Glossary entry

Appropriate Friction

Glossary entry in Friction & flow. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Appropriate Friction.

Quick takeaways

Deliberate slowdowns or checkpoints inserted where harm would be costly or irreversible.

Definition

Deliberate slowdowns or checkpoints inserted where harm would be costly or irreversible. Appropriate friction treats velocity friction and ethical interrupts as safety features.

Scope
I. Friction & flow. Designing intentional friction that protects people while keeping harm contained.

Example corpus

  • High-risk data exports require a second reviewer before completion.

References

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Cite this glossary entry Formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS

Version

v1.4.0

Last updated

Sep 18, 2026

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. (2026). Appropriate Friction. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/appropriate-friction

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Appropriate Friction." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/appropriate-friction.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Appropriate Friction." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 18, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/appropriate-friction.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_appropriate-friction,
  title={Appropriate Friction},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute Research Team},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/appropriate-friction},
  version={v1.4.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Appropriate Friction
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute Research Team
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/appropriate-friction
ER  -

Scholarly metadata

Authorship

Contact: research@ethotechnics.org

Publication details

  • Published: Dec 3, 2025
  • Last updated: Sep 18, 2026
  • Version: v1.4.0
  • DOI: Pending Zenodo deposit

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Credit Ethotechnics Institute, include the term title + version, and link to the glossary permalink.

Archive: Wayback Machine history

Changelog

  • v1.7.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Non-Finality, Consequential Contradiction, and The Excluded Case, and generalized the falsified denominator into the falsified ledger — completing the five concerns and the fallibilist ground they stand on.
  • v1.6.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Human Non-Substitutability, Safe Incompleteness, Anti-Conversion Rights, Abstention, Constitutional Debt, Discretion Migration, and Corrigibility Rent — the person-side principles, the three abstentions, and the rent concept.
  • v1.5.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Exception Absorption, Exception Learning, Case Corrigibility, Structural Corrigibility, Institutional Learning, Corrective Debt, and the Workaround Presumption, formalizing the historical turn: reading institutions through their failure trajectories rather than their stated controls.
  • v1.4.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Residual Complexity, Complexity Displacement, Falsified Denominator, Closure Without Remainder, Constitutional Governance, and Post-Optimization Rigor, embedding the foundational contention of burden redistribution.
  • v1.3.0 · 2026-09-11 — Added Attestation, Liability Record, Carve-Out, Delegation Chain, Composed Latency, and Silent-Harm Discovery, each bound to the standard clause that requires it.
  • v1.2.0 · 2026-09-08 — Added The Non-Conversion Principle, Exit Cost, and Jurisdictional Path Dependence, each linked to the theory essay that argues for it.
  • v1.1.0 · 2026-01-09 — Expanded scholarly metadata, operational tests, and provenance notes.
  • v1.0.0 · 2025-12-03 — Initial glossary release with stable permalinks.