That has little to do with what I was talking about. Something that "predicts" by thinking "If I am not holding the ball, move closer" has no concept of being able to "make it" to the landing spot. It couldn't care less where the ball ends up. All it needs to know is if it is currently holding the ball and how to get closer. The "how to get closer" is the predictor.

As I said, I understand you can make a control system that works that way. I'm just saying that humans don't appear to work that way, and possibly cortically-driven behaviors in general (across different species) don't work that way either.

Edit to add: see also the Memory-prediction Framework page on Wikipedia, for more info on feed-forward predictive modeling in the neocortex, e.g.:

The central concept of the memory-prediction framework is that bottom-up inputs are matched in a hierarchy of recognition, and evoke a series of top-down expectations encoded as potentiations. These expectations interact with the bottom-up signals to both analyse those inputs and generate predictions of subsequent expected inputs.