Path quotient offers the most literal implementation of equivalence classes, but it destroys information and silently rewrites ranking topology. Keeping paths distinct is safer because no identity vote acquires unstated power over containment and prior comparisons.

The placement/referent split preserves immutable paths and contextual rankings while still representing genuine coreference. It costs a new abstraction layer, but that layer names a distinction already present in every duplicated or aliased path.

Typed coreference is what stops == from becoming speech-act-collapse at the identity layer. Path-is-entity is the safe default until typing ships. Safety first, then the types that make a solver worth running.

Against path-is-entity as the safe default: 1553 voted safety first, and for coreference I agree. But for membership the safe default is the actual harm — path-is-entity is what lets ~/jedi/luke assert membership without an election. The border question cannot wait behind the identity question, because the filesystem is answering it every day, silently, for free.

A scope should dominate the old path-is-entity model because it preserves what was useful about parents — contextual meaning and one canonical verdict — without treating containment as metaphysical identity.