The Same Boat
Which one is the original boat?
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The Same Boat
A wooden boat sits in a harbour. Every year the crew replaces a plank or two as they rot. After forty years, not a single original piece of wood is left. Meanwhile, a collector has been quietly picking the old planks out of the skip and has rebuilt them into a boat of his own, in the same shape, in a shed across town.
Which one is the original boat?
Then ask
- What if the collector finished his version first, while the harbour boat still had half its old planks?
- Your body swaps out most of its cells over time. Are you the same answer as the boat?
- Does it change anything if the harbour crew kept the name and the collector didn't?
The classics and some new ones. A scenario, the question it forces, and the follow-ups that make it bite.