Fair point, though I think that when it's low rez enough, it becomes less apparent that it's not in screenspace, and it gets closer to a retro look: https://youtu.be/EzjWBmhO_1E?t=102
There was a MUD I read a printout of the textile manual for when I was a kid (didn’t have a computer). It explained how to create mobs and zones, and one of the example characters they used repeatedly was a knight or paladin called Geoffrey. I think it also introduced me to kobolds.
I’d love to find it again and reread it.
I thought it was called Legends but that hasn’t turned up the same thing.
I played a Legends MUD game on a BBS, could that be it? I’ve looked for it for years on and off and finally found it recently. With text files, and Even the executables and database to run it.
America of Theseus is a great phrase, quite apt for describing "the American Experiment" and the numerous ways America reinvents itself. but I don't see how this usage of it provides any discernable meaning. Ship of Theseus is more a question than an answer, so saying "America of Theseus, therefore 1969 or any connection to it is irrelevant" doesn't follow.
I think it’s apt because the Ship of Theseus as a thought experiment is unanswerable. It’s both. It’s neither.
America does keep reinventing itself. It has few of the same parts as before, but it still resembles some concept of “America” in many ways. In that way it is the same ship.
But is it the same ship? Can it win a space race today that a previous manifestation of America could? Maybe it’s not the same ship and what it could do in the 60s it can no longer do today.
I certainly don’t think it’s a question that demands an answer. Perfectly valid to choose not to show up to the starting line. But having run that race under the same banner generations ago doesn’t tell us much about the America today.
My comment is borderline off topic, but I just can leave it at that. Sorry.
> I think it’s apt because the Ship of Theseus as a thought experiment is unanswerable.
It is answerable, you just need to go meta a little. You can argue that the Ship of Theseus doesn't exist (and didn't existed) because it is just a lot of wood. You can use reductionism further and say that wood doesn't exist, it is a bunch of atoms or quarks or whatever. The ship is just a leaky abstraction people are forced use because of their cognitive limitations. But if it is an abstraction, not a "real" thing, then I see no issues with the ship existing (in a limited sense) even after it changed all the atoms it consists of.
The other approach is to declare that a ship is not a thing, but a process. Like you do when talking about people, who change their atoms all the time, but they still keep they identity in a "magical" way. If you see people as a process, then it doesn't matter how often it replaces its matter with another matter. Like a tornado, which exists while exchanging matter with environment all the time and still being the same tornado. Or like a wave on a water surface, it doesn't have any atoms moving like a wave, but still a wave exists.
> It has few of the same parts as before, but it still resembles some concept of “America” in many ways.
It doesn't matter if there any old parts left, what matters is a continuous history.
> But is it the same ship?
It is the same ship, but its properties are changing over time. Like when people become older, some of them become wiser for example, some become physically weaker.
> But having run that race under the same banner generations ago doesn’t tell us much about the America today.
Yeah, with this I can fully agree. BTW we don't know was the Ship of Theseus becoming better or worse after repairs, but I'd bet that its maximum speed was changing due to repairs.
I agree with what you are saying, but feel that the original usage (above) had a POV, as if that POV was in keeping with the thought experiment. (now, any POV is in keeping from a thought experiment, but it cannot be said except in extremis to follow from the thought experiment
I think there are many more examples of his point. Food, for example. McDonalds famously adds non-uniformity, scorch marks, etc to their bread and meat to make it appear as if it wasn't manufactured within small dimensional tolerances.
Thanks. Starting with the butterfly and playing with the rotation slider I did manage to produce some seriously "biblically accurate" butterflies. No emergent evolutionary biology yet, but still fun.
Maybe stupid answer, but I’ve read a few older papers that used ensembles to identify when a prediction is out of distribution. Not sure what SotA approach is though.
