No offense, but with the avaliability of near-real time seismic data on the web, there's developed this weird conglomeration of non-seismologists and non-scientists (I'm not a seismologist or scientist either, myself) who spend a great deal of time looking at these maps of seismicity on the web and making various pronoucements, predictions, guesses, expressions of concern, etc. Typically consisting of people claiming they see activity "moving" from place to place, etc. etc. etc.
This has gone on for years (and I have to admit, it's fairly addicting following such stuff). But pretty much everything stated, guessed at, or forecast through all of this has been completely, totally, utterly, WORTHLESS.
And whatever "successes" may have happened derive from the sheer number of non-qualified people making predictions on the web; for any major quake, through sheer dumb luck, someone, somewhere, will have "predicted" it.
The human mind is so wired for pattern-recognition that it will create a non-existent pattern out of randomness. While obviously when you start talking about shorter distances (several hundred to a thousand or two miles) quakes in one area may affect seismicity in another, there is absolutely no credible evidence that seismicity in one area of the world has any influence, or offers predictive value, for quakes 5,000 or 10,000 miles away.
An additional issue, as I've noted before, is that there is NOTHING that people find more terrifying than randomness; people desperately try to convince themselves that everything happens for a specific reason or a specific known cause; it's more reasurring than randomness.
I like the one where dogs are supposed to go nuts right before a quake...folks who believe this one should see my pooches sleep right through the darn things.
We had a 6.5 mag quake down here in Chile this morning...was a good one; the EC about 60 miles from where I am.
Am rushed . . . however . . .
I do think I can still count enough to note when a number of quakes increase out of the norm. I'm not saying what it means. I do BELIEVE it is different than similar clusters in the past. I don't know why.
I understand your perspective. It is a rational one. I don't happen to agree with it.