Philosophy of Physics Seminar (Thursday - Week 1, HT20)

Historically, science has been reluctant to make long-term predictions about the future. One interesting exception is astronomy, where the combination of relatively low complexity, low noise environments and large timespans as well as strong theories have allowed the field of physical eschatology to emerge. This talk will outline the development of physical eschatology, discuss the current main models, and try to analyse the methodological challenges of such extreme long-range predictions, especially in the light of longtermist ethics increasingly being interested in some of the results as being potentially relevant for deciding near-term strategies.