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I also got a bit thrown by the whole "acoustic/electrical" thing. what's up with that?



Oh, that. Easily explained :

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The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge



In other words: Event is to portent what thunder is to lightning.

It's what is meant by counter- in

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The difficulties of [...] counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation



that's troubling.

Counter- as in counterespionage (which would make counterestimating the opposite of estimating hence by a failure to interpret) or as in counterpart (which would make by failure to interpret difficult to interpret -- how can you find it difficult to fail to do something? I find it terribly easy to fail myself) ?