The Ship of Theseus

I know you're not a big fan of air travel, so I've got a I've got a question for you, all right, if you wanted to go to, say, somewhere on the other side of the world, you wanted to go to China or go to somewhere in Europe or something, and you still hate air travel as much as you did, and I offered you the chance to go there instantly via a real life teleportation machine that would scan your body and figure out where all the atoms are and then rebuild you in a teleporter pod on the other

side of the globe wherever you wanted to go, and you could be there instantly. Would you do it? Oh? This is a fun one, right, because what happens to my my old body is it just destroyed and it's just incinerated on the spot. Well, incinerated has such negative vibes. I mean, it's not incinerated, it is turned into its atomic constituents, all right, And then I can't just keep both though I can't double sleeve and have have have one of me here in the States and the end

the other me is is in Asia somewhere. I don't know. That seems like it would lead to bad sci fi action movie scenarios where one of you must eliminate the

other on the commands of the moon King. Well, you know, it's it's tempting still just to to cut out all of that air travel, because air travel can be taxing, it can be exhausting, um and yet at the same time, by virtue of being taxing and exhausting, I'm never quite the same person when I reached the other end of that flight, especially if it's a long flight, right, because I may enter into the flight being a little anxious, but maybe on some level like looking looking forward to

that you know, long period in which I can just listen to music and read. And then on the other side then I am I'm potentially tired. I'm actually you know, blust out from you know Xanix and Steve Roach albums, um, you know, three hours plus. But I'm not quite the same person, right, I'm I've changed a little bit, so I might as well be this teleported other self that is Uh, that is a diversion from who I am now.

I don't know, when you get to the end of a flight, even if it's been unpleasant, do you really have the sensation that you have died. Uh? It depends I guess how much turbulence I have to endure. I mean, that's always the question about the teleporter machine, right, I mean it's the question that everybody had to start wondering

about Star Trek. I guess. I guess there was probably a blissful period early in Star Trek history where nobody wondered if the teleporter machines killed you, But pretty soon people had to catch on, Right, is it just is it just killing you and then making a copy of you somewhere else that will continue with your behaviors, but your life ends when you step in. Yeah. And it's just everyone's gotten to the point where they're cool with it. They just don't think about it. They just step into

the teleporter and let's suite annihilation wash over them. I'm just I'm ready to die and make a copy of me somewhere. I don't know, it doesn't seem like people would be like that. I mean, most of the time people have the sensation that their experiences are continuous and they want it to continue to be continuous. I guess in track, as long as there's not an afterlife, you're good, right, So just never know, it's just blind leap of faith, right.

And of course, I mean we have, as we've talked about on the show before, we have no idea how the say the baton of consciousness is handed off from past self to present self, to future self and from one moment to the next. I mean, maybe maybe it's the case that every time you go under general anesthesia, you die, and then a different person wakes up with all of your thoughts and memories. Maybe you are the copy that woke up after the last time you went

under anesthesia. Maybe that happens every time you fall asleep. You'd really have no way to know. Yeah, that that is certainly a point when the curtain drops and who knows exactly what's going on with the set, right, or at least what's going on with the set is is very much an area of interest to UH, to scientists who study consciousness. Now here's another question for you, Joe, what if you were able to get ahold of a

time machine? I'm not talking some sort of realistic uh, you know, time machine like we've talked about discussing, you know, black holes and whatnot. I'm talking to a causality wrecking Hollywood time machine, travel to the past machine, time cop travel to the past machine. That is rough. So if if I were to go back in time and meet a younger me, is that younger me really me? Is

this to means? Because the younger means not physically identical to me, It's mind and personality isn't identical to me. So if if a Jean Claude van Damme were to spin kick me into my past self, would I even melt into a screaming pilot Jelley? Well, no, I don't think so, because I don't think travel into the past

is possible. But even if it were possible, I assume that if you went into the past, you would just be like another person, like an identical twin, And identical twins don't melt each other into jelly when they collide, at least at least as far as I know. I don't know, we've never seen it happen. Now, we have a lot of wonderful of science fiction to utilize when we we tackle these these questions of identity and self and change. But they haven't always been around in the

old days. You had to do depend on listen more traditional stories, uh myths for your your thought experiments. And in fact, one of the oldest thought experiments is that we had that we have is uh is very much in this vein the ship of theseus, the ship of theseus. Right, So this is one of the most classic paradoxes in the history of philosophy. And it also goes to a thing that I think for some reason, it seems the Greeks were particularly interested in, which was the nature and

identity of things? I mean, of course, the nature and identity of things is always a topic for philosophers to investigate, but the ancient Greek philosophers seemed really concerned with what made a thing itself? What were the properties or the essences of a thing that gave it its identity? How did you know that you were really Robert? How did you Robert know that you earned that you had the merit of being called Robert? Why why wasn't something else Robert?

And so they had these ideas of essences and forms and all this stuff is deeply concerned with what makes something itself and when you can call it what it is. You know, this makes up an interesting side question here. Do you think of yourself as Joe. That's a good question, and there are actually a couple of ways to answer it. I mean, I would say in when I step back and think of myself, I do. I guess I think

of myself as Joe as a self. You know, there's some there's some soul Joe out there that is the core of who I think I am and my main qualities and all that. And of course you're not always the best judge of yourself, so other people could probably describe that person better than I could. But but there's there's another sense of how you think of yourself in which I don't think I think of myself as Joe. Moment to moment. I think of myself as the most

recent contents of my consciousness. So I'm just a moment to moment, I'm not Joe. Moment to moment, I am whatever I'm thinking about. That's a good way of putting it. Well. When I try and answer the question myself, I think, well, I'm not I don't only think of myself as Robert. I think of myself kind of as the me. You know, I'm just I'm just this I in in a given scenario unless I am like you're you're saying essentially becoming

the thoughts that I am having. And then I'm even further away from this when I when I'm forced to think of myself as Robert, it is because, uh, the external world is is making me do it, because that is what they call me, and that is what I continue to be called because I just, I guess, don't

feel passionately enough about it to change it. Well, one of the reasons we wanted to talk about the idea of identity in the ship of Theseus is that the external world is increasingly going to be forcing us to think about questions like this because of new technological capabilities that are coming online. So this is yet another conversation that we're having, sort of in the wake of of a conversation you saw in New York this year at the World Science Festival. But this is a great topic

that's worth exploring from the bottom up. So I say we go all the way back to theseus and then work our way to the technological and scientific questions. All Right, well, let's start with Theseus. Then, who was a gimme? Theseus? He's essentially the flash Gordon of Greek mythology. You know, he's always the most important, but the least interesting character

