Dang it Kav this is good. This is REALLY good.

Love the title -- it really adds an extra layer of meaning and depth to the image, invoking the transhumanist thought experiment that questions the core aspects of what makes us who we are. Nice work as ever.

One could make the same argument for the molecules that migrate in and out of our bodies over our organic lifetimes. We are our experiences, not our components, meat or metal. And as we experience the universe we too change. Who we are is fluid, a wave in the ocean, ever changing

i'd go one step further: we are not things, we are processes. an active mind is change, each thought is the act of replacing a plank.

That's a great way to put it. From birth to death, life is a continuously changing process, and our minds themselves are constructs which continuously form new patterns and connections while erasing and rewriting old ones. Even death is simply just another change, old patterns deconstructed and lost while new ones are formed from what used to make up a person.

Nothing ever truly ends. It just changes.

Yep, which means that it could be still a ship to be used, instead of wasting away like a derelict.
It means people cared for that ship to make it keep going.
It means that the ship is something important for many people.
You don't get that much material and that much effort put in on just something that nobody cares about.
A ship does not end with itself. A ship (especially well maintained) is also all the people who care for that ship and help it going on.
It might not be the ship it originally was... and that is a good thing.
Because the ship that it originally was would probably be (at that time) just a rotten thing full of larvae, grubs and woodworms.
But it was taken care of. It was loved, it was maintained.
When something broke, it got fixed, by other people no less... it was not left broken.
A ship is not alone, and perfection is not being immutable.
Perfection is (by definition) utopic, but the history of the ship's travel remains even after people stopped fixing it because it could not be fixed anymore and let it finally rest. 😜👍💖

If the ship retains it's name, then yes, it's the same ship. Love your art.

We're an active process, when the replacement and change stops, we're dead.

This is some fantastic design mate

This is quite literally my dream <3

I'm inclined to answer "yes," because the ship is a pattern of being. If the pattern is wrong, what exists isn't even a ship, only a pile of material.

What makes the ship Theseus' ship are the elements of that pattern-of-being that can't be replicated: history, use, legend. These are no less a real part of the pattern for not being physical.

Some would say that the Keel is the core and what really makes it a ship. The same could be said for the mind/soul of a person, as long as you are still you, it doesn't matter what the world thinks!