5 ms·
Why would you care about "good", a relative notion that means different things to different people, over reduction of friction, a clearly beneficial thing that
by nnq 7y ago
Why would you care about "good", a relative notion that means different things to different people, over reduction of friction, a clearly beneficial thing that accelerates technical and scientific progress?
If we could only "dissolve" all those parts of society and culture that are mostly pure friction, and spin the wheels 100x faster to the future...
- dragonwriter 7y ago> reduction of friction, a clearly beneficial thing Reduction of friction accelerates harms as well as benefits, it's not “clearly beneficial” without further knowledge of context. Sure, it makes scientific progress faster, but it also makes genocide faster.
- baq 7y agothey say power tools allow you to make mistakes faster. the internet is the same.
- scrumper 7y agoSo... I can't say "good" but you can say "beneficial." Reduction of friction is not clearly beneficial! That's exactly the point. Superficially it appears to be, but it absolutely isn't the case. Reducing friction lets things happen faster. Both good things and bad things. And since the meaning of 'good' depends on where you sit, you can't claim that it's purely beneficial.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoFaster isn't always better. Think of a control system with a delay element in it. Removing it may make the control system better. Or it may turn out that delay was dampening a positive feedback loop, and now the whole thing blows sky high.
- tomaskafka 7y agoFriction is the culture. Friction is when you ask someone on a date instead of jumping on them on the street. Friction is how you don't kill someone even though you are really angry about him/her right now. Friction is how you can't turn Yosemite park into a supermarket and suburban sprawl, even though it would been profitable.