2 June 2026

Resolving the Ship of Thesus

How I resolve the problem philosophically is how it's handled in the Frictional Games masterpiece SOMA, when Mark Sarang says: "How do we remain the same? A continuous flow of thought and perception keeps an unbroken chain of continuity that we know as our self. Our conscious mind is not the pattern of our brain, but a continuous emergent entity based on that pattern."

And if you take into the fact that our bodies are constantly replacing and renewing our cells, and consider that most of the matter in you is not human, it is mostly a mix of good bacteria.

And if you take in the morality from The Good Place: "What matters isn't if people are good or bad. What matters is if they're trying to be better today than they were yesterday", then in all senses, you are an emergent entity from moment to moment.

Every second your cells are dying and dividing. Every day you try to be a better person than you were yesterday. And over time you might have metal stuck in you holding you together, have a root canal with a crown, or have a pacemaker, and even that may be replaced again. You may change friends, move house, move countries, change partners, and every year get older and put more skills on your CV.

'You' is a constantly changing entity, stretched across time and space, starting from the explosions of a supernova millions of lightyears away and creating stardust that coalesced together in the Earth and eventually created you as you are now. You are stardust, holding itself together with memories, bacteria, titanium screws, and a desire to do a little better tomorrow. So worry less about what you're made of, and more about what you will become.