# Stubborn Attachments *Published October 2018 by [[Stripe Press]]. ~158 pages. Author: **[[Tyler Cowen]]**, economist at George Mason University, director of the [[Mercatus Center]], and host of *Conversations with Tyler*. The book Cowen has described as the culmination of 20 years of his philosophical and economic thinking — and the work that anchors **Progress Studies** as a respectable intellectual movement.* **Draft profile.** Cowen's short, deliberately accessible monograph arguing that **maximizing the sustainable rate of economic growth** is the supreme moral imperative — constrained only by an absolute floor of human rights. The book is the **bridge text** between mainstream growth economics and TESCREAL-adjacent longtermism: it provides the philosophical scaffolding for caring intensely about future generations without ever invoking [[Nick Bostrom]] or the rationalist canon, which is precisely why it travels so well in Silicon Valley. ## The Argument in One Page Cowen's case unfolds in five moves: 1. **Compound growth is morally enormous.** Small differences in growth rates produce vastly different futures over a century. A society that grows 2% rather than 1% per year is, after 100 years, *more than twice as rich.* That gap represents the difference between lives lived well and lives lived poorly for billions of people. 2. **Future people matter as much as present people.** We should *not* discount the welfare of distant descendants. This is the longtermist move — done with very little fuss and no Bostromian existential-risk drama. 3. **Therefore, sustainable growth dominates the moral calculus.** Almost any policy that durably raises long-run growth is more valuable than almost any policy that helps people today, because the future contains so many more people. 4. **Human rights are the absolute side-constraint.** Cowen explicitly rules out atrocities-for-growth: human rights cannot be traded against welfare gains, no matter the size of the gain. This is what differentiates the book from the utilitarian / [[Effective Altruism]] strand that produced [[Sam Bankman-Fried]]. 5. **Epistemic humility about the rest.** On most other questions, Cowen argues for "stubborn attachments" — durable rules and institutions that we don't second-guess, because reasoning under deep uncertainty cuts in favor of stability. ## Why It Matters in This KB ### 1. It's the bridge text between mainstream economics and longtermism *Stubborn Attachments* makes the longtermist conclusion (future people matter; act accordingly) reachable from **mainstream growth economics** rather than from Oxford philosophy or [[Rationalism]]. That bridge is why the book is foundational reading across the Silicon Valley investor class — it gives techno-optimist politics a respectable philosophical pedigree that doesn't require defending [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] or [[Nick Bostrom]]. See [[Longtermism]] for how the same conclusion is reached from the Oxford / FHI side. ### 2. It is the founding document of Progress Studies Although the *Atlantic* essay launching **Progress Studies** wouldn't appear until July 2019 (co-written by Cowen and [[Patrick Collison]]), *Stubborn Attachments* is the philosophical precondition. The Progress Studies thesis ("growth is morally urgent; we should study what produces it") is a direct corollary of this book's central argument. Stripe Press publishing *Stubborn Attachments* in 2018, then Collison and Cowen co-authoring the Atlantic essay in 2019, is **the canonical sequence** of how the movement was built. ### 3. It launders TESCREAL conclusions in growth-economics vocabulary The book reaches the same destination as [[Superintelligence (Book)]] — *the techno-elite should be free to drive long-run civilizational trajectory* — but does so without ever sounding like the rationalist subculture. That makes it the **velvet-glove TESCREAL** text par excellence: same politics, fluent in faculty-club idiom. ### 4. It is the most-cited Stripe Press title in tech-investor circles Appears on the reading lists of [[Patrick Collison]], [[Marc Andreessen]], [[Sam Altman]], and the broader [[Roots of Progress]] / [[Institute for Progress]] network. Functions as **shibboleth and credentialing device** for the Progress Studies in-group. ## Reception - **Inside Silicon Valley / Progress Studies world**: treated as a foundational text. - **In academic philosophy and economics**: politely received. Critics in the *Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics* and elsewhere flag the book's treatment of redistribution, environmental constraints, and political feasibility as underdeveloped. - **From the left**: critiqued as a sophisticated repackaging of trickle-down growthism with longtermist rhetoric. - **From the EA mainline**: Cowen's refusal to accept the standard utilitarian framework (which permits some rights-trade-offs) is sometimes treated as a limitation; from this KB's perspective, it's the book's saving grace. ## Critique The book's two largest blind spots, both relevant to this KB: - **Who decides what counts as growth?** Cowen takes "sustainable economic growth" as a measurable, agreed-upon target. In practice, the people setting that target — Stripe-Press-published authors, [[a16z]] partners, AI lab CEOs — are also the people who benefit most from the politics implied by it. The book never grapples with this. - **Human rights as side-constraint isn't enough.** Cowen rules out atrocities, but the bulk of TESCREAL-adjacent harm is *not* atrocities — it is the slow concentration of decision-making power in a techno-elite that the book's framework treats as a feature rather than a bug. See [[Émile Torres]] and [[Timnit Gebru]] for the structural critique of this entire genre. ## Companion / Counterpart Texts - *[[Where Is My Flying Car]]* ([[J. Storrs Hall]], Stripe Press 2021) — the Progress Studies counterpart from the engineering side; same conclusion via nanotech-utopian history rather than economic philosophy. - *[[Superintelligence (Book)]]* (Bostrom, 2014) — the rival route to the same longtermist destination, via existential-risk argument. - *The Great Stagnation* (Cowen, 2011) — Cowen's own earlier work diagnosing the problem *Stubborn Attachments* offers the moral response to. - *What We Owe the Future* ([[William MacAskill]], 2022) — the explicit longtermist text; *Stubborn Attachments* is the gateway drug. ## Draft Notes / To Expand - Add detail on Derek Parfit influence (Cowen credits him heavily) - Trace appearances on key 2019–2025 Silicon Valley reading lists - Map the explicit / implicit dialogue with Bostrom and MacAskill - Document the book's role in [[Patrick Collison]]'s broader intellectual project - Add specific page citations for the human-rights side-constraint argument - Cross-link to a future [[Progress Studies]] concept page once created ## See Also - [[Tyler Cowen]] — Author - [[Stripe Press]] — Publisher - [[Patrick Collison]] — Cowen's primary Silicon Valley collaborator; co-author of the Progress Studies launch essay - [[Longtermism]] — The philosophical destination the book reaches from a different starting point - [[TESCREAL]] — The broader bundle the book sits adjacent to - [[Effective Altruism]] — The utilitarian movement Cowen explicitly differentiates from - [[Extropianism]] — The deeper ideological ancestor of techno-optimist growth politics - [[Where Is My Flying Car]] — Counterpart Stripe Press title from the engineering side - [[Superintelligence (Book)]] — The rival foundational longtermism-adjacent text - [[Mercatus Center]] — Cowen's institutional home