In 2011 Cowen published a digital pamphlet in which he argued that since the 1973 oil-price shock, America had experienced a hidden crisis of lost growth that would be resolved only by the development of new technology. He called this period the “Great Stagnation”, and he proposed a cultural solution rather than an economic one: raise the social st... See more

Douthat: So do you fear a plausible future where A.I., in a way, becomes itself stagnationist? That it’s highly intelligent, creative in a conformist way. That it’s like the Netflix algorithm: It makes infinite OK movies that people watch. It generates infinite OK ideas. It puts a bunch of people out of work and makes them obsolete. But it deepens ... See more