in a given story. That's my initial response anyway. But he also went into the maze and fought the minotaur, right, yeah, not only thought the minotaur, but but what is he is the slayer of the minotaur, solver of the the Maniuan maze as well. Solver that's the corporate speak idea, right, you know, he didn't slay the minotar. He solved that problem. He was able to execute on on strategy, yes, but then he also escaped from the maze right by by

virtue of string if I remember. Oh that's right. Yeah, that's a good part, because it's one thing to kill the minotar. I mean, that's pretty impressive in and on itself, But you still have to find your way out of the Manoan maze. How many minimally counterintuitive elements does the story of Theseus and the Minotaur have? Well, we have the minotaur for starters. Is that it is that the only part well the maze I suppose I suppose there could be a real maze or is there something magic

about the maze? Well, that's kind of the if I'm remembering correctly from past episode on on mazes and labyrinths. Um. One of the things about the maze is that depends on depends on which telling you're looking at. If you go back far enough, it's less of a maze. It could be something else, something less extravagant. But as the tradition builds, the maze becomes this this fabulous, fabulous dungeons

and dragons dungeon scenario, you know, which I love. But but I guess that's always something to keep in mind with with these tales, is it's not it fits in with what we're talking about here today. Mythological story is not this one thing that has been passed on. It is a thing that is built upon, a thing that

changes over time. Ah well, well that brings us to the central concept, right the ship of Theseus, so to quote from Plutarch in his his Lives, he wrote you about the lives of illustrious men, And so Plutarch wrote, quote, the ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned, had thirty oars and was preserved by the Athenians down

even to the time of Demetrius. Hilarious, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers for the logical questions of things that grow, one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same. So there's your classic dilemma on

the ship of Theseus. They have a ship. The ship, of course, like all ships, rots and falls away over time, so you've got to replace parts of it. Now, if you maintain this ship for so long that you've eventually replaced every original board in the ship and no original parts remain, is it the same ship? Is it still

the ship of Theseus? Or has it become something else? Yeah, the hokey version of this is the or the hokey variant is is Grandfather's Acts, which, imagine a number of our listeners have heard as well, Why is this hokey? It's just it's like it only has two parts to it, Like there's so the Grandfather's Acts is the idea. Hey, here's Grandfather's acts. But the handle rotted away, we had to replace that, and then also the blade brokes we had to replace that. Both parts of this two part

tool have been replaced. How can it possibly be grandfather's acts? Well, actually, don't think that's a hokey example, because I think that kind of thing really comes through when when you think about, say, uh, artifacts in a museum, A lot of historical artifacts in a museum them are not going to be exactly the same material constituents as when the artifact was first forged, or especially a lot of like things that are not so much an artifact you can pick up in your hand,

but like buildings and installations, a lot of these things have been restored long ago in history. So you might see a thing in a museum that at some point somebody replaced parts of long ago. So are you seeing the real original thing? Yeah? You know, this makes me think of the Parthenon, which of course is in ruins and has been in ruins for a little while. Now should we rebuild it exactly? But if you rebuild it, then yes, you make it look like the thing that

once was. But then, like you think, the thing that wants to think, and then you have to choose which era you want to recreate. You know, there's certain eras that they're certainly not talking about recreating. But but then, yeah, once you've restored it, then you also lose the the iconic ruins that exist today that that in that in a way are a more I guess you could say, honest reminder of what was there before. Well, in a way also, the ruins are part of what the Parthenon is.

I mean, the Parthenon is a thing that exists over time. And if you take away the ruins, you have in a way destroyed the Parthenon, even if you take them away to rebuild it. I think of that. It makes me think of the Colossi of Memnon that we discussed, which to remind everybody, these were These were a pair of of ancient coloss i. One of them fell over in ancient times. But then what's also restored poorly in

ancient times? Uh so what do you do? Do you get up you decide one day that you're just gonna restore them both to how they may have once looked? Do you restore them both to the ruins? I mean they are these are all a part of the essentially the life cycle of these statues over time. Yeah, so this question is actually meaningful. If you want people to be able to experience history, what is the thing that

gives them the most authentic experience of history? Is it the de Haid version as it stands or is it a restored version? And the same thing is true of the ship. If you want people to be able to see the Ship of Theseus because it has this great historical significance, do you replace the rotting parts or do you just let it rot? And if you just let it rot, does it eventually disappear? Of course it does.

I think that's one of the reasons I like the Ship of Theseus more than I care for a grandfather's acts, because it's more gradual. There's so many more parts involved. There's more of a question of at what point, uh, you know, is it more new than old? At which point in this gradual process does it does it lose its identity? Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's sort of incorporates the paradox of the heap into the question of whether a thing that is replaced in the same

way as the original thing. Because you're you're you're asking is there a transition point. At what point is you know, if fifty percent of the mass of the ship has been replaced, now, is it no longer the ship of Theseus? Like it's a dollar bill, you know, do you have more than half of it to have it be worth a dollar? Yeah? Like this this comes up some more scenario comes up when we start thinking about species and does speciation. At what point does this cease to be

one species and truly become a different species. Well, this just highlights the idea, the fact that species is sort of an artificial distinction. I mean, it has some utility for biologists, but it's a species, not a thing you find in nature. It's just sort of a useful concept, a useful concept to describe something that is an ongoing process, which you know, ultimately, one of the questions we're asking here today is to what extent can the same be

said about identity? Now, of course, lots of philosophers have explored the idea of the ship of Theseus. You know, philosophers get real worked up about whether something is what it is. So Plato's Cradlest Dialogue in some ways deals with this concept. Um and Thomas Hobbes dealt with it too, right, that's right. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who have fifteen eighty eight through sixty nine. He added another and in my opinion,

very fun level of complexity to this thought experiment. He said, what if you not only gradually replaced all of the parts of the Ship of Theseus, but what if you also took all of those old parts and use them to assemble an identical boat. So you took the rotting timber, you replaced that with goodwood, and then you took the rotting timber and made a new boat out of it. Right, And at this point, which is the real ship? Now

one is remodeled, the other is reassembled. They're both the same same ship, and yet clearly they are not the same ship. That is a good variation. I've also heard a variation of this where you like gradually steal some sort of masterpiece a piece at a time, and replace it. So if you were just wanted to steal, to say, the Ship of Theseus from a museum, and he sold it piece by piece, you know, swapping out for a counterfeit piece, then do you ultimately do what do you have?

Did you actually steal the whole ship or in replace it with a counterfeit or is that still the ship in there? I just got an awesome idea for yet another remake of the Thomas Crown affair. They steal the painting one centimeter at a time with razor blades. Yeah. Now, and and you know another detail that's often thrown in as did theseus ever actually stand foot on this ship?

