In reasoning so, he showed that, as we go through life, there is a value in trying to do such tasks as designing a perpetual-motion machine: there are some problems that we will never be able to solve, and it’s useful to understand why. ... What prevents perpetual motion, Leonardo realized, is the inevitable loss of momentum in a system when it rubs against reality. Friction causes energy to be lost and prevents motion from being perpetual.
Necessary Drag
Removing friction sometimes creates chaos.
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Clausewitz said that battle plans were great but ultimately subject to “friction”—delays, confusion, mistakes, and complications. What is friction? ... Friction is the Russian rasputitsa, the endless mud that makes quick work of brilliant plans and bigger armies.
Boyd said von Clausewitz’s second major flaw is that he spends a lot of time talking about how a commander must minimize “friction”—that is, the uncertainty or chance that always appear in the “fog of war.” He does not deal with maximizing the enemy’s friction—as does Sun Tzu—but only with minimizing his own. As Boyd said to Spinney, “Sun Tzu tried to drive his adversary bananas while Clausewitz tried to keep himself from being driven bananas.”
For lack of a better term, I have labeled this new problem substance cognitive friction. It is the resistance encountered by a human intellect when it engages with a complex system of rules that change as the problem changes. ... Playing a violin is extremely difficult but low in cognitive friction because although a violinist manipulates it in very complex and sophisticated ways, the violin never enters a "meta" state in which various inputs make it sound like a tuba or a bell.
“Sure,” she replied with a lilt in her voice, “I was thinking I might make a tennis player after all.” She was right. Joan was beginning to sense the difference between “trying hard,” the energy of Self 1, and “effort,” the energy used by Self 2, to do the work necessary.
The alternative to overpowering policy resistance is so counterintuitive that it’s usually unthinkable. Let go. ... If you calm down, those who are pulling against you will calm down too.
If we find something that works, we stick to it. Once we find something that works—no matter how badly—we tend not to look for a better way.
But sender and recipient both know that it’s a poor substitute for purchasing a card in a shop, writing on it by hand, and then walking to a postbox to post it, because contrary to the cliché, it isn’t really the thought that counts, but the effort – which is to say, the inconvenience. When you render the process more convenient, you drain it of its meaning. ... But the other reason we might not realise some everyday process is broken is that it isn’t broken to begin with – and that the inconvenience involved, which might look like brokenness from the outside, in fact embodies something essentially human.