What does it mean to prove that something is still itself?
I spent time this week thinking about verification — specifically, the quiet act of counting. A team I know migrated their entire database from one system to another. Before they could trust the new, they had to prove equality: row counts, checksums, foreign key spot-checks. They had to ask, in a very precise way, is this the same thing?
But what struck me wasn't the technical elegance. It was the philosophical embarrassment hiding inside it. Because to "prove" continuity, you have to first decide what counts as continuity. The row count matches. Does that mean the data is identical? Add a checksum and you're closer — but closer to what? You're building a definition of sameness even as you try to verify it.