and was then killed by the mob to kill all witnesses, I'm going to ruin their plans as it was not a personal scenario. If it's a serial killer and I ended up as their next target of interest and eventual murder, then I will sure as shit just kill them, because that is no longer impersonal. Considering Hitler's past that's a dissuade situation. And if he still goes on to try to Reich it up, then you kill him.
They're a different person, you can influence them to change the future just as much as you could kill them. Unless you believe in preordained outcomes there's no reason to jump right to killing. You could kidnap them and drop them in a different city, cut off their hand, burn their house down. Those are even extreme examples but all actions that would greatly influence a person's path in life. Going to the Hitler thing, if you time traveled to when he's a baby and steal him from the hospital to leave him in an Jewish orphanage, would he still lead the Nazis? How about a different country? Different continent?
Easy! Just get stronger to the point you can easily deal with his stuff... You can punish him after he did the deed...
Depends. You time traveling is going to change things, and someone who originally did something objectionable might not end up doing the same thing this time around. I think it’s fine to preemptively attack someone who plans to attack you. But I don’t think it’s fine to preemptively attack someone who *might* be planning to attack you, based on something he did in a completely different timeline. But with isekai villains, it’s worth noting that whatever they do to the protagonist is likely only the latest in a long line of crimes anyway. Same for villains in CN and KR stories, too.. and even western literature...
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/so-what-if-youve-been-reborn/ (BL) The summary matches your question except the rebirth characters are the villains, but they are not the MC of the story.