EAG Talks Forecasting can get easier over longer timeframes | Toby Ord | EAG London: 2025
Most people believe forecasting gets systematically harder over longer time periods — that it is hard to see further through the mists of time. But there are many forecasting questions for which the reverse is true. In this talk, Toby Ord shows how this can be, teasing out a variety of different mechanisms which can make prediction about the further future easier. One upshot is that the prospects of long-term forecasting (and other kinds of systematic enquiry about the long-term future) are more promising than one may have thought.Toby Ord is a philosopher at Oxford University whose work focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity. He co-founded Giving What We Can in 2009 and helped launch the wider effective altruism movement. His 2020 book, "The Precipice," is a landmark exploration of the science and ethics of existential risk.