IX. To Grok or Not to Grok, That is the Question

But be it alive, or be it dead, we are completely finished with the old clockwork, Newtonian, billiard ball universe we once knew and loved.

We leave the comfortable, familiar world of particles, strings, quarks and sub quarks behind and take up the fuzzier, but more accurate, cosmology of different energy levels and of many dimensions.

Although it may get a bit uncomfortable in some places, we look back to the 20th century, to pioneers such as James Joyce, and the mathematician authors of both Flatland & Alice in Wonderland for philosophical support.

Another trustworthy guide being Robert Heinlein of Stanger in a Strange Land - author who came up with the now much ballyhooed verb: Grok.

Quoted directly from the (uncut) version of Stranger:

"'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed--to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science--and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man...if I chopped you up and made a stew of you, you and the stew, whatever else was in it, would grok--and when I ate you, we would grok together and nothing would be lost and it would not matter which one of us did the chopping up and eating."

Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

My definition of Grok simplifies to indicate a verb which means “to fully comprehend”, and we state categorically that this phrase does not refer to any AI agents, living or dead.

For those of us who once believed we could trust in the science, because everything had been decided, well, we left that universe behind several centuries ago.