That ends up playing into the identity of it. But back to Thomas Hobbs, so yeah, he's he's saying, you know what, have you took the old pieces and you just reconstructed the ship? But if you you could take that principle and extend it to other scenarios, less less contrived ones. Yeah, yeah, I mean he he ends up pondering this a bit more too. He says, wouldn't this also mean that nothing can be the same? A man standing would not be the same as he was when

he was sitting. Water in a vessel would be another example of this. It's in the vessel and then you pour it out. I mean, clearly it's the same water or is it the same water? Based on on this question, he says, uh quote. Wherefore, the beginnings of individualization is not always to be taken either from matter alone or from form alone. And all this gets down to is this idea of identity over time as opposed to identity in a single moment, you know, whatever a single moment is.

And there's a lot of philosophical thought on this topic, more than we can possibly summarize in this episode. Well, yeah, but I do think it's worth exploring the idea of thinking about um, maybe there, maybe what these paradoxes are doing, like the ship of theseus and Grandfather's acts and the water in a vessel is highlighting some fundamental flaw in our metaphysics. It's showing you hate you're generating paradox is because there's something wrong with the way you categorize things

in the world. It's the same way you might know there's something wrong with your physics theory, if it's requiring you to divide by zero or something. You know, something went wrong somewhere along here. Well, it really feels more and more like it's a situation where our metaphysics is largely about figuring out real time events, Like, you know, the soldier is unning at me, what should I do to avoid him? Uh? But then we we end up extrapolating that via mental time travel and memory. But we're

taking it into the future. We're taking it into the past, and we're considering knees and hiss and situations that are not identical to the present. That's a great point. But more than that, what would it mean for a thing to be identical to the present? I mean, is there such a thing as an identical moment to the president or the identity of a thing? Even so, I want

to talk about a cool article I saw. This was published in Aon magazine in November seventeen by kelso Vaira, and it's called which is more fundamental processes or Things? And it's just a quick, nice little explainer on the difference between what's known as substance metaphysics and process metaphysics. Now metaphysics, of course, it's just our attempt to understand the most basic level of reality or existence. It's the

set of principles that's underneath physics. So physics, for example, might be able to tell to you that a thing is a certain mass and a certain velocity and so forth. Metaphysics might ask what does it mean for a thing to exist? Or what does it mean to have a property like mass or velocity. What are properties? And so, to quote from Vyera's article, quote, Western metaphysics tends to rely on the paradigm of substances. We often see the world as a world of things, composed of atomic molecules,

natural kinds, galaxies. Objects are the paradigmatic mode of existence, the basic building blocks of the universe. What exists exists as an object. That is to say, things are of a certain kind, They have some specific qualities and well defined spatial and temporal limits. And so you might use the example of like a cat, your cat, Robert, Now, your cat has existed for a certain amount of time.

It has certain features that you can list that describe it physically, the color of its fur, the color of its eyes. I don't know how much it likes to jump up on the cow her, how much it obeys you when you tell you to do something. I don't know how much cats ever do that. That's probably not part of cat identity. Yeah, she's not much for obeying.

But ve Era argues that perhaps substance metaphysics is just not the best way of thinking about the world, and it actually leads to confusion and paradox and so He gives this example of the question of the you know, you know, the classic do you see this glass of water is half empty or half full? But about that glass of water? Via writes, quote, but what if the isolated frame a glass of water fails to give the relevant information? Anyone would prefer an emptier glass that is

getting full to a fuller one getting empty. Any analysis lacking information about change misses the point, which is just what substance metaphysics is missing. So he articulates the view of process philosophers, people who believe that the fundamental constituents of reality are not things but processes. It's not that a thing exists, it's that a process is in a particular state at a particular time. As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead put it, we should think of the world

as a collection of occurrences instead of things. And this resonates with me a lot. I actually think about this view fairly often, especially when I'm reading about fundamental physics. But speaking of the Greeks that I mean, this also has a there's a long tradition of this kind of thought. If you go back to hero Clydas, who propounded the

principle of Panta ray. Everything flows. Existence in a way is like a river, and you can't step into the same river twice for multiple reasons, not just because the water of the river has flown past and changed, but because you've changed when you step into the river again.

And I think the important thing about this thing about process metaphysics is that this doesn't have to change anything about our understanding of the physical laws of nature, and as far as far as I can tell, it's totally compatible with them, and some would actually say more compatible

with them. It's also certainly more in keeping with our understanding of biology, which tells us that they're not actually fixed kinds of animals or plants or bacteria, but there's instead this process of change over time, and that the change produces frequencies of different alleles as its cycles through

ever changing states. Yeah, and then of course you also think about the various chemical reactions that are are necessary, the various um you know, all the things that that that affect our mind stated even any given point of the day. You know, when we try and decide who we are, we're essentially trying to like pick out what is the ideal version of me that they manifest at any given point in the you know, the currently or

in the near future or the near past. Is it the you know, is it the I haven't finished my second drink or I'm on my second cup of coffee? You know me that that's that's the only version that I'm going to account that I'm gonna count. What's the platonic form of Robert? You're trying to seek out some ideal form of yourself that you've created as an abstraction, and that doesn't actually match who you are or what

you're doing at any given moment in time. In fact, try to think of an object that you can identify that has an identity that does not fundamentally change its former nature over time. A seed turns into a sapling and then into a tree, and then it dies, and then it rots and goes into the ground. And this is the case of every biological thing you can think of. But then, of course, on a longer time scale, other

things are like that, stars, asteroids, planets, black holes. You know, think things change over time, even even black holes evaporate over time. You've got hawking radiation. Well, just I think too about the very stones that we build our monuments and our grave stones out off. We build things out of stone because it makes them more permanent. You know that that that it will live on after we'd gone.

