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Why friction is necessary for growth

jameelur.com

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Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#41

Post by jwpapi »

BinaryIgor wrote: post #33
jwpapi wrote: post #20

I think it comes down to reasonable friction to overcome or pointless friction I feel very annoyed by pointless friction (inefficient systems) but motivated by friction that improves myself (going to the gym) If you solve for what’s best for you this trumps seeking friction

This section of the article sums it up pretty nicely: "Humans are creatures of comfort. Just like so many things in this world, we follow the path of least resistance. With access to technology being ubiquitous, and ChatGPT being so widely available, to choose not to use it is very hard. You need to deliberately prioritize your growth and choose to go against the current. You need to deliberately introduce friction t…

But I’m not agreeing with that statement. I don’t think its a good mental model. If you don’t have candies at home it will be easier to eat healthy. I don’t think deliberately having them at home will lead to more growth, it will just increase the likelihood of failure.

Willpower to me seems more like a limited resource that should be invested (and is I agree trainable to a degree) wisely to maximize growth

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#42

Post by andoando »

djoldman wrote: post #34

> Overcoming friction leads to growth. Comfort leads to stagnation.... I’ve come to believe that with the rise of convenience and comfort, it becomes harder for us to reach our potential.... A certain level of convenience can lead to efficiency gains. Automation is important for a reason. Too much convenience though, that's a killer. When friction was inherent in the system, applying ourselves led to growth as we ove…

Thats not a logical flaw, that's throwing out the premise of living in a logical world and saying "but if things worked completely differently, your argument makes no sense"

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#43

Post by busymom0 »

In weightlifting, it's similar to progressive overload giving enough stimulus for the muscles to grow. If you just keep lifting the same weight over and over again, your muscles get used to it and no longer grow. However, if you slowly keep increasing the stimulus by either increasing weights, or increasing the reps/sets, or slowing the tempo, then it gives your muscles a reason to adapt and grow to be able to handle the new load.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#44

Post by bluefirebrand »

djoldman wrote: post #34

> Overcoming friction leads to growth. Comfort leads to stagnation.... I’ve come to believe that with the rise of convenience and comfort, it becomes harder for us to reach our potential.... A certain level of convenience can lead to efficiency gains. Automation is important for a reason. Too much convenience though, that's a killer. When friction was inherent in the system, applying ourselves led to growth as we ove…

> In a world where one could snap their fingers and magically have everything, would "growth" be impossible?

Honestly I think it would be impossible, or at the very least incredibly unlikely. It would be something only the most exceptional people could possibly achieve

It probably shouldn't be that way

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#45

Post by bluefirebrand »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #16

I’ve always said that we need to get out of our comfort zone, to grow. I’ve never thought it necessary to expound; it’s such a “no-brainer.” Right now, LLMs are selling a vision of “friction-free” productivity, but we haven’t yet gotten to the part, where humans start mastering LLMs as tools. That’s still quite nascent. Once that happens, a lot of people that have been firing all their employees, and getting fat on t…

> we haven’t yet gotten to the part, where humans start mastering LLMs as tools

Personally I don't think LLMs as tools are "masterable" any more than I think slot machines have an element of skill to win

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#46

Post by RyanOD »

gwd wrote: post #38

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…

I never considered the type of effort you're referring to as wasted.

It reminds me a bit of looking up coding solutions on StackOverflow back in the day. Yes, it was a slog and consumed valuable time. However, I always felt that I picked up all sorts of other valuable information reading a variety of possible solutions or spying a related but different problem and taking a moment to consider it.

It is similar to how I learned to play guitar. With no videos and very limited tablature, I had to learn songs by ear which was crazy inefficient. However, it trained my ear and kept me exploring the entire fretboard as I figured the song out. This ended up making me a much more complete guitarist.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#47

Post by majeedkazemi »

miguelacevedo wrote: post #40
gwd wrote: post #38

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…

Great distinction! Ideally, friction occurs at the edge of your ability instead of on tedious tasks where you learn nothing, and it's more like work .

yeah, friction should be designed to be meaningful and not just feel frustrating or like a barrier. it should empower the user.

in our research, we found that an AI agent which involves the user in each step of the process (e.g. asking them to check the AI’s assumptions, or edit them directly if they’re not good) ends up being a bit slower -- i.e. more friction -- but gives the user more control. And when compared with an AI agent that provides less control but faster, users preferred the slower agent which provided more agency.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3654777.3676345

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#48

Post by beardedetim »

RyanOD wrote: post #46
gwd wrote: post #38

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…

I never considered the type of effort you're referring to as wasted. It reminds me a bit of looking up coding solutions on StackOverflow back in the day. Yes, it was a slog and consumed valuable time. However, I always felt that I picked up all sorts of other valuable information reading a variety of possible solutions or spying a related but different problem and taking a moment to consider it. It is similar to how…

This is a good callout/distinction you're making. How we view the goal of the experience determines our experience itself. The guitar analogy is really good because if your goal was to learn guitar, it's definitely not wasted but if your goal was to learn this one specific song as quickly as possible, I could see how my perspective would be different.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#49

Post by jancsika »

boilerupnc wrote: post #21

Related: Wolff's Law "bone in a healthy animal will adapt to the loads under which it is placed.If loading on a particular bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger to resist that sort of loading. [...] The inverse is true as well: if the loading on a bone decreases, the bone will become less dense and weaker due to the lack of the stimulus required for continued remodeling." [0] https…

HN'er on Monday: I'll just do maximum friction to improve bones. No pain no gain, baby!

HN'er on Tuesday: Ow all my cartilage and tendons are damaged. Help!

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#50

Post by r_lee »

hedora wrote: post #24
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #16

I’ve always said that we need to get out of our comfort zone, to grow. I’ve never thought it necessary to expound; it’s such a “no-brainer.” Right now, LLMs are selling a vision of “friction-free” productivity, but we haven’t yet gotten to the part, where humans start mastering LLMs as tools. That’s still quite nascent. Once that happens, a lot of people that have been firing all their employees, and getting fat on t…

Nonsense. Just hire people to automate away 100% of tasks at your company. Later, lay them off and reduce your costs to a $100/month LLM subscription. Your prompts will be your moat and your margins will go to infinity. It will be glorious and sustainable for years to come. - A large fraction of soon-to-be-redundant upper management, 2025.

Nonsense.

Unlike the disgusting parasites called "employees" or "the workforce" (vomit)

The Glorious management and executives are at such levels that those vomit-inducing vermin could never reach. They will never be replaced.

They are by definition invincible, irreplaceable by AI, or even future Superintelligence.

Because by definition, they ARE the Superintelligence.

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