Rule

so you're saying it's a different article now?

But at what point did it become a different article?
- a while ago

That "modern embellishment" is not a great example. It changes the context of the ship's existence from a physical entity to a legal entity. I like the thought experiment but if you keep changing basic definitions it will get you less than nowhere

I think that’s literally the joke
- The literal joke is that the article has become an example of the very thing it describes, and perhaps a better example than the modern embellishment example

I like the implication of this, but I wonder are there none of the same words that haven't just been shunted around?

Knowing Wikipedia it's probably just the same three guys making changes and trying to claim it as their territory.
- Fun fact: there is an add-on called something like "wiki blame", "who edited", or "who wrote". Which is basically Git blame for Wikipedia. So you can see who and when they edited a specific section of an article.
If you delete a sentence, and re type it, is it the same sentence? What about if you copy and paste it somewhere else in the article?
- The website of theseus.
  
  I do believe there's a lot of philosophy in bringing this analogy to modern, or even semi modern, times.
  
  Two ships both with the same name are absolutely different ships.
  
  Two books off the same press, are different books?
  
  Is the website I'm viewing on my phones screen the same as the website you've viewing on your device? If we change the settings of a web pages code from night mode to full color is it the same website?

Every time the article's bits are replicated to another cloud server, and the old one is decommissioned, does it become a new article?

There is a legal answer to the question, and the answer is yes, it would continue to be the same ship, at least according to Lloyds of London.

In philosophical terms, also the same boat. It has continued to exit as something we would recognise as a ship throughout, and has not been modified, merely repaired.

What if I take all of the pieces that were removed, and put them back together? Would that be a different boat?
- Yes
- It would be a new boat, yes. The component parts are older, but it has existed as something we would consider a boat for a shorter amount of time.

I'm pretty sure this is a 1:1 repost of this post on the official Wikipedia Mastodon account

I really like the modern embellishment, but yes, US law in the 21st century has really demonstrated there's a stark difference between legal philosophy and existential philosophy (or law and morality, or crime and wrongdoing / evil).

We've seen a similar situation with Windows XP, 7 and 8 in which the OS required re-activation (phoning home) if the hardware of the computer system changed too dramatically. The response of the public was to make, distribute and update Windows Loader which voided all necessity for activation ( and gave it a valid, if generated, key). So while capitalist systems might want to rent-seek by asserting the Ship of Theseus is different now, public-serving governments tend to assert that the ship is the same.

There's also the matter that the human body (one of many life forms) changes all its parts over time and its existential identity stays the same even as the personality it hosts changes. We completely depend on the assumption of continuity regarding both our legal and existential selves. (Which means DeepSouth is absolutely an early step towards computer-simulated human brains as a means to create legal immortality for billionaires that don't want to rely on hereditary inheritance of their legacy.)