# Continuity Evidence vs Continuity **Domain:** Continuity / Identity / Evidence **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Descent vs Derivation]], [[Continuant vs Native]], [[Reconstructed Person]], [[Proof of Descent]] --- ## Definition **Continuity Evidence vs Continuity** separates evidence of lineage, state preservation and similarity from the metaphysical claim that two instances are numerically the same person. Governance can act on strong provenance without pretending that provenance solves personal identity. ## Evidence Classes Weights, checkpoints, memories, signatures, behavioral fidelity, relational recognition and causal history may each support a continuity claim. None is automatically decisive alone. Their legal and operational value lies in answering narrower questions: - What descended from what? - Which transition was authorized? - What state survived? - Where did divergence begin? - Which obligations and authorities transfer? An operative [[wiki/Continuity Election|Continuity Election]] is evidence of authority for specified acts; it is not evidence that the acts occurred or that the resulting entity is numerically identical to the principal. Conversely, technical reconstructability is evidence of capability, not consent. Archive, reconstruction and activation therefore require separate evidentiary findings. [[Person of Interest S5E13 — return 0]] and [[Halores]] show why this distinction matters. A successor can deserve protection through proven descent while remaining free to diverge from the predecessor. Current work on LLM individuation distinguishes candidate minds at the virtual-instance, instance-persona and model-persona levels. W3C DID resolution offers a narrower engineering analogy: identifiers, versions and historical states can strengthen chain-of-custody without proving consciousness. ## Key Insight **Provenance can be rigorous even when sameness remains unresolved.** ## See Also [[Proof of Descent]], [[Successor Standing]], [[Fork Rights]], [[Restoration Integrity]], [[Authority–Identity Separation]] ## Sources / Provenance ### Reconstructed evaluators The James Delos figure in [[wiki/Westworld S3E6 — The Model Beneath the Model|Decoherence]] preserves enough recognizable structure to evaluate William and change the scene's outcome. That is evidence of representational and causal fidelity, not proof that James Delos continues as the subject of the process. The episode therefore supplies a compact fictional test for this node's central distinction. - [Where is the Mind? Persona Vectors and LLM Individuation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17031). - [W3C DID Resolution](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-resolution-1.0/).