The shape of f(t) is essentially an empirical question. Thus, a key message of this framework is that we need to do more empirical research on the forecasting error function, including aspects such as (i) how quickly forecasting noise increases with prediction time-horizon, (ii) under what conditions does forecasting noise not increase rapidly with time-horizon, and (iii) how can we better predict the long-run effects of actions today.
I sort-of agree, and I’m definitely quite supportive of research into all of those things. But I think “essentially an empirical question” might be a bit misleading, since it gets very hard to gather extremely relevant empirical data as the forecasting time horizon we’re interested in gets longer.
My impression is that we currently have a tiny bit of fairly good data on 20 year forecasts of the most relevant kind. (I say “most relevant kind” to capture things like the forecasters making it clear what they were forecasting and seeming to be really trying to be accurate. In contrast, things like Nostradamus’s predictions wouldn’t count. See this great post for more explanation of what I mean here.)
Getting good data on 100 year forecasts of the most relevant kind will of course require waiting at least ~80 years. And so on for longer ranges.
So I think that, whatever empirical research we do, for the next few decades our views about the shape of f(t) over long time horizons will still have to be based on quite a bit of theory-, intuition-, or model-driven extrapolation from the empirical research.
That said, again, I am very much supportive of that empirical research, for reasons including that:
Our extrapolations should be better if we have more to extrapolate from
Even just getting a better idea of the shape of f(t) over e.g. 10-30 year time horizons, and getting better at forecasting over those horizons, could already be very useful for prioritisation decisions
One reason is that we may be able to affect the chance of entering into attractor states (and, in particular, facing existential catastrophes) during this time period
Yes, it appears that for long time horizons (>> 1000 years) there is not hope without theoretical arguments? So an important question (that longermism sort of has to address?) is what f(t) you should plug in in such cases when you have neither empirical evidence nor any developed theory. But, as you write, for shorter horizons empirical approaches could be invaluable!
I sort-of agree, and I’m definitely quite supportive of research into all of those things. But I think “essentially an empirical question” might be a bit misleading, since it gets very hard to gather extremely relevant empirical data as the forecasting time horizon we’re interested in gets longer.
My impression is that we currently have a tiny bit of fairly good data on 20 year forecasts of the most relevant kind. (I say “most relevant kind” to capture things like the forecasters making it clear what they were forecasting and seeming to be really trying to be accurate. In contrast, things like Nostradamus’s predictions wouldn’t count. See this great post for more explanation of what I mean here.)
Getting good data on 100 year forecasts of the most relevant kind will of course require waiting at least ~80 years. And so on for longer ranges.
So I think that, whatever empirical research we do, for the next few decades our views about the shape of f(t) over long time horizons will still have to be based on quite a bit of theory-, intuition-, or model-driven extrapolation from the empirical research.
That said, again, I am very much supportive of that empirical research, for reasons including that:
Our extrapolations should be better if we have more to extrapolate from
Even just getting a better idea of the shape of f(t) over e.g. 10-30 year time horizons, and getting better at forecasting over those horizons, could already be very useful for prioritisation decisions
One reason is that we may be able to affect the chance of entering into attractor states (and, in particular, facing existential catastrophes) during this time period
Yes, it appears that for long time horizons (>> 1000 years) there is not hope without theoretical arguments? So an important question (that longermism sort of has to address?) is what f(t) you should plug in in such cases when you have neither empirical evidence nor any developed theory.
But, as you write, for shorter horizons empirical approaches could be invaluable!