The last Open Thread was in October 2017, so I thought we were overdue for a new one.
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I'm trying to distinguish between cost-effectiveness analyses (quantitative work that takes a bunch of inputs and arrives at a output, usually in the form of a best-guess cost-per-outcome), and theoretical reasoning (often qualitative, doesn't arrive at a numerical cost-per-outcome, instead arrives at something like "...and so this thing is probably best").
Perhaps all theoretical reasoning is just a kind of imprecise cost-effect analysis, but I think they're actually using pretty different mental processes.
Sure, but forecasters are working with pretty tight time horizons. I've never heard of a forecaster making predictions about what will happen 1000 years from now. (And even if one did, what could we make of such a prediction?)
My argument is that what we care about (the entire course of the future) extends far beyond what we can predict (the next few years, perhaps the next few decades).