Draft talk:Ship of Theseus

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Improvements[edit]

Current goals for what needs improvement (no particular order). 1whispydog (talk) 10:18, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  • Better page formatting
  • Proper categorization
  • Properly format citations
  • More information about the thought experiment
  • Spelling and grammar checks
  • Factchecking stuff

Regarding the CN: This comes from Googling "when was parallel lives written?" There's different results, ranging from a review on a Goodreads page to a Wikipedia page of one of the biographies. I don't know exactly how best to cite this, so I'm leaving it as CN for now. 1whispydog (talk) 14:31, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Don't forget to mention Trigger's Broom. Spud (talk) 14:46, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
There is a similar idea in multicellular organisms[1] that has a bearing on which organs are more likely to develop cancer[2] but also bears on the existential question of whether a younger person is the same older person even if virtually all of their cells have been replaced. Bongolian (talk) 17:41, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
For humans, philosopher Derek Parfit addressed addressed the cellular replacement issue in the context of accounting for personal identity. (Reasons and Persons § Personal identityWikipedia). Bongolian (talk) 07:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Legibility of long S (ſ)[edit]

In Hobbes' writing, there are numerous instances of an ſ being used, where we would nowadays normally expect an s. This was standard writing for the time (See Why does the letter 'S' look like an 'F' in old manuscripts?)
It can make it difficult to read or for screen readers to parse correctly; should the quote be adjusted to make it more legible, or leave it as is? I opted to replace the ſ for the time being, as that's what WikipediaWikipedia appears to do. 1whispydog (talk) 22:50, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to use 's' replacement since it doesn't change the meaning. Bongolian (talk) 07:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)