And that's true. These things tend to to exist on a scale that goes beyond the limits of of our biology. Of pure mortal exists. And yet at the same time we change the stone to make it into the graves gravestone. And any walk through the cemetery will remind you that that these things to fade uh and uh and and are eroded or are shattered when when tree limbs fall

upon them. Uh So yeah, everything spoiler, everything changes. It's great to walk backwards through time in a cemetery, to start with the fresher graves that have the pristine stones, and then walk back through time to the older and older graves, which often they tend to just disappear into the ground. They turn into nubs. You can't read what's on them anymore. There there there will maybe be just

a kind of rock marker and that's it. Yeah, And then the sun starts going down and the ghouls come, and then you realize you've really been wandering in the graveyard too long and you have changed into a delicious meal. Uh No, I guess the ghouls prefer grave flesh, don't they do they eat live people? You know, it depends

on the interpretation. But the stories I like, I think the girls will go for a live meal if they can get it, you know, especially if it's somebody that has become lost in the cemetery and uh and the sun is setting. It's like the kid who prefers chicken McNuggets, but will if they're forced to eat a delicious, fresh cooked me a lot of produce and all that. But yeah, so I was trying to think of an example of a counter example, right, is there something that doesn't change

over time? And I was like, well, you know, you've got maybe fundamental elementary particles. They don't really they don't have characteristics. They're all identical, they're interchangeable. Maybe they don't change over time. But thinking back to the entire history of the universe, that's not actually true. Like during the Plank Epoch at the beginning of time, as far as we know in the local universe, quarks and electrons hadn't

been formed yet. This is a time of hot condensed energy when we did not have quarks, And then later you get quark glue on plasma and all that. But so, I don't know, I don't know if you can actually think of a thing that is an object that has never changed and will never change. Even in mythology and religion, you're often hard pressed to find that one constant that

doesn't change. I think probably, I guess if you if you look at you know, Monotheistic, Judeo christian Um and Islamic interpretations of God, then you have something that is supposedly unchanging over time from the very beginning to the very end. But in it's like most other religions and cosmologies. You know, God's beget begot, God's and and and they all have these essentially life cycles that they're going through. Well, I would say even the fact that monotheistic gods enter

into narratives makes them not exactly unchanging. You can't tell a narrative about something that doesn't change. If it enters into a new covenant with with humanity, then that's hopefully a change. Hopefully there was some change in uh, in attitude there that we can view as positive. I'm sure there are a million ways of splitting that theological hair, but uh, but anyway to come back to the idea of philosophy, process metaphysics, thinking of things not as objects.

This is not a world of things, but a world of processes going through changes. How how should this change the way we think about the ship of theseus, so Vieira writes. To explain why things change without losing their identity, substance philosophers need deposit some underlying core, an essence that remains the same throughout change. It is not easy to pin down what this core might be. As the paradox of theseus ship illustrates, and then he explains the ship

as we already have. But he writes, is this the same ship, even though materially it is completely different? For substance philosophers, this is something of a paradox. For process philosophers, this is a necessary part of identity. Of course, it is the same ship. Identity ceases to be a static equivalence of a thing with itself. After all, without the repairs, the ship would have lost its functionality. It would have become a ruin or a shipwreck. Well, it just wouldn't

be a ship anymore. Yeah, uh so, Yeah, ships change, parts get replaced, and that's part of the process of the ship. There is no thing ship. Ship is A ship is an ongoing process of change, just like you and me are. And Naviera defends against the idea that processes are just transitions between different fundamental substance realities by pointing out one thing we mentioned a little bit earlier

than the paradox of the heap. Uh, if you've never read about this before, The paradox of the heap basically says, Okay, you've got a heap of sand. Now you remove one grain of sand at a time, and every time you remove a grain of sand, you ask is it still a heap of sand? And at some point you will only have one grain of sand left. That's obviously not a heap. But you can't point to a moment where suddenly the heap was not a heap anymore. The same

thing happens with biological entities in evolution. One of the great images that are Richard Dawkins is used in explaining the history of an organism is try to imagine your ancestors going all the way back down the generations, where you old hands with your mother, and then your mother holds hands with her mother, and it goes back like that forever. At what point where will you find the moment where a mother gave birth to a daughter of

a different species than her. It will never happen every At every point, the mother was giving birth to something that was pretty much the same animal she was. But these changes accumulate over time, and you can't if you zoom in, you'll never see the change. I mean, at some point the thumb is no longer opposable. I guess that that might play a role. Well, but it's not going to be a transition from opposable to not opposable.

It'll be It'll be a gradual transition. That's something that maybe is not even noticeably less opposable, but does just slightly less and eventually it just becomes a fist bump. Oh, there you go. Can't hold hands anymore, You just fist bumping mom all the way back to the protozoa. But that can't be right, right, because the fist bump is the thing you arrive at, not a thing you came from. Fist bump is the future. But well, but who's to say. Who's to say the this bump wasn't the predominant mode

of greeting in. You know, among our KaiC humans, they might have even done the explosion. Who knows, yeah, or the snail. That's what all those hands on the cave walls are the explosion. Alright, On that note, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, we will summon the swampman. Thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back. So we've been talking about the ship of dcs, the question of what determines the identity of a thing.

If you take a ship and you replace all of its parts over many years, is it still the same ship even if no original part of that ship remains. And one of the ways that this becomes actually relevant to the real world is when we start thinking about minds. Right, because we have this thing we call experience, the experience of experience, and you have the sensation that your experience is continuous, or at least I have that sensation. I

assume everybody else does. Everybody else acts like they do, and like they want their experience to be a unified part of this continuous, ongoing thing that is identifiable as itself. You don't want to suddenly be somebody else who is no longer you. Those certainly people do have, and this becomes a question like, to what extent do they legitimately have this moment of just profound change in their life, you know, as a moment of revelation or salvation, you know,

a road to Damascus kind of thing. To what extent is it a true change or is it a or are we like forcing the change upon ourselves. We're saying that we changed, but on a on some other level, we're still thinking of ourselves as a continuous movement. Well, even then, people tend to put the value of their change in terms of themselves relative to who they used

to be. So if you have had this Road to Damascus moment where you know, I'm a different person now and I'm so glad I am, you tend to think of that as being valuable relative to whatever kind of creepy were before, right, I mean, any if you have a good redemption story, you've got to get into what what came first. Yeah. And also if every personal change or improvement for the better was like the Star Trek teleporter that just kills you and makes a newer, better

copy of you, would people really go for it? I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, Occasionally there'll be a story where somebody, generally they've written a book or something, but they've made this phenomenal change that used to be a terrible person and now they're a good person, and they're out there preaching the word about how everyone should be a good person too. And it makes you think at times, well, I was never a terrible person. How come? How come Terry Gross isn't talking

to me? You're the brother in the prodigal son story? Exactly? I never This isn't fair. Yeah, I was good the whole time. Where's my uh, where's my celebration? Ain't that life where jealous creatures aren't? But anyway, so, yeah, we we need to talk about the swampman. Yes, we We've put the swampman off for far too long. So the swampman is a variation on the ship of theseus idea

applied to the human mind. And this is originally a concept that was introduced by the philosopher Donald Davidson in a presentation called knowing One's Own Mind originally, I think in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.

