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Why friction is necessary for growth

(jameelur.com)
158 points WanderingSoul | 2 comments | 29 Sep 25 13:39 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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gwd ◴[29 Sep 25 16:30 UTC] No.45415701[source]▶
Can I make a distinction between "friction" and "effort"?

If you're riding a bike up a hill, you can't go up without effort. But not all of your effort is actually moving you up the hill -- some of it is being lost in friction: inefficiencies in your muscles, friction in your gears and wheel and chain, wind resistance.

Similarly, you can't learn anything without effort; but it's often the case that effort you put in ends up wasted: if you're learning a language, time spent looking for content rather than studying content is friction; effort spent forcing yourself to read something that's too hard is effort you could have spent more profitably elsewhere.

Put that way, we should minimize friction, so that we can maximize the amount our effort goes towards actually growing.

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1. jimkleiber ◴[29 Sep 25 18:11 UTC] No.45416922[source]▶
Not sure how it translates outside of the physics space, but I'm pretty sure if one is trying to go up a hill, more friction would equal less effort. Because if there's less friction, then I think I would fight more against gravity?

For example, I'm thinking of trying to drive a car uphill on ice and the way to do it is to add more friction by making the tires more grippy.

Now, maybe where the friction is matters. If it's between the tire and road, perhaps it reduces effort, but if in the engine pistons, maybe it increases effort.

Actually makes me think about how too little friction or too much friction can cause problems, just like too little stability or too much stability, or too little mobility or too much mobility can cause problems in our joints.

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2. xdavidliu ◴[29 Sep 25 19:58 UTC] No.45418067[source]▶
nit: the grippy friction is actually static friction, which is different from kinetic friction, which is closer to what the article is referring to. Kinetic friction dissipates energy from objects in motion, similar to how when we're trying to get things done, we are moving and doing things, but jankiness and other sources of (kinetic) friction drag us down.

the "grippy" friction is closer in spirit to the concept of leverage: if I want to push something and get it moving, I need to brace my feet on the ground, otherwise when pushing the thing, I'm moving myself backwards and not making any progress.

While static and kinetic friction use the same word, they are actually quite different in spirit.