The number isn’t an opinion with a percent sign. It’s an evidence-backed estimate published with an interval, a precedent count, a tamper-evident freeze, and, where a market exists, the market’s price beside it. The forward record is early, so maturity is shown with the receipt instead of implied.
#3238 — Hormuz closes, oil to $200 — prints at 6.5%, interval 0–14%, on 40 precedents, beside the market’s 3.0%. Everything but the machinery travels with the number: an edge you can see is an edge that gets arbitraged away.
Thin evidence prints a wide band; it narrows only when the record earns it. We claim certainty in proportion to what history supports — no further.
No probability sits at the extremes. Certainty about the future is the one call history always punishes.