I guess you could make it more intuitive by thinking about the system in terms of the units of your feedback (e.g. force on an actuator like a bicycle handle ba

I guess you could make it more intuitive by thinking about the system in terms of the units of your feedback (e.g. force on an actuator like a bicycle handle bar in your example) rather than the deeper, underlying physics. In the end it doesn't matter which you use as long as it works.