Prediction Theory

This section is not about technique. It is about what a prediction is allowed to claim once it has been made. If a chart can be read, what exactly has been read — a fixed outcome, a tendency, or a range of possible responses? The essays here take the uncomfortable questions in order rather than deferring them.

The first three set out the ground: what use a reading has, why a fate can be predicted at all, and what the act of prediction actually consists of. The next four are about failure and scale — the problem with formulas, what injury, illness and disaster mean inside the model, how the principle of adaptation works, and why many people die at once when the model is supposed to be about individuals. The last three are method questions that decide real readings: whether the hour of birth can be fixed, how much the day matters, and what to do with a system like the nine stars that has been folded into the tradition.