I was referring specifically to the paper https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/bacon-garbage.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/bacon-garbage.

I was referring specifically to the paper https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/bacon-garbage.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs415/reading/bacon-garbage.pdf (found by pron in another comment). Where duality is in term of seeing reference counting as a form of negative-tracing. the paper also analyzes various techniques and claim that they mostly just mixes the two approaches. also if I can be facetious: > So here's how reference counting and garbage collection are duals: they both manage the memory lifetimes for objects not on the stack. that would be an equivalence, not a duality.