The version I found was reprinted in the American Philosophical Association Centennial series from but the original one was back in the eighties seven, and so Donald Davidson was raising this question, what is the relationship between the identity of a thing in the history of that thing? Are you ready to go to the swamp? Robert Okay Davidson says, Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp. I

am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence and out of different molecules, the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, the swamp man, moves exactly as I did, according to its nature. It departs the swamp in honors and seems to recognize my friends and appears to return their greetings in English. It moves into my house and seems to write articles on radical interpretation. No one can tell the difference, but

there is a difference. My replica can't recognize my friends. It can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in the first place. It can't know my friends names, though of course it seems to. It can't remember my house. It can't mean what I do by the word house, for example, since the sound house it makes, was not learned in the context that would give it the right meaning, or any meaning at all. Indeed, I don't see how my replica can be said to mean anything by the

sounds it makes, nor to have any thoughts. It's a nice creepy little tale. Uh that's summoning. Uh, you know memories of the philosophical zombies that we've discussed the zombies. Well, yeah, so it's the question with the P zombies is it's a assumed in the P zombie thought experiment that that

they behave exactly like humans, except they're not conscious. I guess Davidson's asking the question of can a thing that behaves exactly like a normal person but has no prior experiences actually be having thoughts, actually be uh speaking, meaningful sentences if it's just randomly producing phenomena identical to what a person would produce if they arrived at those behaviors

by the normal means. And so, to be clear, if we if we follow through with this, if we really imagine what he's saying, a perfect Adam for Adam copy of you would be externally indistinguishable from you, and would presumably behave exactly like the original you. There's nothing we know of that would make it behave differently, but it would not exist in a context in which its behavior

would have any meaning. It might have a long heartfelt conversation with a close friend of yours, and it would behave exactly like you would and say the exact same things the original you would have said in that conversation, but and in fact would never have met this friend before. So does the swamp creature have a relationship with your friend? Does the swamp creature know the friend? And for the

same reason, does the swamp creature know anything? Now. I know we have some comic book fans out there who might think, hey, this sounds a little bit familiar, because this is exactly the way that Alec Holland become swamp Thing in Alan Moore's amazing run with the swamp Thing comic. Huh um. I actually went back and read this again. The very first issue I guess you'd say this is is titled The Anatomy Lesson. It's from February. Yeah, I

haven't read it. Actually, I feel bad because Christian once gave me a huge stack of comics to read that did include a run of swamp Thing. I'm sure it was Moore's, but I never made it to that one though. I did read All Star Superman, which was great and I think sort of lightly brushed against some of the same philosophical questions about the identity of a person through time travel and all that. But I gotta read swamp Thing now. Oh yeah, well it's it's It's definitely worth

checking out. It's probably been a decade since I read all of it, but I did pick up the anatomy lesson and gave it another read, and it is indeed wonderful. This is the one that originally hooked me when I when I read it for the first time, and I wound up spending way too much money at the time on all of the Alan Moore swamp Thing books. Uh, none of them disappointed. But this first story is just perfect.

It's a it's an intelligent little horror story that cast the very the very identity of swamp Thing in a new light. So he's not just alc Holland a man who is mutated into a plant man following a science lab explosion in the swamp. No is More describes it. The wonder chemical here transforms the plants and when Holland's burnt corpse sinks into the swamp, the plants eat it and regrow a body that believes itself to be like Holland. So the organs don't work, heart, lungs, brains, It's all

just vegetable manner that has form but no function. But it believes it is Holland. And it is always believed that it is Holland. And this is the only thing that has kept the swamp Things saying this whole time. Well, so this Davidson presentation, I believe is from the first time he presented. It was in which is after this, So I think it would have to be that Davidson was inspired by swamp Thing and not the other way around. Yeah,

I think it might be the case. I did just a little bit of research on this, and I could not find any definitive statements on inspiration here. But but it seems like that would be the case, and I think that's great. I suppose we can only wait until the leave of extraordinary Gentlemen show up in the philosophy journals. Now, well, I would actually love to see um swamp Thing and swamp Man meet up. I think that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that Alan Moore could return to

rite at some point. In fact, I'm a little surprise it didn't happen, except Swampman would be completely indistinguishable from Donald Davidson, right, so it would basically just be Donald Davidson meets swamp thing, except it's not the original Donald Davidson. I mean, it's a weird thing to consider. I spend a while trying to this is one of those weird kind of thought experiments that pokes you and you have to sit there for a while thinking like, wait a minute,

is this Is this truly illuminating or not? I mean, I was like trying to decide, and I still don't think I've made up my mind. But it is strange. What does it mean to have a thought? Because we typically believe that a thought is about something. So say, for example, you have the thought I do not like

the smell of hard boiled eggs. We consider it part of the definition of this thought that you're aware of the existence of hard boiled eggs and you have smelled them, or at least you think you have, and you do not like the smell. But if a being with an atom for Adam Replica of your brain has that thought, and yet it has never smelled the smell. Is it really having that thought? What is it doing with its brain? You know it could not be forming that thought from

information derived from sense experience. That thought when coming from a being that's never seen any evidence of the existence of hard boiled eggs, has never smelled them, hasn't ever learned the words hard boiled eggs or the words smell. The thought is just random behavior, no more significant than you know, a million pages of random numbers printed out

on paper. Now at the same time that I can't help but think that, hey, I could develop a false memory of, say, eating a hard boiled ostrich egg, which I don't believe I have ever eaten. But if I but, I can easily imagine where I might tweak my memory into into thinking that I have. Likewise, what have I read a very convincing passage in a novel in which

a character eats a hard boiled dragon egg. I have no actual sense experience of that happening, But if it was well written and had lots of detail and atmosphere, then I could i it very well in a sense experience it in my mind. I think it's fairly obvious that that we humans spend a great deal of time obsessing over memories that are at least flawed, even if we're lucky enough to be free of memories that are false entirely. And you're exactly right, I mean we have,

we have false memories all the time. But they arise within a context of semantics, right, I mean they arise in a world where you know that you exist, and where words have meanings, and you've learned the meanings of words like egg and like smell, and you know that there is such a thing as smells, And I mean there's an entire structure that makes that false memory possible and makes it feel meaningful. So, for instance, I I have had a hard boiled egg, I have seen an

ostrich I've seen a picture of an OSTRICHJAG. I can therefore extrapolate what it would be to eat one and then have the fuel to to build that false memory. Yeah. Now imagine you have a brain that generates that memory, except it's never seen anything, and it's never learned any words, and it's never had any of this experience. It just happens to have the atomic structure of a brain that has had all those experiences and thus it behaves the

same way. It's like if I had to form a false memory of smoking a clues pats like what, I don't I don't know where I would begin to to assemble that memory exactly. So yeah, that's what's at stake. So I I've I've struggled with this thought experiment because I don't know if it's if it's making me feel weird because it gets it something really fundamental, or because it's one of those confusion machines that just like takes their intuitions and churns up a bunch of confusion about

