How to Listen to the Future: The Philosophy of Warning Signs

​We are constantly being warned, but we seldom heed warnings. Cautioned about authoritarian leaders, climate change, technological dystopias, or other catastrophes, we fail to take action or even take them seriously. Too often warnings are dismissed—much like the artists, scientists, environmentalists, and intellectuals who deliver them. Why don’t we listen? 

​In this Growth Lab LIVE session, Santiago Zabala asks us to think of warnings as “signs from the future.” He argues that warnings—as distinct from predictions—invite us to see the possibility of a radical break from the present. Predictions tell us to submit to the inevitable, but warnings ask us to take part in shaping a different future. 

​About the speaker:

​Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of a number of books, including Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (2017) and Being at Large. Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (2020), and most recently, Signs from the Future. A Philosophy of Warnings (2025). Zabala has also written opinion articles for publications including the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

​Agenda:

• ​​1830h - Doors open

• ​​1900h - Talk starts

• ​​2000h - Q&A

• ​​2030h - Drinks & Networking (upstairs at Bar Bailen)
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