{"text":[[{"start":5.2,"text":"The writer is a systems engineer and author of ‘Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World’"}],[{"start":13.04,"text":"GLP-1 drugs and GPT models share an unsettling kinship. Each promises to dissolve friction so thoroughly that we forget it was ever there. One rewires how the body registers hunger; the other turns inklings into instant expertise. Both reveal how reflexively we welcome the removal of resistance and how rarely we ask which kinds deserve to stay."}],[{"start":39.480000000000004,"text":"In the history of friction-removal, physical toil fell first. Washing machines erased scrubbing while plumbing and thermostats ended the hauling of water and tending of fire. Then came bureaucratic easing: e-filing, direct deposit, money transfers and online flight check-in all swept away the drags that breed inefficiency."}],[{"start":64.11,"text":"Next, distance and delay. GPS made it nearly impossible to get lost and one-click online ordering eclipsed errands. Streaming put an end to trips to the video store and then the store itself. Remember dot-matrix printers? The clatter as each line crawled across the page, leaving behind an embossed texture, the perforated edges you tore off and the ribbon you changed when it faded. Inkjets and lasers made them obsolete. PDFs came next, and then chatbots, which make even reading the PDF optional. Each advance made the tasks simpler, then pointless, then delegable."}],[{"start":105.75,"text":"But removing resistance comes with its own risks. In aviation, when fly-by-wire control systems replaced mechanical linkages with electronic ones, controls became smooth — too smooth. The haptic cues that pilots relied on faded. Engineers had to add stick shakers to mimic the tremor that once warned of a stall — sensations that pilots intuitively grasped."}],[{"start":132.94,"text":"Power steering in automobiles created the same sort of void — controls that felt effortless yet detached until designers restored a hint of pressure to help drivers feel traction. In both cases, tools extended skill rather than displaced it. Fake feedback only works when it builds on real experience. "}],[{"start":157.07999999999998,"text":"Engineers use damping, or calibrated resistance, to prevent overshoot, slowing change just enough for corrective feedback to take hold. Banish it and the system cannot adjust, swapping stability for speed. In education, regular tests slow down the pace of learning in order to make it stick. Even eating depends on rate-limiting pauses that let the body sense fullness, giving time to catch up with desire. "}],[{"start":185.48,"text":"Medicine, too, faced a similar dilemma with anaesthesia. Pain serves as the body’s sentinel, and its complete suppression invites dangerous complications. Clinicians have learnt to balance relieving agony with retaining protective reflexes, proof that some frictions deserve extinction while others demand preservation. "}],[{"start":207.66,"text":"Decades of simplification have conditioned us to treat drag, distance and delay as defects. Yet some frictions sharpen purpose instead of stalling it. Our rapid embrace of weight-loss drugs and AI assistants shows how instinctive that impulse has become."}],[{"start":227.35999999999999,"text":"GLP-1 and GPT go deeper, softening constraints that are embedded in the human experience. Hunger is more than an inconvenience; when it works as intended it marks the line between enough and excess. Wrestling thought into text does the same, forcing us to distil vagueness into meaning. "}],[{"start":248.85999999999999,"text":"Used wisely, both GLP-1s and GPTs can expand human capacity, and for many they bring real relief. GLP-1 drugs help those with metabolic disorders, reshaping hunger along with relationships with food, body image, self-worth and identity. But they override existing signals. And GPT models lower the barrier to eloquence and expertise, although they may also erode confidence in our own thinking. Both raise the same question: are they shedding a burden or dulling instructive feedback?"}],[{"start":285.34999999999997,"text":"Good engineering removes friction that impedes and conserves friction that informs. We often miss that nuance. We expect everything to work and when effortless controls fail we hydroplane, unable to steer even at a safe speed. "}],[{"start":304.49999999999994,"text":"This is not a lament for hardship. Something gets lost, however, when we no longer understand, in a tactile, embodied way, how things function or fail. We become more vulnerable than we realise. And when the surface gives way, we may no longer recognise the cracks."}],[{"start":326.17999999999995,"text":"We call this progress. And for the most part, it is. But if friction teaches us how to feel the world, then we should also ask what else we might be smoothing out of reach."}],[{"start":345.4599999999999,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1770963061_1558.mp3"}