Coping with Friction

*** Note to reader: This article was inspired by a dialogue with a colleague regarding the nature of friction. Readers with a basic understanding of the strategic philosophy of USAF Colonel John Boyd will have an easier time proceeding. ***

"I believe we have uncovered a Dialectic Engine that permits the construction of decision models needed by individuals and societies for determining and monitoring actions in an effort to improve their capacity for independent action." - John Boyd

To truly understand friction, we must survey it across several domains.

When we think of friction, just the word itself, the mental model that populates inside of our head involves friction in the physical world - we rub our hands together with force to demonstrate the “slowing down” effect that each has on the other, or we think back to the geometrical diagram of the block on a slope.

This is the essence of friction, and when motion occurs that involves friction, it's called kinetic friction. Kinetic friction was first identified by none other than Leonardo da Vinci (see drawing below from his notebooks) in 1493, and since then, a formal system has been constructed around the study of friction. It’s called tribology: the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. [1]

Fear not - we won’t get deep into tribology here. Kinetic friction is a mechanical process that is an essential part of a larger system that contains dynamic forces in relative motion, so we must widen our context to understand the implications that friction has on such a system. This, however, does require us to pull in axioms from tribology and other branches of physics to establish definitions on which to build.

One such axiom tells us that all mechanical friction interactions are inherently dissipative processes. Dissipative processes transform energy (kinetic, information, system potential, etc) into something else. As a result, the remaining capacity of the system to do work is degraded compared to the initial form prior to the introduction of friction. Friction is an inescapably non-conservative force, and systems with prevailing friction bleed energy. [2]

Some of this energy is lost in the form of heat. The transformation from energy to heat forces an evolution from mechanical systems to a higher level that involves thermodynamical aspects, since temperature changes are governed by the formal axioms of thermodynamics. One of the three primary axioms in this domain is the Second Law, which states that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.

Boyd identified the Second Law as one of the most powerful pillars upon which he built his thesis, as it deals with the link between systems and chaos. We can connect the dots here to see that friction can be the spark that lights the fire of chaos in a system. This is a powerful insight, and it puts the concept of friction very close to the center of Boyd’s thinking.

We have very quickly moved from simple definitions of friction, to friction as an essential aspect of a dynamic system model, to a trigger that expands the definition of the system (thereby generating a new macro-system), to a force that ultimately causes chaotic and irregular motion of a system, or even its collapse. The implications here are vast. At the very least, a system’s friction characteristics can tell us a lot about that system’s dynamics. But it’s not a stretch to say that the friction characteristics alone are a fairly decent representation of the system dynamics. [3]

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Everything a System

Systems are everywhere. We all exist in multiple systems, macro-systems, and sub-systems at once. Each individual person is a system operating in an environment along with other human systems to form a macro-system called society. These whirling interactions all involve dynamic forces moving in relative motion - meaning friction is inherent at every level. But there is a critical difference between human systems and the inanimate systems that we have covered so far.

By developing a consciousness, humankind has evolved an ability to “jump out of our system” to a degree, taking a bird’s eye view of ourselves, our minds, and our interactions as they unfold and after they have unfolded. This higher level cognition allows us to identify friction, study friction, and work to increase it or decrease it in our systems and in others’. We can also generate abstractions and mental models of anticipated future interactions and situations.

Because we simultaneously operate on the physical level, the mental level, and the moral level through a complex network of tangled hierarchies and orientation-related mental processes (all of which are systems themselves humming along in various levels of our consciousness), we continuously and automatically exploit the recurring theme of “level-change” as a vehicle for insight, context, and orientation.

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War is a Chaotic System

Sometimes dynamic forces moving in relative motion decide that they want to kill each other. War is a violent clash between opposing social systems in a dynamic macro-system of interacting forces. As the individual human system operates on the physical level inside of this white-hot thermodynamic macro-system, the friction characteristic appears again in a way that is directly analogous to kinetic friction.

