Incredible it took so long for someone to figure out what’s going on here.
I was about to say much the same observation, but with minor congratulations to devilsknew for stirring things up so efficiently with just a linguistic trick. Whether it was intentional or not, I’ll give you benefit of the doubt for doing it on purpose. 
If however you are genuinely interestrd in pursuing this theory of yours further (which was brilliantly stated at first, but fell apart the more you “explained” it) You’ll love reading
“Quantum Psychology” By Robert Anton Wilson. Especially the bits about backwards causality. Genuinely good book.
As to the argument: to paraphrase the case for the affirmative:
[list=a]
[li]Assume that people participate in games of chance with some (albiet tiny) expectation of winning.[/li][li]Assume that the players choose their numbers with the belief that their choice will help them win. This is a “belief about the future” - a weak prediction of sorts[/li][li]Once the draw is held, the players can be sorted into groups of those whose predictions came true, and those whose didn’t. In retrospect we can see who was right all along.(*)[/li][li]The fact that there are some accurate predictors demonstrates conclusively that accurate predictions can and do happen![/li][/list=a]
That was fun as far as it went, and is, in itself, pretty good logic until you ask questions about which predictions will be true before the event which imbues them with their ‘trueness’. Try to dissect the fallacy in the sentence (*) above without bringing quantum waveforms into the picture.
The “who has the precognitive ability?” and “what happens if?” questions are like that - they assume 1-dimensional time. Altogether correctly, I’ll add.
It’s hard to argue with the central argument: A statement, once proven to be true, must have been true from the start.
the case for the negative:
Unfortunately devilsknew followed up by defining the term ‘precognition’ out of existance, then shattered his follow-up argument into a few years bad luck’s worth of mirror shards.
By the time devilsknew was through with it, a “precognition” was anything that foreshadowed anything else, regardless of whether it was recognised as such at the time. This refusal to identify what is a precognition or isn’t is key in avoiding the uselessness of the new non-word.
In English, Precognition, as in cognition - is about knowlege and requires awareness, Awareness of its application, and awareness of its accuracy. You have to know that you know it. Without this context, it’s merely data. (can’t remember what this theory of knowlege is labelled)
If a time-traveller was to give me the winning lotto numbers on a piece of paper, but failed to tell me what they were, I wouldn’t be cognisant of the winning lotto numbers, I have no knowlege of them, just possession of them. So we are best to count out the random computer factor - it doesn’t know that it’s generating lotto numbers.
Some theories also state that knowlege has to be true. This is a strict interpretation, but easy to argue for once you know how to reference time variables and can handle the following statement:
A guess became an accurate prediction at the time of the draw. Even looking back in retrospect, it was just a guess yet is an accurate prediction.
… See the above-referenced book and the chapter on E-Prime to see how it’s the is word that’s causing us headaches. :dubious:
And to wrap up before I go to bed:
A statement, although now proven to be true, was not known to be true at the time. Hence it was not knowlege or precognition. 