stuff that doesn't really matter. Yeah, I don't know. I keep coming back to the idea that if swamp man or even swamp thing, remember like, if he has these memories of being this person, then yeah, those those those memories arise from those memories have internal context. They're kind of like a software that that that that that that he's carrying around with him. Yeah, and even if he you know, even if it's just a copy of the

original software, it's still the software. Well, it's kind of like if you imagined a software, a piece of software created by randomly generating characters to create lines of code that would execute eventually. And so at some point you could randomly create a piece of software that does things. Could you call that software? Could you say that it has a purpose? Could you say that it has functions? Could you say that it uh that it executes? I mean,

obviously we don't think software is conscious. I guess the question of whether the swampman would be conscious is a different kind of thing. Well, if if Swamman goes home and and then and says hi to to these friends, I feel like he's he's as human as anybody else. Really, I think that would be Daniel Dennett's take. So Dinnett has addressed the challenges and usefulness of this thought experiment

about Swampman, despite how popular it's been. Davidson first offered it, I think in the seven and uh, though a lot of people have picked up since then. Davidson apparently told Dnnet at some point that he regretted introducing it because he believed it caused a lot of unenlightening back and forth without proving much. So then it's got a critique

of this thought experiment. He says, you know a lot of thought experiments basically try to function like science experiments, so you can coct a bizarre, implausible scenario with the purpose of isolating a variable. You want to put something some particular variable. You want to be able to turn one knob up to eleven and control everything else, and you know, run everything else down to zero, so that you can test your intuitions about what happens and with

changes in that variable alone. And so the variable isolated in this thought experiment is the history of an object such as a person. Right, you say, materially identical. Only thing that's different is how the atoms got that way,

and then it you know. He admits that a lot of times thought experiments like this are really useful, like think about how physicists like Einstein and Galileo and Newton abuse thought experiments that us intuitions and math to determine fundamental facts about the laws of nature before anybody had actually confirmed them with physical experiments. So thought experiments based

on bizarre scenarios and intuitions can be very powerful. But other times thought experiments testing bizarre scenarios are are just creating unnecessary confusion. And in his discussion of Swampman, then it asks us to consider the cow shark, Robert, have you ever seen a cow shark? I have not. Well, here, here's how you'd know if you have. The cow shark is created when a normal cow gives birth to an animal that is Adam for Adam, exactly like a shark

that you would find swimming in the ocean. Now, is this newborn animal a cow or a shark? I'm gonna say it's a shark. It looks like a shark, it swims like a shark. It's a shark, even if it came out of a cow. Oh, well, so you got you're challenging some definitions, right, because some people would say, well, white sharks are born to shark parents. Even if a shark looks kind of weird, it's still a shark, right if it parents were sharks. Well, that kind of logic

will get you eaten by a shark, I'm thinking. But then dnn, it adds another wrinkle. He says. Okay, Well, let's say this shark is Adam for Adam, a shark, but with the exception that it has cow DNA and all of its cells. Now, is it a cow or a shark? It's a very peculiar shark. I would say, now, DNN.

It asks this question with with the idea that if you ask this to a biologist, they would probably not think this was a very meaningful question, right, because in reality, a cow will never give birth to an animal in the perfect form of a shark that has cow DNA and all of its cells. It's not logically impossible, meaning it doesn't involve an inherent contradiction, but it's just never

ever going to happen in nature. And thus we don't learn a lot about biology by testing our intuitions about cows and sharks this way, because our intuitions about biology have evolved to function in the world where this never happens and never will happen. In other words, the very tools we're using to solve this puzzle of is it a cow is to shark are shaped by a world

where this question will never arise because it is physically impossible. Now, you could come back and you could say, wait a minute, haven't we solved real world physics problems by creating physically impossible thought experiments things like a like a sleigh traveling at the speed of light for relativity, or objects that fly through the air with zero friction and the answer is yes. But dinn It says, you know, those experiments involved much less of an uncontrolled departure from reality than

the cow shark or the swampman. The physics experiments carefully name and limit their violations of reality so that you can take that violation and calibrated as part of the experiment, and then real world experiments can be devised to test the conclusions of the thought experiments after you're done. Not

so for cow shark and swampman. Really, you know, dinn It says, Uh, there's sort of a general rule of thumb, and It's quote the utility of a thought experiment is inversely proportional to the size of its departures from reality. So he does not really seem concerned with Davidson's worries about whether swampman can actually have thoughts or known the meanings of words, or even be a person, because swampman is physically impossible in the context that we've developed words

and concepts like thought and meaning. In person, a person has thoughts which are derived from evolution, development, and experience, and a swampman does not exist within that context. So I'm curious what you think about Dennett's critique here. I think he makes a good point, but I'm gonna have

to come back on it. Well, I do feel like there is this sense that some some thought experiments are of course very useful, and then the further you you get, you kind of get into that territory of their fun. They're great to think about it. You know, it's like saying, oh, my hands can touch everything but themselves. Man, you know, they're it's it's it's great, but I don't. But my hand can touch itself. I'm poking my palm right now. Well maybe, but this is why this is That was

for Futurama. I think with the h one of the ends eats a hippie and becomes high, and it's like, my hands contect everything but themselves. Um so it's yeah, kind of a false paradox. But but you know, there's so many of these things that they I do. I do kind of side within it here. It does feel like some of the more extravagant thought experiments do get into that area where it's not particularly useful, but it's fun.

It's more recreational. Right, Yeah, I think that's right. I mean I get what he's saying, and I think He's exactly right that we should be careful not to draw conclusions by testing our intuitions on conditions that those intuitions are totally unsuited to evaluate. Here's a great example. I bet you've heard people make arguments about the origin of the universe based on an intuitive understanding of things like

space and time. Right. You know, people argue about like what it means for the universe to begin or to come into existence or something like that, based on what they think it means for like a meeting at the office to begin. It's just like our concepts are day to day concepts are not only unhelpful but directly confusing in that context. But I might take issue with Dennett's response because I would say, we live in a world where science and technology might be making versions of the

Swampman experiment sort of replicable in reality. Maybe not making an atom for adom recreation of your entire body that does seem fairly impossible, but by making something like a perfect copy of the processing functions of your individual brain, or say, gradually replacing parts of your brain ship of theseus style with a biotic computer hardware. And I want to be clear that I don't know this is possible.

