https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/1154003
TBH, the same is probably true of most Wikipedia articles which were created early in the site's history. It took a while for editors to settle into the writing style that's now characteristic of the site.
> According to an ancient Greek legend, Theseus had a warship that was preserved as a historical relic by the Athenians. Some of its boards rotted and had to be replaced. After many, many years, many such replacements occurred. Eventually, none of the original boards were present. Philosophers could then debate whether it was the same ship that Theseus had used, and if not, when it had ceased to be so.
versus the current version:
> The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. In Greek mythology, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?
While the story of the ship illustrates the problem nicely, it is not as important, as the ship is merely a vehicle to get the point across - and Theseus too, presumably.
Another submission currently on the front page might help answer that! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38670845
You go down to the docks, you see a half assembled ship, you ask about it, and they tell you that’s Hector’s ship. It’s not a ship yet. It’s a promise of a ship, and idea.
It’s still Theseus’ ship until he loses it gambling, and whether it continues to be a ship or is sold for scrap and becomes part of five other ships… well then the idea of the ship has died.
Which is what the deflationist explanation from the page seems to allude to?
(I had to go back and see if I had embarrassed myself when I stubbed in an article back in 2004. Meh — but just as well I stopped contributing to Wikipedia.)