In Odd Tinkering's most recent video, he purports to restore a classic slate version Game Boy Advance. It comes to him with a burn scar on the screen and a power supply issue, in amongst other things. He spends all this time cleaning up the console, using the last of his hydrogen peroxide unyellowing the casing, and most of the last of his isopropyl alcohol cleaning the internal components, just to pitch out the casing altogether and replace it with a 3D-printed original that can accept an internally-lit screen.
The FNS Theseus sets sail again.
A lot of game console restoration videos, not just from Odd Tinkering, invoke Theseus' paradox. The refurbisher receives a broken down old piece-of-crap game console and restores it to a functional state. However, in more videos than I'd like to see, people simply pitch out parts and replace them, up to and including the mainboard and exterior casing. Some, like Odd, will film themselves putting the console back together for testing at various points during the restoration process, after replacing parts to see if something about the console's operation is now functional. At the end of the video, more often than not, the refurbisher will have replaced so many parts that they basically rebuilt the system from nothing.
In the original ship of Theseus paradox, the timbers of King Theseus's ship rotted away one after the other and were replaced in due course until the entire ship was composed of replaced parts. Aristotle and Theophrastus argued that the ship the Athenians called the "ship of Theseus" was, in fact, a completely different ship. The only true ship of Theseus that I've seen Odd Tinkering build was the Game Boy Advance SP with the broken hinge. Honestly, I'll give him that one: the casing was cracked in more than 1 place and the ribbon cable for the screen was bent up to shit. Even then, he reused the same logic board and installed a new screen from a salvaged console.
In the case of the newest GBA "restoration" video however, he committed what I feel is the most essential faux-pas when it comes to restoration. He replaced the screen with an upgraded version that has internal lighting. In so doing, he committed the second-most essential faux-pas: the replacement screen would not fit into the original casing, thereby requiring him to 3D print a new one. Had he simply replaced the screen with a salvaged one, he would not have needed to replace the casing. Then, he has the audacity not to clean the logic board, absolutely assuring that at some point in the future it will need to be opened again to replace the logic board. "Oh, the screen's a bit dark, I'm just going to replace the screen with a modern replacement that requires a new casing, no big deal, thanks for watching my restoration video." I know that Finnish is Odd's first language, but he knows enough English to know the difference between "restoration" and "refurbishment". I guess that's why I'm taking so much offence, after basically singing Odd's praises after the Atari 2600 restoration. Incidentally, THAT was a restoration. So far as I know he replaced no major parts and simply cleaned up the ones that were existing. I mean, he replaced some capacitors, but where anyone else would have simply pitched out the original internals and replaced them with 3D-printed switches and a Raspberry Pi, Odd Tinkering actually restored the console. He did not do this to the most recent Game Boy Advance. He upgraded parts, thereby making it a refurbishment, not a restoration. English. I'm getting bent out of shape because of English semantics.
Still, I felt very betrayed by the amount of waste that went into that video. Assuming it had been properly labelled a refurbishment, he should have ordered the replacement screen before re-whitening the casing, which would have meant less hydrogen peroxide use. If the plan was always to pitch out the casing, that should have been done before the re-whitening process. If the plan was always to pitch out the screen and replace it, that should have been done before the new polariser was installed, which would have meant less waste in 3D-printing a cutting guide and then cutting the polariser out of the sheet. And, for some reason, the plan didn't include cleaning the mainboard adequately to prevent creeping corrosion problems years down the road. This was not only a ship of Theseus, it had elements of "fast fashion" to it as well.