this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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The question is if you could change little things about yourself over time, would you still be you? This is a question of identity, how much can we change and still remain ourselves?
Think about it this way: if you could use something like CRISPR to slightly alter your genes, maybe grow scales or gills, would those cumulative changes eventually turn you into someone else entirely?
Or consider this: what if you started replacing body parts with prosthetics – an arm, then a heart, and so on, until your whole body was artificial and completely different. At what point would you cross that line from you to something new?
But that's not what the comic is about. If we followed the comic, your body would eventually be turned into an airplane.
That's exactly what the comic is about. If we follow the artificial replacement of your body argument, then over time you could change it into an airplane. Would you stop being you at that point?
If you change a boat into a wagon, is the boat a wagon or is the wagon a boat?
It's a transition of an entity that used to be a boat into a wagon. This really isn't that difficult of a concept.
So it's not Theseus's ship anymore, which is my point.
I mean that's literally the punchline of the comic.