Counting Galois representations

One of the main ideas that comes up in the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is a way of "counting" 2-dimensional Galois representations over $\mathbb Q$ with certain prescribed properties. We discuss the problem of counting other types of Galois representations, and show how this leads naturally to questions related to derived algebraic geometry and the cohomology of arithmetic groups. A key example will be the case of 1-dimensional representations of a general number field.