# Institutional Retrocausality **Domain:** Predictive Governance / Causal Systems **Doc Type:** Canonical Corpus Term **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Institutional retrocausality** is the process by which a predicted future becomes a present cause because an institution acts on the prediction before the predicted event occurs. The term is not a claim about physical retrocausation. It describes policy, allocation and infrastructure carrying a forecast backward into present treatment. ## Sequence 1. A model predicts a future condition or life trajectory. 2. Institutions change resources, scrutiny or opportunity in response. 3. Those changes alter the subject's actual trajectory. 4. The altered trajectory is recorded as confirmation of the model. The model is therefore an actuator rather than a passive observer. [[wiki/Forecast-Induced Dissipation|Forecast-Induced Dissipation]] is its degradative form; [[wiki/Corrective Intelligence|Corrective Intelligence]] is its reparative alternative. ## Governance Implications Training data must record prior institutional interventions, not only subject outcomes. [[wiki/Model Contestability|Model Contestability]] must allow challenges to the causal framing, and [[wiki/Counterfactual Opportunity|Counterfactual Opportunity]] must preserve cases capable of falsifying the forecast. ## Principal Source [[articles/Peak Person and the Predicaments of Prediction|Peak Person and the Predicaments of Prediction]] ## Key Insight **A forecast used to change the world becomes one of the causes it claims merely to describe.**