I'm pretty skeptical. I think Robert, you're also somewhat skeptical of the curse Wiley and hype about digital immortality and all that kind of stuff that I think there's a lot of unanswered questions about that. That's some techno utopians take for granted. But I also can't rule it out. So it may not be a sure thing that you can replace your brain with a digital copy, or that you can replace parts of your brain one at a time with hardware. But it's not a swamp man, and

it's not a cow shark. It's a thing that I can't be sure we should rule out. So this is a question that it's entirely possible we could face in

reality in the near technological future. All right, so let's take another break and when we come back we will discuss this a bit more than Alright, we're back, So before we keep going, though, Joe, I do want to point out, um your so what you do when I said that when I quoted the Alien and Future rum and said that the hand can touch everything but itself, you demonstrated your hand touching itself, but actually your fingers were touching your palm? Was your hand actually touching your hand?

Maybe there's more weight to this, uh, this paradox than I thought. Well, maybe there are no such things as hands. Is there a hand or is it just like a team upon which you have fingers and palm playing? You know, that's another example that sometimes comes up for the ship of THESEUS A sports team, them individual members change over time, but we have this idea that the team itself is a thing that is consistent, even though sporting teams are

are are generally anything. But you know, they'll they'll be ups and downs. Uh uh. You know, they may have a great year this year, but then who knows what next season will be? Like, Yes, definitely, this happens all the time. Let's say you you like a company. You want to invest in a company, but that company has multiple rounds of like layoffs and new hires and all that,

so that none of the original people remain. And then say they change their branding and they get a new name for the company and all that, and they also end up changing their core business model so that they're doing something different than what they originally did. But you're still investing in the company. I don't know why I went to that. I'm not usually a big stocks guy. So this ship of theseus, as we've discussed it, it it reveals a lot about the nature of change and this

elusive quality of self. Any given mind state we express is ultimately just just a phase and a continual path. We tend to falsely identify both past selves and future selves as being the same as who we are now. But the reality, of course is it is it is rather akin to these uh, disassembled and reconstructed ships that we're talking about. I'm a vessel composed of certain parts of my past, and many of these parts will constitute

the ship of my future. And so when we ponder such possibilities as digital immortality or some form of digitalized consciousness, we can't help it summon the ship of theseus, which me am I attempting to safeguard. Though will and will it remain me? Will it change? Doesn't matter? And then there's the whole coin flip to consider. Oh yeah, yeah,

what's the deal with the coin flip? Proper um? Well, this is the idea, like, if I am digitizing myself for teleporting, is there any uh, well, am I actually going to continue experiencing as this new thing or is it in there? Well, that's a great question. I mean, we don't really know the answer to that, and I

I feel like it's almost hilarious sometimes. How easily many techno utopians and digital immortality enthusiasts just seemed to assume that your consciousness can be transported onto some kind of hardware or machine. I think that's far from a given. We don't even know if it's possible for machines to be conscious. Maybe, I mean, it might be possible. But

even if so, would that be you in there? Would it be like the teleporter and Okay, now you die and here's a digital copy of you that you don't get to share in the experience of I mean it ultimately is would it be the same as that stone statue of a long dead individual? Like it's just the technological evolution of that same idea, Like that that statue is not long dead Napoleon. Uh, neither is this digitized

Napoleon that we're going to send alpha centauri. Now. I attended the World Science Festival earlier this year, and one of the salons that I attended as a smaller panel discussion was a titled to be or not to be bionic.

And one of the participants on this panel was a man by the name of S. Matthew Law, director of the Center for Bioethics and affiliated professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University, and he brought up the whole if you can upload it is it you question and pointed to the gradual replacement of neurons one

by one is a potential approach. Uh, And it makes sense, right, don't just make an immortal robot version of me, No, gradually change me piece by piece into an immortal robot almost like almost like tricked me into being an immortal robot. You know. Don't just don't just hoodwink me all at once, like like you know, slip in there. That's an interesting question.

So yeah, I imagine if somebody just made a robot copy of you and then said, well, now this is you, you you would say no way that that's don't turn me off because that's not me. But if they replaced you one part at a time, it's possible that might give you a feeling of continuous experience that the rest that the the process wouldn't. But I mean that depends on you know, they're all these different models of what's

the physical substrate of consciousness? Right? Is consciousness? Uh? Is there some part of the brain that it's based in. If you go back to Daniel Dennet, who we were talking about a minute ago, he might say, well, actually, the idea that consciousness is a single thing is an illusion. You know, consciousness is a range of phenomena. Now this, uh, this gradual replacement of neurons to upload consciousness, this of course,

is just another thought experiment in and of itself. For instance, cognitive scientists and philosopher David J. Chalmers wrote about it back in the nineties. Though I'm I'm unsure who first actually proposed the idea and if it occurred within the realm of philosophy, cognitive science, or science fiction. So many of these wonderful ideas actually emerged within the sci fi realm before uh they become you know, cognitive science, thought experience, etcetera.

Swamp thing and swamp Man potentially being an example of this. I mean, this is one of the great things about science fiction is it gives us space used to explore these concepts before they're actually technologically feasible. Uh. And you know it is. It kind of gets into that whole Daniel Dennett situation too, Like sometimes it's it's just there to amuse you and like, you know, twist your mind around. But if it twist your mind enough, you know, sometimes

you end up it becomes this, uh, this pure thought experiment. Um. Well yeah, and along the same lines, I think maybe what you're getting at is that sometimes science fictional explorations of concepts can become the opposite of enlightening. They just become confusing, they become a bad road to take, or

they just become art you know. I think of like some of the Borhees stories where you have somebody that's dreaming within a dream, the circular ruins and all these there are elements to them that are similar to thought experiments. But I would never say that a Borhe's story is a thought experiment. I guess you could. I mean, I guess an interesting questions in the story. I'd have to

like go back and think story by story. But Library Library of Babbel's kind of a thoughtics it is, Yeah, yeah, I mean you could almost say it's a philosophy paper, you could. Yeah, all right, maybe I take all that back let's see I need to reread to some bore high scraps. But but but you know what I'm saying, like it can become I feel like some of these ideas, it's almost like there's a crossroads, like, right, where are

you gonna push it? Are you gonna push it into this realm of of of sort of you know, boiled down thought experimentation or is it art? Is it meant too to make you think and explore new ideas, but not in like necessarily a you know, a regimented fashion is most sci fi, just like speculative meta ethics papers that are it's formulated in a way that people want to read. Well, it comes back to time Cop. Time

Cop is not a thought experient. And yet at the same time, when I first saw it as a kid, and in time and time over the years, I'll stop and I'll think, well that part when when the two villains melt together, is that right? How would that work? Like I'm it's you know, it's poorly constructed ultimately, but it does make me think, like a lot of bad

movies do, I guess. But but back to the gradual replacement of neurons and uploading them at all um, Yeah, it comes back to the ship of theseus idea during this replacement is gradual replacement? Does it at some point cease to be me? And and what if there is this dark point in the transition, the moment of unconsciousness, does that signal the end of your consciousness in the beginning of the next Uh? Is that which comes after

not you? And if it's not, then again, coming back to what you said earlier about anesthesia, how are we supposed to interpret that? Is the the individual before and after anesthesia? Are those ultimately separate uh entities? I mean, ultimately there's this slippery kind of concept in here that I feel like is key that that is causing a lot of the trouble. And it's the idea of I don't know if there's already a name for it, but

I'd call it something like anticipatory continuity. So it's like, you think, if you can create a conscious robot and you could put your brain in there, you know, at least the conscious robot could have the experience of being continuously you. But what you don't want is the you that's about to transition thinking I'm going to disappear and die.

