This is one of my favorite philosophical questions. At what point is something different?
[quote]The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late first century. Plutarch asked whether a ship that had been restored by replacing every single wooden part remained the same ship.[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
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4 RepliesAs an expansion of this question we should discuss the way teleporters work in star trek. When Kirk steps into a teleporter he is disassembled at the atomic level and rebuilt by different atoms at a different node of the teleporter. So, if Kirk is disassembled he dies and when he's reassembled with different atoms is he really still Kirk?