I should point out that I'm fairly familiar with the literature roughly up to the level that Clojure takes advantage of (I've used it to implement custom versio

I should point out that I'm fairly familiar with the literature roughly up to the level that Clojure takes advantage of (I've used it to implement custom versions of persistent maps and RRB trees that store to disk). There may be more advances since then or techniques I'm not familiar with. I think the problem I'm describing is fundamental, but I'm not a researcher and am not claiming any advanced knowledge beyond being an experienced Clojure developer that is familiar with the internals.