If you could get someone's "talent" by killing them...

I AM ZERG!

Im Bender!

No, I would only kill in self-defense...

I wouldn't, unless...

I'd kill an emotionless killer first, then the last two kills wouldn't matter.

Alex Mercer, then I can keep absorbing people. It won't bother me at all.
Edit: way to change the rules.

I suppose I can't choose people that are already dead?

You know, because if they're already dead I wouldn't have to kill them...

I'd rather be the guy that absorbs others' talents simply by standing next to them.

You watched too much Heroes. :D

If guns kill people, do pencils misspell words?

I wouldn´t kill for ANY reason. I would wound my enemy. But not kill.
You can learn everything by training.

....

You. Because then I can change the rules and kill more than 3. :3

Maybe if I went back in time and killed Hitler Id get his talent at public speaking and swaying others opinions?

Id kill superman. Get all his powers, and not be such a boring as shit character.

No, I am not evil.

Mr Methane's talent.

Hawking. It'd be good for science, as I could continue his researches.

I would find the best professional killer the world has to offer, then I'd kill him. I'd get his killing talent and his lack of remorse, which means I could kill any two others I prefer without issues.

I'm so pragmatic.

Oh, there are exactly three people whose talent I really want. But can't say exactly what they are. It's called a secret, brah! :x

I'd kill myself. Oh, wait...

But will you have the irresistible urge to gather powers? Will you be Sylar?

I would kill Justin Bieber, since he doesn't have any talent its a win-win.

Sylar was one of the best tv villans

Surely such a world would create chaos. I mean, through assassinations (since the method of how you killed them wasn't specified, they theoretically could die by anything..someone tripping them and their skull breaking, someone feeding them something they're allergic to, poison, etc) or really any general number of things, at some point it'd get right back to how it is now.

For example, (for discussion's sake, lets just say 'talent' is all their positive traits, which even then is kinda up to opinion so lets just go with things that make them universally [or mostly agreed upon] better) say Albert Einstein was killed by someone. That someone would gain all of his knowledge and thinking prowess, but if they killed him while the person was a child, they'd live their whole life with that knowledge, accumulating more as time progressed until someone killed them.

Now, eventually you'd need to figure out a way to combine people's knowledge, right? I mean, say someone wanted to combine Albert with the fighting knowledge of Napolean..How would you go about this? You couldn't, right? So really, what would change from then to now? You could try to distill people's lives into one person, but the moment that person dies of natural causes, alllll the knowledge is lost. The only difference is you would have spent years upon years slaughtering your fellow man for such a goal..but isn't that how we are now? Slaughtering people for our goals?

I noticed some people are mentioning 3 people to kill, and i still feel like rambling so lets bump it up to two..

You could, theoretically, create a god. Or as close to perfection as humanly possible. But the world would quite surely reach extinction as we assailed others purely to gain their abilities, having kids solely to raise them to be killers of their father/mother, etc. Through science, and especially with the ability to assimilate previous knowledge or speed of learning from the previous generation of man, we'd probably reach genetic engineering far faster than we have or will now..so we'd be able to create beings with tons of defects, but the one trait we want to pass on to the next of kin..This would lead, again, to people just being born to be killed for ascension fodder..

And even then, would war change? Would it not be the same as it is now, just with super soldiers instead of rookies? And what happens if you send a brilliant strategist onto a battlefield and he gets slain by someone? It'd make for a very interesting game, although toying with lives is never right..I mean, too, things would be even worse than they are now, with the ruling elite literally being elites, while the regular people, never getting to kill anyone (or if they do they'd become imprisoned since they wouldn't want any old joe becoming perfection) would be oppressed and downtrodden..They'd be able to manipulate the markets far more easily, since their combined knowledge would work to their favor, provide the perfect propaganda, etc..

But, then again, this is just the negative side of things. There's always a positive side. Someone, somewhere might raise their generations to help the world. With such an ability, we very well could achieve world peace or total destruction by a flip of a coin. We could explore space or find new ways to oppress our fellow man. Honestly though, while my big paragraphs were all pessimistic, if we're inheriting only the good qualities of man from killing one another, human greed and ignorance would probably be wiped off the table of our existence pretty quickly.

TL;DR, i spent wayyy too much time on this and i apologize if you made it here legit.

Some serial killer, so I'd get every talent he absorbed and rid the world of a menace.