h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Interesting article. It's nice to start the day with ontological and philosophical ideas to spark ones thoughts. I would posit that asking if this sock or boat or person is the same as before only points to the human habits of wanting classify and label things. Whether the sock has been darned or not is irrelevant. The mere passage of time has changed the sock. Is it the same sock? No, it is the sock that *was* the sock. Am I the same person/entity I was 10 years ago? No. Besides the point that all of my cells and molecules have changed through time and setting aside the fact that my own sense of self has also changed and my experiences and knowledge have changed me, time itself has changed and therefore I have changed with it. Time has moved on and so have "I" with it. Only if "I" were frozen in time would I be the same "I". I have continuity with the previous "I", but I am not the old "me".
Of course if one were to follow my train of thought to its extreme one would waste one's entire life reintroducing one's self to everything and would never make down to the pub.

... and, by the time you got to the pub, you would have to start a new tab; or, at least part of you would.

Indeed it is our human trait, or habit if you will, of naming and catagorizing things that gives rise to this whole conversation. The sock that is is the sock that was only if we wish to percieve it so. There is no part of the sock that is sock. There is yarn and lint and accumulated debris, and the yarn is probably a synthetic compound of elements but no part of it is a sock. We give it the name and form of sock (or Theseus' Boat or boat at all). So it matters not at all what compounds make up the object that we percieve, it matters only that we percieve it as sock (or boat or yellow brick road). Is it the same sock? Why not if in our mind we percieve it as the original then to us it is.
Now, what pub were we percieving as having drinkable beer?

And if you put said item over your hand does it stop being a sock and become a glove puppet.

On a more serious note I spent time on an orthopedic word one one poor blokes injuries included massive brain damage that robbed him of his memoris and changed his personality. His wife said "...he's not the same man..."

It has been wisely said that we live 100% of our lives above our shoulders and between our ears. All of our experiences consist of interpreted sensations and nothing else.

Any one of us could be running the universe

Nonsense. I run the universe and that is that.

My Uncle, towards the end of his life, suffered from a memory impairment that greatly reduced his ability to store new memories. A long car trip was just a quick blip to him once he arrived as the memory of the trip had not been stored. Oddly this in no way distressed him and he lived happily in the present for months before kidney failure finaly stopped his life.

There are several excellent books written by Oliver Sachs on the suprising ways brain injury affects the day to day perceptions of it's victims. Very entertaining and not at all clinical.

That should have been my point. We are, each of us, running our own universe.

The story certainly rings true, as some of it is reminiscent of my aunt's bout with Alzheimers.

Can you recall the name of the book? Sounds intriguing.
For a similarly excellent layman's book, on emerging viruses and disease, might I suggest "A Dancing Matrix How Science Confronts Emerging Viruses" by Robin Marantz Henig?

Fascinating work that virtually predicts West Nile Virus and SARS.

I am suffering with degradation of socks. What was once a small hole in a large sock has become a large hole in a small sock.

To follow this to its logical conclusion, with time, my once-complete sock will have become a complete hole, with nothing to define its once-socky existence.

Doesn't that change the nature of things ?