The spatial distribution of seismicity is often used as one of the indicators of zones where future large earthquakes are likely to occur. This is particularly true for intraplate regions such as the central and eastern United States, where geology is markedly enigmatic for delineating seismically active areas. Although using past seismicity for this purpose may be intuitively appealing, it is only scientifically justified if the tendency for past seismicity to delineate potential locations of future large earthquakes is well-established as a real, measurable, physical phenomenon as opposed to an untested conceptual model. This paper attempts to cast this problem...