Different Kinds of Difficulty

Introduction D ifficulty is a difficult thing to pin down. I had to expend a good bit of effort to write this piece, counter to my usual method of writing ad hoc . I’ve settled on a tripartite construction of difficulty: effort, time, and familiarity. Effort is what I think the colloquial usage of difficulty is reduced to. Effort is a measure of expended, concentrated energy—e.g. through thinking…