On Jan 21, 5:55 pm, alex23 <wuwe...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jan 21, 10:39 pm, Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benja...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > This is a very old problem (still unsolved I > > believe):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus > > +1 internets for referencing my most favourite thought experiment > ever :)
+2 Oscar for giving me this name. A more apposite (to computers) experience: Ive a computer whose OS I wanted to upgrade without disturbing the existing setup. Decided to fit a new hard disk with a new OS. Installed the OS on a new hard disk, fitted the new hard disk into the old computer and rebooted. The messages that started coming were: New Hardware detected: monitor, mouse, network card etc etc. but not new disk! Strange! The only one thing new is not seen as new but all the old things are seen as new. So… Ask a layman whats a computer and he'll point to the box and call it 'CPU'. Ask a more computer literate person and he'll point to the chip inside the box and say 'CPU' Ask the computer itself and it says 'Disk'. Moral: Object identity is at best hard -- usually unsolvable -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list