In warfare, forces move against each other in relative, violent motion, generating friction in much the same way as your hands did when you rubbed them together. Friction is a very real, tangible feeling to the soldier. In the pitiless domain of war, friction influences all participants in the same way that it has in the previously studied domains - resisting action, bogging down forces, and sapping energy. Clausewitz described friction as “the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult”; I think most physicists would agree with that simple definition. [4]

Just like in physics, a military system’s friction characteristics tell us a lot about that system’s dynamics; indeed, the friction characteristics alone can serve as a representation of the comprehensive social system inside which the military system resides. At a minimum, it presents the direction which the enemy commander’s intent should be directed.

Both Sun Tzu and John Boyd were explicit with their recommendation to apply effort to inducing friction within the enemy system in order to amplify chaos levels and generate disorder, malfunction, and ultimately system collapse. The OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) applied as an offensive weapon is meant to isolate the enemy system and generate as much chaos as possible within it.

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Mismatches

Entropy increases in human systems when friction force is introduced. Why? Look at the image above; friction causes psychological mismatches between expectations and reality. Warfare is often misunderstood or oversimplified. Intelligent strategies do not focus on the destruction of the enemy force, but instead on the degradation and collapse of the enemy system. Is it easier to collapse System Put Blocks Through Holes by smashing the board into bits... or handing it a square block with which it cannot cope? This efficiency of focus targets the enemy’s true center of gravity (usually mental or moral), and achieves a more efficient victory.

This style of warfare uses dislocation theory to generate various types of mismatches within the enemy system; temporal dislocation generates mismatches relating to timeliness, functional dislocation generates mismatches relating to form and its function (like the block example), positional dislocation generates mismatches relating to location, and moral dislocation generates mismatches relating to the hearts and minds of the human participants inside the system. [5]

Ultimately, dislocation efforts use mismatches to generate friction for the enemy system, with an aim of generating sufficient friction to bring about enemy system collapse. Friction is therefore both evidence of a mismatch, as well as a cause of psychological mismatch at-scale in human macro-systems.

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Coping with Friction

John Boyd proposed the following causal chain (slight alterations made by me): anomalies generate mismatches, which generate crises (friction), which generates desperation, which generates change / action / system degradation / system collapse. [6]

The chain is recursive and begins with the base of anomaly. But notice the variety of outcomes in the change link of the chain. When a human system encounters friction, it can either change / act, or experience degradation / collapse. Also note that the change / act outcomes automatically alter something within the system, thereby generating new anomalies by default. The engine just continues to run from there.

Obviously, we prefer good outcomes. So when we encounter crises, we should choose to change / act. Again, unlike mechanical or thermodynamic systems, human systems are intelligent participants who can exercise meta-cognition, allowing for the modification of behavior based on interactions with reality - and friction. Both the OODA Loop and the anomaly-action causal chain end in an interface with external reality in the form of action. Results from action can be identified, studied, and wrapped back into orientation as previous experience data.

This data can be used to identify mismatches more quickly. It can also be used as a model to build similar versions of mismatches in an enemy system. It can also be analyzed and synthesized in such a way as to generate new insight. Such data is an output of interaction, which is, as we’ve shown, affected at the foundational level by friction. While friction is inherent in any system involving dynamic forces in relative motion and cannot be avoided entirely, human minds can derive insight from friction.

This doesn't mean we should relish in friction; we should attempt to decrease unnecessary friction in our systems, but the greater requirement is to operate effectively despite the existence of friction - and to learn from the process of doing so. [7] Friction itself may degrade a system, but a good commander can take degradation at one level and, as we’ve seen, turn it into useful insight on a higher level. This can be considered an open system response to friction.

Adjusting to friction and learning from it is the essence of adaptability. The intersection of the anomaly-action causal chain and the processes existing between observation and action in the OODA Loop are where adaptability originates.

If enough similar mismatches are encountered, a more accurate orientation is developed, making it possible for orientation and decision to eventually become implicit and nearly instantaneous. This is how good commanders generate intuitive processes for coping with friction. The backend mental processes occur at the intersection of the anomaly-action causal chain and the intuitive OODA loop, which has now evolved into the OA Loop: Observation -> Action.

This "O->A flow state" is the essence of agility. An agile commander (or system) interacts with friction and mismatches in an elegant manner consistent with the circadian rhythm of the macro-system - or as the ancients put it, the “rhythm of the breathing of the universe”.

-- KJF