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chaosmage comments on Open thread, 30 June 2014- 6 July 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You have three months to live, a five year old child, and you just told her. And she tearfully asks: "When you're dead, will you still love me?"
How do you respond?
I found my own reply, although it took me longer than that hypothetical child would have waited for it. I'm more interested in yours, but mine follows below...
"Look, I hold you with these arms. My arms extend from my right hand to my left hand, so this much is my reach. When I walk over here, I can't hold you - but I still love you. There's only distance between us, that doesn't change the love. But there's not just space, there's also time. In time, I extend from my birth to my death, like from my right hand to my left hand. So again, outside this time from birth to death, I can't hold you - but that doesn't change the love. There will only be time between us."
I would say something like: "When we aren't together and you think about me, you can feel the love between us in your heart, can't you? That won't change when I'm dead. We just won't be able to spend time together. Maybe you dream about me at night and you can feel the love in your dream. Keep me in your heart and you keep the love alive. On the other hand me body will go. At first that might feel painful but over time you can let go but the love will still be there when you think about me and focus on your heart."
This answer doesn't contain any false information and it contains a useful strategy for the child to deal with the death. In reality I would spend more time on installing the strategy correctly: (1) Feeling love in the heart, regardless of whether I'm physically present. (2) Dreaming about me and interacting with me in the dream when the need arises. (3) Letting go and accepting that my body dies.
An advanced option would be to use the remaining time to install a sense of me as a fully functioning Tulpa in the child.
Yes, while I'm under Alcor's care the part of my brain that holds my love for you will remain intact.
I don't think you actually love her unless you're using that part of your brain.
You're not conscious while you're frozen.
So does love go away when you sleep?
That's why small children keep waking you up. :D
I thought that was to make sure you're too exhausted to make another...
The brain doesn't shut down it's activity while you sleep either.
That will comfort the five year old child only because it's predictable that the five year old child misunderstands it, and the misunderstanding will comfort the child.
In that case, you may as well just lie directly.
That depends on whether you think that: a) the past ceases to exist as time passes, or b) the universe is all of the past and all of the future, and we just happen to experience it in a certain chronological order
The past may still be "there," but inaccessible to us. So the answer to this question is probably to dissolve it. In one sense, I won't still love you. In another, my love will always exist and always continue to have an effect on you.
... and the five year old won't understand those subtleties and will interpret it to mean something comforting but false. An answer to a question is one thing, and an answer that a five year old can understand is another.
(Besides, if the five year old's parent loves her forever because the past is there, is that true for everything? Will her parent always be dying (since the death will have happened in the past)? Whenever she's punished, does that punishment last forever? Do you tell five year olds who have the flu that the flu will always be around forever?)
I think the A theory of time is effectively disproved by relativity.
By the way, for those who do not know, these are actually called "the A theory of time" and "the B theory of time"
I don't think its been disproven. See <a href=http://philpapers.org/rec/ZIMPAT">here</a> for how A-theory can fit in with relativity.
Explain like I'm five.
Chaosmage just did!
My point is that I don't think a five-year-old would understand either explanation.
If the five year old can't understand, then I think "Yes" is a completely decent answer to this question.
If I were in this situation, I would write letters to the child to be delivered/opened as they grew older. This way I would still continue to have an active effect on their life. We "exist" to other people when we have measurable effects on them, so this would be a way to continue to love them in a unidirectional way.
If I lie directly, the child will figure that out some time after I'm dead. I'm trying to avoid that, and to still give her comfort.
A child who can figure out that you lied can also figure out that you said something that you knew would be interpreted as a lie, so how does that help?
Some people find the former more upsetting than the latter. Irrational perhaps, but widespread.
In that situation I would have gone with a straight "yes", nor would I feel myself to have lied. I'd consider it a case of choosing to speak figuratively rather than literally.
I don't think that what you did say was misleading or that the child would have, in essence, misunderstood it. In fact, under the circumstances I think it was a very well-expressed, even a beautiful, answer.