If an object is replaced from the inside out, is it still the original item? Is this Beetle still the same as the original one? This is the famous paradox of the ship of Theseus, which is usually formed at the intersection of mathematics and philosophy, and the ship of Theseus is one of the most famous paradoxes, which questions whether an object in which all its components have been replaced is still the same object, you know? Paradoxes are one of the miracles of human cognition, and they are difficult to solve with mathematics and statistics.
Theoretically, a paradox is a statement based on the original premise of the problem, which leads to obviously contradictory conclusions, and even the most famous and well-documented paradox will often fool the relevant experts, because the paradox fundamentally violates common sense, after all, people determine that a thing is its own basis, often not the elements that make up the thing, but the internal structure of the thing, that is, the relationship between the elements and the spatio-temporal continuity of the thing. The Ship of Theseus is a question posed by the Greek historian and philosopher Plutarch of the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD.
The specific description is as follows, in the endless sea, there is a large ship sailing on the sea, called the ship of Theseus, day after day of sailing caused the hull to be damaged to varying degrees, or each plank was damaged, so someone replaced it with a new plank, a few years later, all the parts of the hull were replaced again, from the perspective of the old and new, this is a new ship, at this point, the question is, at this time can we still call it the ship of Theseus? When people assemble the replaced parts into a ship again, is it the ship of Theseus? Who are the two ships that are the real Ship of Theseus?
In other words, suppose that every part that was replaced was stored, and a hundred years later, human technology could have reached the point of reversing decay and recombining it to create a ship, and at that time, the ship that was "rebuilt" would still be the original ship? If so, is the ship that was "repaired" in port the same ship as the original? Have you found that this thought experiment is the same as the "white horse not the horse" of the Hundred Sons and Hundred Gongsun Dragons, it seems that under normal circumstances, an object plus an adjective is no longer the object itself, and in reality, have you discussed with your friends the topic of "The Ship of Theseus"? For example, should monuments be restored? If monuments rebuilt after restoration by modern people, modern crafts, and modern consumables, even if they look the same and are in the same location, should these be called monuments?
Let's suppose there is an absolutely rational man Danno, Danno is deeply in love with his wife Ellie, and promises to love his wife forever, but one day, Ellie and Danno divorced, and Later Danno married another lady, Anna, at this time, should Danno love his ex-wife Ellie or his wife Anna? Perhaps anyone can clearly know the answer, that is, Dano's love is his current wife Anna, why don't we get caught in a dilemma at this moment? This is because "connection", to know that husband and wife is a connection, when this connection does not exist, Danno's definition of "wife" also changes.
It can be said that Danno still loves his wife, but his wife is not exactly equal to Ellie, the same is true of the ship of Theseus, when the plank is replaced, its connection with the ship has been severed, at the same time, it is no longer part of the ship of Theseus, therefore, there is no concept of the so-called "reassembly with the plank of the ship of Theseus", many people know that the human body is a process of continuous growth, human beings are metabolizing every moment, old cells will die, new cells will appear, then When every corner of the body is replaced, at that time, are we still the same as our original selves?
In fact, it contains the same truth as the ship of Theseus, we can even explain from the perspective of quantum mechanics, in quantum mechanics, there is such a basic formula, called the principle of full homogeneity, in fact, this principle is the basic fact generally recognized by the scientific community, the principle of all-homogeneity says that if there are two particles, their properties are exactly the same, which means that they have "all-assimilation", which is indistinguishable and completely equal, and the same is true of the cells of the human body, the old cells were once new cells. New cells will also slowly grow old, but no matter how they change, their properties will not change, except for cancer cells, they are all "all-homosexual particles", together constitute the human body, so, we have not changed, you are still the original self.
The Simpson Paradox, named after the British mathematician Edward Simpson, describes a phenomenon in which when we combine several groups with a clear trend, you will find that the trend of several sets of data disappears, and the real-life case of this paradox appeared in 1973, when the Graduate School of the University of Berkeley conducted a survey of enrollment rates by women for gender differences in admission, and the survey results showed that when each department was surveyed separately, the enrollment rate of female students was higher than that of male students, however, The average shows that the admission rate for boys is much higher than that for girls, how is this possible in theory?
In response to the above example, it was explained that a single average cannot explain the correlation of specific groups in the entire data set, in the above specific example, the female students apply in large numbers to departments with low enrolment rates, such as law and medicine, the fact is that these faculties admit less than 10% of the students, resulting in a very low proportion of female students enrolled, on the other hand, more boys will tend to apply for colleges with high enrollment rates, such as engineering, whose enrollment rate reaches 50%, so the proportion of male students admitted will appear very high, and at this point, the paradox of the Ship of Theseus, Does it also subvert your thinking? What do you think about this? Feel free to leave a comment below the comments section, thank you for watching this video, we will see you in the next issue.