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0% of the phrases of the original Wikipedia "Ship of Theseus" article remain
- sowbug 3y agoIt's hard to say whether it's even the same article at this point.
- deelly 3y agoNaturally.
- politelemon 3y agoWas this done deliberately by the editors? (If that is addressed in Twitter comments, that is not visible.)
- mtmail 3y agoUnlikely. I'm counting 1816 revisions since the article was created 15 July 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ship_of_Theseus&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ship_of_Theseus&a...
- duskwuff 3y agoAnd the first version was pretty rough. It was only a couple of sentences long, and included a bizarre, irrelevant tangent ("a modern embellishment"). It's no surprise that every part of that has long since been replaced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/1154003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/1154003 TBH, the same is probably true of most Wikipedia articles which were created early in the site's history. It took a while for editors to settle into the writing style that's now characteristic of the site.
- tripdout 3y agoI feel like the overall description from 2003 better explains the concept than the current article: > According to an ancient Greek legend, Theseus had a warship that was preserved as a historical relic by the Athenians. Some of its boards rotted and had to be replaced. After many, many years, many such replacements occurred. Eventually, none of the original boards were present. Philosophers could then debate whether it was the same ship that Theseus had used, and if not, when it had ceased to be so. versus the current version: > The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. In Greek mythology, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?
- svnt 3y agoCreating opportunities for tangential article links is not the issue it once was at Wikipedia, but it still definitely impacts readability.
- nicoburns 3y agoPerhaps you should put some parts of the original article back!
- thfuran 3y agoYeah, the old version is definitely much better.
- Geisterde 3y agoWe all accepted santa was real at one point right? Like, we grew up and realized hes a fantasy character. I think its perfectly fine to keep the original article, you can discuss whether the history is true or not later in the analysis. Big boys and big girls can accept that some myths are worthy thought experiments implicitly, it doesnt need this language, only to gatekeep the knowledge behind some kind of intellectual sanctity.
- midtake 3y agoThis is a problem with the Ship of Theseus thought experiment as well. When did the Ship of Theseus become a "ship"? With that being nebulous it becomes even stranger to discuss whether switching out parts compromises its personal identity.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago> When did the Ship of Theseus become a "ship"? Another submission currently on the front page might help answer that! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38670845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38670845
- hinkley 3y agoI think that actually simplifies things. You go down to the docks, you see a half assembled ship, you ask about it, and they tell you that’s Hector’s ship. It’s not a ship yet. It’s a promise of a ship, and idea. It’s still Theseus’ ship until he loses it gambling, and whether it continues to be a ship or is sold for scrap and becomes part of five other ships… well then the idea of the ship has died.
- Joker_vD 3y agoWell, obviously the resolution of this apparent paradox is that things/objects don't actually have any "identity" immanent to them, although in most practical circumstances a notion of objects having identities is both useful and roughly accurate. Which is what the deflationist explanation from the page seems to allude to?
- JKCalhoun 3y agoHa ha, "a modern embellishment" reads like the quirky early Web. (I had to go back and see if I had embarrassed myself when I stubbed in an article back in 2004. Meh — but just as well I stopped contributing to Wikipedia.)
- InCityDreams 3y agoWhy did you stop contributing?
- JKCalhoun 3y agoI only contributed the one article because I was searching for the thing on Wikipedia and it didn't exist.
- gmuslera 3y agoNow its time to add a new article to Wikipedia with those original phrases and words rearranged to talk about something totally different, and then debate which one is the real Ship of Theseus article.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoIs that possible without immediately displacing the existing article?
- twodave 3y agoThey can argue about it on the disambiguation page.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- porphyra 3y agoTo be fair, the original article was rather terrible. Like what the heck is with the "modern embellishment"?
- pooper 3y agoThat is the secret of writing. Usually, everything is written in private. Edited, refined over time. And then published. The key is you have to start writing. Something might sound wrong or feel like sand in your socks. This is probably the most difficult part of learning to write. You can't edit and improve what you haven't written yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ship_of_Theseus&oldid=1154003 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ship_of_Theseus&o...
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoWell said. Every well-written piece of text is, in itself, a ship of theseus. And only a ship of theseus piece of text can float, having had all the leaky boards replaced.
- stevenwoo 3y agoI read The Wager earlier this year and it’s implied that every active wooden ship eventually is a ship of Theseus, for a trip from England to the passage around South America at that time many of the ships had to be repaired along the way, though they didn’t start with all new ships.
- maxbond 3y agoAre they repairing every board though or is it mostly the same boards in vulnerable areas getting replaced?
- ClassyJacket 3y agoDefine "the same board"...
- maxbond 3y agoI think what I was imagining there being a schematic which called for a board to be hammered into place at a particular location, and some of these being more exposed to wear than others (as well as being of different strengths because of the dimensions of the board, and if I'm not mistaken different parts of a ship are constructed with different kinds of wood). If we're feeling inclined to Greek philosophy, perhaps this is the Platonic form of the boards being replaced.
