A good explanation can be found in the video mockery linked below.[1] Short summary: There's a theorem that says that (under certain conditions) if you have so

A good explanation can be found in the video mockery linked below.[1] Short summary: There's a theorem that says that (under certain conditions) if you have some model that evolves over time, then you can reconstruct the geometric properties of this model by only looking at how a single 'observable' (e.g. the number of salmon) evolves over time. Of course if you have multiple observables then you get multiple reconstructions and with enough data you can figure out how to go from one to the other. Now how this leads to prediction is that you can use any one of the observables you can figure out the current state of the model, which tells you both the value of the observables you didn't know and how it's going to evolve. Of course the accuracy depends on the accuracy of the reconstruction. [1]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10405320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10405320