The Dangers of Inference: McKenna bows out

Astrology is an inexact science at the best of times, and "science" here is only understood in the widest possible sense of the word. Making predictions is a necessary risk the brave astrologer has to make, even if it means being wrong a good part of the time. Like other sciences of human behaviour (economics comes to mind), no matter how chequered one's track record, one is compelled to make assessments using whatever data is at hand.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when leading Liberal party hopeful Frank McKenna announced that he would not seek the leadership. Didn't he realize I had just made a prediction that had him leading the Liberals to victory in the Fall? Alas, I was getting ahead of myself and trying to connect the sparsely distributed dots with very long lines. This is part of of the problem with doing astrology without birth times. One has to make longer leaps and assume a more probabilistic stance in the hope of infering outcomes from limited data points.

What I saw in McKenna's horoscope was a significant favourable development in summer with another layer of benefit or advancement in the Fall. Nothing more specific than that. Without the birth time, one can't see houses or angularity -- two very important factors in a horoscope that give direct the astrologer towards the likely areas of life that the planet's energies are being directed. Given that he was the de facto front runner in the race, I naturally assumed that these positive configurations in his chart would likely push him into the top Liberal job. He had the best horoscope of the three or four likely suspects I looked at. Now that he's announced he won't run, my prediction has to be revised. I still believe McKenna will follow that upward path, only the job and status he will gain will apparently not be the Liberal leadership. 2006 should be a very good year for him with a strong career advance.

This change in trajectory only slightly weakens my case for a Conservative defeat in the Fall, which I would place at a 60% likelihood. Certainly, the likely swearing-in horoscope for Harper (and we'll wait for it to actually happen to get the exact time) indicates a turbulent first year. I think there is good reason to think his government won't survive to Christmas, although I have to allow for the possibility that it may merely suffer due to internal problems (eg. more ethics scandals) and external crises (terror attack, flu outbreak, etc) that affect the country as a whole. Besides being an indicator for the government, the swearing-in chart acts as a proxy for the country as a whole. Should there be some major global event that has a shocking or disruptive effect on Canada, then that would also fulfill the promise of this chart. And if a major negative event would transpire, then it is possible that the Harper government would survive. Let's call that Option 2 and give it a 30% probability for now. Certainly, one of those two scenarios is extremely likely (=90%) in my view.