- stevenwoo 3y agoIIRC all the wood was vulnerable to either ship worms or rot eventually, they had to replace masts and rudders and scavenge from the least seaworthy ships (and scuttle if necessary) and opportunistically get wood from any island they could make landfall on to make the journey described in the book.
- Ekaros 3y agoI somewhere heard that smaller ships were expected to pay themselves back in couple of years. As they really rotted or other ways did not last very long. And actually maintaining and keeping one operational is massive undertaking, even if you do not actively use it too much.
- airstrike 3y agoJust like a ship would be "christened" before its maiden voyage, it feels like the very first blob of text added to a draft of an article doesn't really constitute "the original" article. It's still "being built" until it gets a sufficiently decent grade. Right now it is still rated C, even though it's been around for decades. It's like an abandoned half-built ship (Which is not to say this tweet isn't uninteresting... but it's funnier than it is insightful)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DiscourseFan 3y agoFrom the first reply to the Mastadon post linked by u/manicennui: >@mori@mastodon.au @wikipedia And yet, the Ship of Theseus page remains, thus proving a bird in the hand is worth two stitches in time.
- tiffanyg 3y agoWould have been better if they hadn't bungled their mixed metonymy... It's a stitch in the bird is worth a pound of eggs off a duck's back, as everyone knows...* * Courtesy of the excellent "Field Guide of Egregious Mixed Metonomies", soon to be published by Penguin Random House Simon Schuster Merriam Webster Britannica, I'm told
- thiht 3y agoTiny heads-up: it’s "MastOdon" not "MastAdon". Seems like a common mistake
- DiscourseFan 3y agoThanks
- manicennui 3y agoWithout the walled garden: https://wikis.world/@wikipedia/111587024591220062 https://wikis.world/@wikipedia/111587024591220062
- subwrmodblocker 3y agoWhat?
- seeknotfind 3y agoBecause Twitter limits interactions unless you're logged in.
- subwrmodblocker 3y ago[dead]
- sixothree 3y agoIt’s common practice at HN (this site) to make articles accessible to everyone. In this case twitter limits your ability to read an article if you are not logged in. The link provided lets you read it regardless of whether you have an account or whatnot.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoIf it's the same person running both accounts, I think it's funny that she snagged the @wikipedia handle, even for that domain.
- jeroenhd 3y agoAccording to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/@Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/@Wikipedia, the account is official and community-run. https://wikis.world/@wikipedia https://wikis.world/@wikipedia also shows verified ownership of the Wikipedia homepage on the account page.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gitgud 3y agoIs this an important metric? I’d imagine a lot of articles across Wikipedia change over time and barely resemble the original article… which is a huge benefit, as opposed to printed encyclopaedias All that matters is that the content is factually accurate, which this seems to be
- dan-g 3y agoIt’s not an important metric, but relates quite strongly to the content of the article…
- ggm 3y agoIts importance is contextual. Semantically, if the replacement text says the same things, it has less importance than if the replacement text understood to meaning says something different: one is just "we liked saying it better this way" and the other is "we changed our mind(s)" -they aren't the same. The field of change over a topic is itself a subject of study. It feels like a join over politics, Ontology and Epistemology.
- jwond 3y agoIt's more of an amusing fact, given the topic of the article.
- gitgud 3y agoAhhh okay, I can't believe I missed the irony of this post
- irrational 3y agoDo you know what the Ship of Theseus is?
- LeonB 3y agoIs it even possible, though, to know what the ship of Theseus is?
- 3y ago
- ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 3y agook
- quickthrower2 3y agoWe are all Ships of Theseus.
- deadbabe 3y agoThe solution to the Ship of Theseus is obviously that there is no Ship of Theseus. All things are just events in time, long moments where matter is organized into some structure for a while and then breaks apart again, and we assign names to those events. Some happen so quick that naming them is pointless and others are so slow to dissipate that a name becomes useful.
- procgen 3y agoThe ship is a pattern that persists in time.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoNot if the overall design is completely altered through the work done on it.
- winwang 3y agoThis hilariously sounds like a possible "defense" in court after being caught stealing said ship. Was it really Theseus's ship?
- tiffanyg 3y agoNow that is the kind of "modern problems require modern solutions" thinking I like to see! Kudos - excellent examination of implications / change of perspective / viewing from another angle. The kind of thinking that, more seriously, really can be essential in developing insight(s) etc. ... and, finding (proofs by) contradiction(s) etc.
- philwelch 3y agoHere’s a real mystery for you. You’re a worker at a dry dock where you are maintaining a ship. You periodically remove perfectly good parts of the ship and send them away, replacing them with new parts and making falsified records claiming spurious damage that needed to be repaired. At a second facility, the pieces from the original ship are reassembled. Did you steal the ship, or has it been sitting there in drydock all along?
- thoughtstheseus 3y agoThis article is relatable
- sixothree 3y agoThat’s the axe that slayed me. Or was it?
