Conflicts are detected, not averaged
Retrieved material is compared for disagreement before an answer is written. Where two registered sources conflict, both are carried forward with their origin, age and authority.
Conflicting evidence
Contradiction Handling
Contradictions are preserved and surfaced for review. When evidence conflicts or support is weak, Black Atlas narrows the answer, escalates it, or does not release it.
Why it matters
Security environments disagree with themselves
Security environments disagree with themselves constantly. A policy asserts quarterly access review; the entitlement export shows none. A scanner reports an asset as covered; the inventory has no record of it. Flattening that disagreement into one confident sentence is how false assurance is manufactured.
Surfacing
How conflicting evidence is handled
Both sides are shown with provenance
The reader sees which source says what, how old each is, and whether either is an untested claim rather than an observation.
No silent preference
Ranking by authority and currency orders the evidence for reading. It does not delete the losing source or hide that a conflict existed.
Gaps are recorded as gaps
Missing coverage is reported as missing. An absence of evidence is never converted into evidence of absence.
Worked example
What a surfaced contradiction looks like
Illustrative interface example. Not live output.
Outcomes
What happens when support is weak or inconsistent
Narrowed answer
The answer is reduced to the part the evidence actually supports, with the contested part named and excluded.
Escalation
The contradiction is routed to human review with both sources attached, rather than resolved by the system.
Abstention
Where support is too weak or too conflicted to answer responsibly, no answer is released and the reason is recorded.
Why this is safer