Report from the Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology in Buenos Aires (24-29 July 2023)

In July, Joe Roussos attended the 17th Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology (CLMPST) in Buenos Aires. CLMPST is a world congress for these fields and attracts researchers around the world every four years. Joe was invited to take part in a panel entitled “Scientific Evidence and Uncertainty about the Long-Term Future”, organised by the Global Priorities Institute (GPI).

The panel aimed to broaden philosophical participation in and discussion of longtermism, by engaging with philosophers of science on issues relevant to that discipline and to long-term thinking. It featured 12 scholars from different countries, who work on a range of issues including causation, climate change, and decision theory, as well as general philosophy of science.

An interesting aspect of the panel discussion is that a large number of the invited speakers expressed doubts or concerns with longtermism in the sense that the GPI typically advances it. This made for a lively discussion and reflected positively on the GPI organisers and their willingness to invite debate and critique.

Joe’s talk discussed the limitations of long-term predictions. He argued that we have very limited abilities when it comes to long-term predictions: historical long-term predictions show very little skill, and their failures are rooted in our unawareness of future social and technological changes. So, when we are presented with arguments which rely in some way on long-term predictions, we should have very low confidence in their conclusions. It is an open question whether concern for the long term requires making such predictions, but Joe’s talk acted as a caution against linking the success of long-term thinking and action to prediction.