- qingcharles 3y agoI get a real kick out of going back to articles I created almost 20 years ago to see how much of them still remains. I still think I have the weirdest named article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qeqertaq_Avannarleq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qeqertaq_Avannarleq
- ClassyJacket 3y agoI love Annie Rauwerda (Depth of Wikipedia). So much passion for these random bits of info. Her tiktok is absolutely delightful and she's been good on the Lateral podcast as well.
- nobulus 3y agoironic
- tiffanyg 3y agoI'd be more impressed if it were that case that 0% of the WORDS remain. Nevertheless, the consonance of this 'weaker result' is still satisfying. Bravo!
- _8j50 3y agoJust like the article, the ship of Theseus changes in its constituency but not in its identity. Am I a different person because almost none of my cells at the time of my birth remain in me? Of course not. And the wiki article is the same article. Whether something can be identified as a specific thing is a matter of social convention. A transformation of something is not a new thing but exactly the former: a transormation, but still that same thing. When does it become something new? Never. For it to be a different ship, it needs to be deconstructed first fully. But what if you reconstruct it so that it is identical to the former ship? It's still a new ship because identity is defined at the time of construction, independent of relative comparisons. Similar to how your complete identical clone would be a different person.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoYes! This is the discussion starter we've been waiting for. Then you're admitting that there's something non-physical that defines the identity of the physical thing, is it possible to argue against that? Or is identity itself meaningless? But it cannot be because without identity there can be no understanding of the universe. Thus, the non-physical is a requirement of the physical. One cannot exist without the other. But where, in what non-physical plane (is there a word for that? ideamension?), does the non-physical inhabit? Or is "understanding" also only existent in the ideamension, not a requirement of the existence of the physical universe? But if not for understanding, why does the universe exist in the first place? Reason; yet another resident of the ideamension.
- _8j50 3y ago> Then you're admitting that there's something non-physical that defines the identity of the physical thing It's not a question of being physical but that of independently describable. > Or is identity itself meaningless Identity is how we frame and contextualize for the purpose of thought and communication. For the purpose of thought I might consider the modified ship the same as the one in the initial state but if the law requires you to rename and re-register as new when you modify so much of a ship then for legal purposes I will start identifying it as a new ship but the people that use the ship will probably consider it that same old ship because for the purpose of thought the independently describable object has not changed. It is not identity that has no meaning but that physical objects themselves have no meaning to us unless framed in an independently describable context (i.e.: as separate from all other things in the context). For a computer program, does the letter 'A' exist? It does if the program can decode a byte as such, but does its inability to describe the bits and bytes that way mean the letter 'A' does not exist? Maybe it is 0x41? Identity has meaning but only to those who are able to describe that identity and reason about the context.
- AnAaaaardvark 3y agoIt's almost like intangible social constructs don't really exist or something. As long as you do not know the thing in itself, how do you know it's really there?
- prometheus76 3y agoIdentities exist and are associated with the material world, but are not directly tied to it. "The king is dead! Long live the king!" illustrates this perfectly. The mortal person who has been embodying the identity of "king" has died, but the identity of "king" persists and will be embodied by a different person soon.
- matrix_overload 3y agoIf you want to understand recursion, you need to understand recursion first.
- Ekaros 3y agoIt is weird that for me it kinda depends on item in question. Slowly keeping rotting wooden ship alive is probably same ship. But let's take desktop computer. CPU, GPU, RAM, MotherBoard, Case, Powersupply, A disk. What if I replace each of these components over a year with exactly same model. So exactly same CPU for exactly same CPU. And then finally I clone the disk to new disk, but to exactly same model of a disk. Some serial numbers have changed, but it operates the same, has the same data and software on. And I could even change the license key of software like OS. Is it same computer or not? And somehow I feel it is not the same.
- npteljes 3y agoThat feeling is the one that's important, I feel. None of these things exist in that way the first place, but we pretend, and we agree on these pretenses. This is how the human mind copes with the stimuli it gets. With regards to computers, I have different things in my mind. For the feeling part, the computer's role is what matter. "My main desktop computer", "My main server computer", "My work laptop". I can know that they are not the same, but they feel similar enough, because they play the same role for me, so for the most part, I don't make a difference.
- hi41 3y agoThere is a movie by the name Ship of Theseus which explores the idea in the context of organ donation and transplantation. I loved the movie. There is one actor by the name of Neeraj Kabi who lost a lot of weight for his role as a monk. Here is the trailer: https://youtu.be/tzw1ezTTVEY?si=NfsG9sY1R1JjmbVV https://youtu.be/tzw1ezTTVEY?si=NfsG9sY1R1JjmbVV
- m463 3y agoI wonder how much our human body is a ship of theseus. I was reading about the hb1ac test, and it is a long-term test that analyzes the percentage of your blood hemoglobin chemically linked to sugar. It is "long-term" because your blood cells have a life span of about 4 months. (If you manage your blood sugar well, you have to do it for 4 months so that new cells won't be affected and a later test will show improvement.) so, I wonder how many other cells turn over? You are not you, repeatedly.
- LordKeren 3y agoMost of the cells in the nervous system (including the brain), as well as muscle cells, last your entire life time