Though of course, you know, the you of every moment changes into the you of the future, and that you of the future remembers being past you and the future. You know, the current you doesn't really worry about the fact that present you won't exist a few seconds in the future. But there's there's some kind of distinction people

are making mentally. They're right, they're saying like, if wait, there's a way that I could die and some other thing could go on being me, which would be different than just me being me a few seconds from now, Well, I just need a teleporter to edit that out before it recreates the enemy, edit out the the fear of death in the teleporter, and then I guess we'll be okay.

But I mean, is it death? I mean, I guess that's actually a question to ask, like, if there's a version of you continuing, is there a way of saying that it's actually that it's not any different from the you of three seconds from now continuing the existence of

you right now? Well, I mean, because if we're talking about just the physical body, we also have to remember that the body does replace itself largely with a new set of cells every seven seven years to ten years, and some of the most important parts are revamped even more rapidly. But that's that's the more original ship of theseus idea. That's gradual replacement, and so we tend to be on board with that, right you know, I mean

I refuse, you refuse, I won't do it. There's some people who who who believe the other the body is just well, it makes me think of our old friend Connor McLeod, the Highlander. So in order to live like five centuries, is it just more or less like our body, Like everything is just you know, cells are dying and being replaced or are his cells just super strong? Are they the same cells? Is he like also largely identical

to the original Highlander except he had a haircut? Well, I mean, this makes me think about our episode about neuroplasticity, about how neuroplasticity is a balancing act, right, Like, you want the brain to be able to change and adapt to a certain extent so it can adapt to new scenarios and learn and all that. But you also don't want the brain to be so radically open to change that it is. You know, it can just be ravaged by trauma and things like that. You know, you know,

what I mean. So there's weakness in being elastic, but there's also strength in being elastic, And I guess evolution tried to shape our our nervous systems to find that correct balance. But inherent in that tension is the idea that some amount of stability over time is preferable. That's like better for us as an organism. You don't want to be radically open to change all the time. Then again,

maybe that that only matters over long time scales. And then is that I guess you could also want to it's the average person just going to be open to

the appropriate amount of change. Like I think back to uh, this is a line from Terence McKenna, but he said, um, if there's something that needs to be done, you will find yourself doing it, um, which is is one of those statements that seems kind of kind of obvious, but at the same time it's I keep coming back to and thinking, well, yeah, I guess I would like And if you say, well, there's this thing I should have done and I didn't do it, well maybe you didn't

need to do that thing, and that's why you have reached this point where you're looking back on it like that what does it mean to need to do something? Yeah, Wow, we've really gone all the way into the navel on this this episode. Um, lots of hands not touching themselves. All right, Well, on that note, I think we're gonna exit here. But before we do, well, we're not gonna have time to touch base. Uh, you know on every example of the Ship of Theseus as it's been expressed

in various works of art or fiction. But but I do want to pinpoint a couple of them here real quick for starters. Uh, the book blind Side by Peter Watts that we both read. I didn't realize until I started looking into this, or I didn't remember that the spaceship that they're on is the Theseus and yeah, and it is capable of rebuilding itself. And then you also have a member of the crew who has had half his brain rebuilt. So there are a number of of

elements there. Well. Also, just generally in the works of Peter Watts, characters are very much Ship of Theseus style brains. Maybe we've had lots of neural augmentation and all that. Now, the teleporter problem variant that we talked about that's been explored on the Outer limits, and to a large extent,

the Christopher Nolan film The Prestige. There was a character on Star Trek Deep Space nine named Antos who was a Bajore and spiritual leader who had to have his brain gradually replaced with cybernetics, and this eroded his previous sense of self and this had a negative impact on his relationship with Kira, the Joran character on that show. Must I've never watched Deep Space, but it's pretty great. I didn't. I have to say, I do not specifically remember this episode, but I used to watch it all

the time. It was like every evening at like nine pm or something in syndication. Our producer Alex has often schooled me on Space nine. Not we're gonna get an email on this one for sure. Uh. There's an episode of Futurama titled The six Million Dollar Man in which Hermes, one of the characters, gradually replaces his entire body with robotic parts, while Zoidberg, the you know, crustacean alien doctor. He's been stitching the discarded parts together into little Hermes

of introl Coast dummy. And so there, you know, you're left to wonder which one is the original, which one is Hermes, is it the robot or this grotesque meat puppet? And then one of the examples that I was most impressed we have mainly because I just had no idea about the depth here on this, but the tin Woodman from the Wizard of Oz books, the books by L. Frank Baum. Oh i've ever read the books? I have not either, but when I started looking into this, Yeah,

there's this whole narrative about the tin Man. How the tin Man has a like his ax was was cursed by the wicked witch. And then he like accidentally like chopped away, you know, part of his body and then uh, then it was replaced with tin. And then he ends up chopping away another part of his body and it's replaced with tin. And he just keeps losing pieces upon pieces of his body until he's all ten except for his heart. And then one day he cuts himself in half,

I believe. And so now now his heart has been bisected, and that's why he needs the the heart he has to reclaim like this, this this portion of his humanity that has been lost in this gradual replacement, essentially a cybernetic replacement of himself. Oh wow, I never thought of Frank Baum getting into cybernetics. Yeah, he's essentially transhumanist. Right. Are you one of the people who's a big fan of Return to Oz. I know people who are into that.

I've never seen it, but I remember seeing the trailer as a kid, being like a little freaked out by those people with wheels for hands. So I should see it. It sounds exactly like the thing I'd be into. We should do a science of Return to Oz episode. Well, let's not commit until we know we're getting into Okay, Now, those are just a few fictional examples of the ship of theseus. I'm sure all of you listening out there you have examples you'd like to bring up as well. Um,

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