Imagine if all hardware in your life was like iPads. You could be swapping out all atoms continuously, maintaining continuity via bits. The solution to the ship of Theseus conundrum is obvious. If the unique identifying bits are all backed up to the cloud, it’s the same ship.
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But in practice, clean separation of abstract global device state and hardware is somewhat newer due to fixed configurations in vertically integrated devices
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Suspect this feeling exists on a spectrum where it can be perceived to different extents. Notice it more after hardware has been repaired/replaced, or when traveling & using a laptop that isn’t my main computer.
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Yep
Btw, your ‘free shipping’ article is attracting quality attention from people I know who grok this stuff well; good work 🙂
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Hmm. I can’t even tell that this is not the same physical iPad. The entire identity of the device is a state restored from a backup plus a few hardware identifier numbers. Without identifying exterior scratches/dents, hardware instances are indistinguishable. Hardware is bosons. twitter.com/vgr/status/109…
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Reason these sorts of musings are uninteresting is that reality is much RICHER than this. You model assumes atoms are basically classical; it ignores everything interesting about them, starting with entanglement.
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