Talk:274: With Apologies to The Who

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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«"grok" is a synonym for "understand".» Well, no. The word is from Robert Heinlein's «Stranger in a Strange Land» published in 1961, where it is defined as «Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.» Obviously, this word belongs to the old people being dissed in the lyrics. Sodapop (talk) 09:08, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, which means that Grok is out of place in the anachronistic song lyrics, being a word whose popularity predates the actual Who lyrics. —Kazvorpal (talk) 05:41, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
Not really. The word "grok" was popular in the Unix community of the late 60s and 70s. As Randall is familiar with Unix hacker culture, it's "his word". The Jargon File defines it like this: "When you claim to "grok" some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you "know" Lisp is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary — but to say you "grok" LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming." 162.158.103.141 21:28, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

in xkxd vol. 0 it said "I'm not sure how he's typing that last line" as part of the extra annotations. 108.162.241.130 10:21, 21 November 2023 (UTC)