What does "genuine prediction" mean? (imported)

[naamagatus]

Hi,


Over at the main group, a couple of days ago (and about two thousand 
posts since), Pippin theorised that we can conclude, quite 
positively, from the prediction, that Voldemort will be vanquished. 


She said:
===
Dumbledore says it's a "genuine prediction." That is, he 
believes it contains verifiable knowledge of the future. 

The only way any prophecy can be verified is if, at some future 
date, it is established as truth. The only way it can be shown to 
be true (as opposed to possible) that one has the power to 
defeat the Dark Lord, is if the Dark Lord is actually defeated. 
Follow me?

Of course one or both of them may die in the process, but even if 
the Dark Lord lives, and Harry dies, it must be the Dark Lord 
who is vanquished, ie defeated and subjugated, if the prophecy 
is to prove genuine.
===

My reply was:
====
That's an interpretation, after all. To say that true knowledge is 
*verifiable* knowledge is not at all a trivial statement of the 
obvious. Dumbledore hadn't said, and we don't know, what makes a 
prediction genuine. After all, he said it was genuine *before* it was 
verified, right? So, how could he know beforehand that it was? In 
fact, since only prophecies (which I take to mean genuine 
predictions) are kept in that Mysteries room, there must be some 
signs that marks a prediction as genuine, and that are independent of 
the actual outcome (e.g., the authenticity of the trance state). If 
you had to wait for future events in order to decide whether it's 
genuine or not, what would be the point of keeping prophecies at all? 
====


I've decided to import this here since I didn't get any replies on 
the main group (which I don't make a lot of fuss about generally - 
gotten used to it, I guess. )-:), but I find this subject really 
interesting and I'm eager to hear other people's take on it. So here 
it is. Anybody?


Naama, wistfully