The Ship of Theseus: Human Edition
At what point do you become your successor? Replace yourself one slider at a time. Please retain your receipt and at least one metaphysical assumption.
01 / Interfere
Changes calculate immediately. Arrow keys work too.
The universe has no undo button. We have Reset.
02 / Observe the consequences
● LiveYou, with an asterisk
The replacement parts agree that you are you. The original parts were unavailable for comment.
Continuity of the organism, not original atoms.
Retained autobiographical material.
Resemblance to your starting dispositions.
Decisions authored without integrated AI.
Why this happened
↳After 5 years, time-driven drift is 0/100. Change occurs even when nobody purchases a replacement part.
↳Body replacement is 20%; memory modification is 10%. A new body does not automatically imply a new autobiography, and an old body does not guarantee an unchanged person.
↳AI integration leaves 78% independence in this model. That describes authorship, not whether there is someone home.
03 / Four philosophers enter a room
No unanimous verdictContinuity favoured
Gives priority to the continuing biological organism. An accurate upload does not by itself preserve that organism.
Strong connection to the starting self
Gives weight to connected memories and dispositions. This model cannot settle whether copying supplies the right causal connection.
The pattern mostly persists
Allows a change of substrate. Even a perfect match does not resolve what happens if two equally accurate copies wake up.
Not measurable by these sliders
No percentage here proves that experience continues, or even establishes whether an uploaded system has experience.
Open the machine / assumptions & arithmetic
What this instrument assumes
- We assume replacement and uploading are technically possible solely to make the thought experiment work. The sliders cannot establish whether an upload is conscious.
- Biological continuity tracks the continuing organism, not the percentage of original atoms. Ordinary bodily turnover is therefore not counted as disappearance.
- Memory continuity, psychological resemblance and independence are separate dimensions. Time introduces illustrative memory loss and personality drift; the rates are invented.
- The philosophical lenses deliberately disagree. There is no combined identity score, factual legal verdict, consciousness detector, or definitive threshold at which you stop being you.
How the numbers connect
Slider settings are scaled from 0 to 1. “Clamp” keeps a score between 0 and 1 before display as 0–100. The same inputs always give the same result.
Four separate continuities
Biological continuity = (1 − 0.85 × body replacement) × (1 − upload). Memory continuity = (1 − modification)^1.2 × (1 − 0.6 × drift). Drift = 1 − exp(−years / 2,500). Ordinary cellular turnover is excluded.
Resemblance is not a verdict
Psychological similarity = (1 − personality change)^1.15 × (1 − 0.3 × memory change) × (1 − 0.25 × AI) × (1 − 0.65 × drift). Independence = 1 − 0.88 × AI − 0.1 × upload × AI. Lenses apply different interpretations; their display thresholds are illustrative, not identity laws.
Model 1.0 · Editorial thought experiment
No background AI calls. No prophecy subscription.