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I just replaced the last parts on my 20-year-old "PC of Theseus." (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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To be honest, the case is still the original one, but almost every other part has since been replaced. Now, I’ve taken it back to the shop where I bought it 20 years ago and asked them to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and memory - the last of the original parts.

So, is it still the same computer?

I also like that I can just keep replacing parts on an existing product rather than buying an entirely new device each time. That's exceedingly rare feature these days.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think that logic actually doesn't hold up, perhaps because when a new piece is added, the PCs identity slowly changes. New pieces since it becomes part of the definition of what that computer is.

Let's take the idea of adding a new piece, say a secondary drive. Does that make the computer a new computer? Of course not, that drive belongs to the whole. Does it make it 6/5? Technically not, since you're just counting the original pieces... even if said drive becomes integral to your PC by hosting you Linux distro you migrate to.

Years pass, parts fail, and that Linux instance persists. Now you're down to 0/5 but somewhere along the way your PC of Thesius changed along with it's parts. Using that old definition makes no sense anymore. In fact, it never did. Some say it changed the night you learned about Arch Linux on Lemmy. Others say it changed when you left your Windows loving wife over her poor taste in OS.

I... may have lost my train of thought. I guess all this is to say you can argue definitions all you want but there isn't a mathematical solution when we're taking about stuff like identity, definitions, etc.. but to be fair, it's a thought experiment, not meant to be solved so much as a way to provoke critical thinking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

It's less that the identity of the PC slowly changes, and more that you give up assigning it a single identity. Instead you pick a point of reference (let's say, the PC as OP bought it), and then you measure how much it changed from then to now.

That's how it works with quantitative logic - you never ask "is this the ship of Theseus?", you ask instead "how much of this entity is the ship of Theseus, as left initially in the Athenian harbour?"

Let’s take the idea of adding a new piece, say a secondary drive. Does that make the computer a new computer? Of course not, that drive belongs to the whole. Does it make it 6/5? Technically not, since you’re just counting the original pieces…

It can't be 6/5=120% - adding a secondary drive makes the computer slightly more different. It must be less than 100%.

Since I'm counting long-term storage as 20%, and it changed halfway (the old drive is still there), I'd argue that now it's 90% of the PC that OP bought. (Of course, those numbers are simply made up, what matters is the reasoning.)

even if said drive becomes integral to your PC by hosting you Linux distro you migrate to. [...] Others say it changed when you left your Windows loving wife over her poor taste in OS.

This adds two interesting bits of complexity:

Software is part of the PC. Data as a whole is. As such once you save a single file in a computer, the computer isn't exactly the same as it was before; similarity is now lower than 100%.
Relevancy. A drive hosting your system is more important than one not doing it, even if both are being used. Changing the former should count more to decrease similarity than the later.

but to be fair, it’s a thought experiment, not meant to be solved so much as a way to provoke critical thinking.

Yup. It isn't something serious; just some millenniums old talk. As such losing your train of thought is not a big deal, it's part of the fun.