On prophesies

History abounds in prophesies. A famous one is in the Bible about Herod (by the way, there were many Herods, who were conflated in the Bible): presumably a child would be born who would become king. Similarly mythical stories are about Oedipus and others. In most of these dire consequences are prophesized (I don't want to get into details because that's not the point): the child would kill his parents. Believing the prophesy, the father, most often king, tries desperately to kill of the child, but of course fails. The child ultimately kills his father (Freud would love this--he actually did). So the question is: why would the father try to kill the child? (Herod is "father image"). If he believes the prophesy, he should know that he cannot avoid it. So he might as well sit back and listen to classical music. If he thinks he can circumvent it, it is obvious that he doesn't believe it. In which case he might as well sit back and listen to classical music.

The same is true about modern-day soothsayers who presumably had foreseen some catastrophe and were desperately trying to warn the Authorities. The same inconsistency obtains. Don't they believe their own visions? If they do, why bother?

There are carefully worded ways in which a prophesy can be true and help allay a disaster--they are similar to careful time travel stories. But history or religion were not written by philosophers or mathematicians.

Here is one possible construct of a prophesy that is both true and actionable: "Either the father/king can find the child and kill him, or the child will kill his king/father (and maybe marry his mom)". This prophesy is not trivial, it has a truth value, it says something that had not been known before, tells the king to get off his ass (and stop lusting after his step-daughter, Salome), and it prophesizes a previously unknown outcome.

The same is true about those annoying, catastrophe-predicting soothsayers. In this case the prediction could be: "Unless the soothsayer succeeds in notifying the authorities about the impending catastrophe, the Empire State Building will crash into the Grand Canyon".