[deleted attacking comments - Moderator]
Let me provide an analogy of how astrology works. It is not "generalization and conjecture"
Go out into the meadow or forest behind your house. There you find a flower you've never seen before. You want to know what it is.
You have a plant identification book gathering dust on your bookshelf, so you begin to look through it, trying to identify this flower.
The book first divides all plants into two groups: flowering or non-flowering. The first group contains all plants that produce flowers. The second holds plants that don't, such as conifers, ferns, grasses.... Your plant has a flower.
The book might then ask "how many petals"? "What branching pattern?" "Leaf structure?" and on and on.
After a very thorough, detailed examination of the many separate characteristics of your flower, you determine that it is Magnolia grandiflora, var. "St. Mary's"
In order to "identify" a unique human being, astrology follows a similar procedure.
I use chart pattern (the arrangement or distribution of the planets around the Earth at the time of birth) as a preliminary step in chart analysis. This places the individual in one of seven broad categories of temperament type. Then I look for preponderances -- there are many kinds of them -- and each one of these, if I find them, further narrows the "type" of human being described by the chart. It is the progressive narrowing of potentials that finally describes the "species" of person....a fine specimen of Magnolia grandiflora.
Computers, I think, work in the same way. A whole series of zeros and ones finally leads to a specific color on the screen. A single change at any point in this chain of Yes-No gates results in a totally different outcome.
As far as retrogradation...
I have 4 retrograde planets in my personal chart. I am an introvert. My life has been full of detours and "whoops".
But to really understand what these 4 Rx planets are "saying" about my character and my destiny demands knowing which planets are retrograde, their position in relation to the other planets, their aspects, the condition of their lords, the houses they are associated with, and a host of other factors -- and each of these conditions further specifies or individualizes "me", describes me as a unique being, different from every other creature on this Earth. We begin with generalization and then, step by step, refine our analysis until we have a very specific portrait of a unique individual.