It seems to me that the point of thought experiments often is less about the answer you get to and more about realizing that the question itself is not nearly as clear as you thought it was.
Worrying about the exact moment when it stops being the same ship is missing the point that “same ship” is merely a practical abstraction, not an objective description of reality.
Reginald Selkirksays
My favorite:
Could God create a stone so large that His hitting Himself in the head with it would explain the change in personality He underwent between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
it’s an imperative to camus “we must imagine sisyphus happy,” unless i’m remembering that wrong, or it reads different in french, so i’m thinkin… regardless of these circumstances, we gotta. question answered.
Reginald Selkirk@2: No need to invoke a honkin’ big rock. The New Testament is what happened after God got religion.
macallansays
Some things about the Hilbert Hotel I’ve been wondering:
– are all floors covered in Sierpinski carpets?
– how much Cantor dust does it accumulate in a day and how much time does it take to clean it up?
Could God create a stone so large that His hitting Himself in the head with it would explain the change in personality He underwent between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
And would hitting himself again make things better, or worse?
Reginald Selkirksays
@6: Didn’t that happen when He created Islam, or Mormonism?
I’ve seen this image shared many times but I do not know the original source. Does anyone know if the artist has a website and other comics?
@2
Is this the same rock that explains how early versions of the Iphigenia myth had Agamemnon actually sacrifice his daughter to Artemis, and then in later versions the writers changed the story so that she got swapped out for a deer instead?
That one seems pretty easy to explain: the culture of the humans writing religious text changes over the centuries, and the NT was written by people from a completely different culture than the writers of the OT.
It seems to me that the point of thought experiments often is less about the answer you get to and more about realizing that the question itself is not nearly as clear as you thought it was.
Worrying about the exact moment when it stops being the same ship is missing the point that “same ship” is merely a practical abstraction, not an objective description of reality.
My favorite:
Could God create a stone so large that His hitting Himself in the head with it would explain the change in personality He underwent between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
it’s an imperative to camus “we must imagine sisyphus happy,” unless i’m remembering that wrong, or it reads different in french, so i’m thinkin… regardless of these circumstances, we gotta. question answered.
Reginald Selkirk@2: No need to invoke a honkin’ big rock. The New Testament is what happened after God got religion.
Some things about the Hilbert Hotel I’ve been wondering:
– are all floors covered in Sierpinski carpets?
– how much Cantor dust does it accumulate in a day and how much time does it take to clean it up?
Could God create a stone so large that His hitting Himself in the head with it would explain the change in personality He underwent between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
And would hitting himself again make things better, or worse?
@6: Didn’t that happen when He created Islam, or Mormonism?
I’ve seen this image shared many times but I do not know the original source. Does anyone know if the artist has a website and other comics?
@2
Is this the same rock that explains how early versions of the Iphigenia myth had Agamemnon actually sacrifice his daughter to Artemis, and then in later versions the writers changed the story so that she got swapped out for a deer instead?
That one seems pretty easy to explain: the culture of the humans writing religious text changes over the centuries, and the NT was written by people from a completely different culture than the writers of the OT.