Raph's Keynote Address for the GDC.

[Roac]

"Chunk" is possibly even worse, since its use is narrower (it isn't listed even as slang most places) and the word has many other meanings (hell, even urban dictionary defines it as an ethnic slur against overweight Asians before it gets to the gaming meaning)

Uh, no, it's not referring to a D&D die roll.  Chunking is a psychological term relating to how people retain information in memory.

If someone gave me one example of a sentence using "grok" where an actual English word could not be substituted for "grok" then I would perhaps be more receptive.

Because the meaning of grok is tied into one of the deeper plots of a modestly old book, there isn't a word that could replace grok.  Grok means, best as you can term it, "to understand something entirely, completely, and in its asolute, unquestionable true nature", or something to that effect.  The implication runs quite a bit more deep than "I get it".  Use outside the book is going to be more loose than that, but still implies that "I get it" is too weak.

[Samwise]

So your beef is not with new words, it's new words that are similar in meaning to old ones.  I would still argue that they aren't exactly alike in meaning - for example, I consider "mastering," "intuiting," "memorizing," "conditioning," and "grokking" to all be distinct subsets of "learning" (there are probably a few others).

However, ignoring that - should we abolish the synonymn entirely, then?  "Tune" and "melody" are fundamentally the same words with slightly different connotations.  Why not strike "melody" from the English language?

[Samwise]

Grok means, best as you can term it, "to understand something entirely, completely, and in its asolute, unquestionable true nature", or something to that effect.  The implication runs quite a bit more deep than "I get it".  Use outside the book is going to be more loose than that, but still implies that "I get it" is too weak.

On the nose.  I'll point out here that an abstract concept is the only thing that you can really "grok" in the proper sense of the word - only a pure abstract has an" absolute, unquestionable true nature" that can be comprehended in its entirety.  Like, for example, the simple formal grammar which was the main topic of Raph's talk.   

[El Gallo]

Zoxr egro monf donth krorb reeb.

[Samwise]

Zoxr egro monf donth krorb reeb.

Don't be so hard on yourself!   

[El Gallo]

Zoxr egro monf donth krorb reeb.

Don't be so hard on yourself!   

You are missing the nuance.  "Zoxr egro monf donth krorb reeb" is the term for a particular type of hardness-on-the-self that implies appropriate growth-inducing insight along with the hardness. 

[Samwise]

Exactly my point.

[El Gallo]

]Uh, no, it's not referring to a D&D die roll.  Chunking is a psychological term relating to how people retain information in memory.

Yeah I looked up the psychological meaning on http://allpsych.com/dictionary/c.html defining "chunk" as "unit of information used in memory" and "chunking" as "Combining smaller units of measurement or chunks into larger chunks.  (e.g., a seven chunk phone number such as 5-5-5-1-2-1-2 becomes a five chunk number such as 5-5-5-12-12)" though it seems to be talked about as pattern recognition (as in chess masters recognizing general patterns on the board as one fact rather than individual pieces as individual facts), so I can see how it applies.  Not being a professional psychologist, I don't have any informed opinion on whether it's application to tic-tac-toe is correct.  I am not seeing what this gets you when talking to non-psychologists as it seems but another example of "let's jargonize this obvious fact to make us sound like experts" but I'll concede this one for what it's worth.  Chunk away!

Because the meaning of grok is tied into one of the deeper plots of a modestly old book, there isn't a word that could replace grok.  Grok means, best as you can term it, "to understand something entirely, completely, and in its asolute, unquestionable true nature", or something to that effect.  The implication runs quite a bit more deep than "I get it".  Use outside the book is going to be more loose than that, but still implies that "I get it" is too weak.

I'm just not buying it.  It sounds like you are talking about(and Samwise certainly seems to be talking about) something like Zen insight or Platonic knowledge of the forms, which we've been talking about for well over 2,000 years, several hundred of those in English, without appeal to "grokking" anything.  Even if it were the case that there was no English word for this kind of insight, appropriating its use for figuring out how a video game works is not very useful.  "I get it" may be to weak, but "I have mastered it" or "I thoroughly understand it" isn't, and saying those things don't make you sound like you are four years old.

[El Gallo]

Exactly my point.

Well, I guess we're having the happy accident of both going away from the thread feeling like we have proven our points.  I will have to troll some other thread for my 700th post.  Maybe Schild is saying something about WoW again.

[Samwise]

Well, I guess we're having the happy accident of both going away from the thread feeling like we have proven our points.

Really?  I assumed you knew you were being ridiculous and I played along.

I mean, I could have instead posted that it was an obviously different thing, since "grok" has been around for decades, is part of the vocabulary of many English speakers, and can be looked up (several links have already been posted in this thread), whereas what you posted was in a language known solely to yourself and invented a few minutes ago, but I didn't want to insult your intelligence by doing so.   

[Riggswolfe]

This is starting to remind me of arguments about irregardless...

[MaceVanHoffen]

Well, I guess we're having the happy accident of both going away from the thread feeling like we have proven our points.

Really?  I assumed you knew you were being ridiculous and I played along.

I mean, I could have instead posted that it was an obviously different thing, since "grok" has been around for decades, is part of the vocabulary of many English speakers, and can be looked up (several links have already been posted in this thread), whereas what you posted was in a language known solely to yourself and invented a few minutes ago, but I didn't want to insult your intelligence by doing so.   

Please keep going.  This is like watching 2 dogs meet for the first time, growl and posture, sniff each others asses, then walk away satisfied that each one has defended his territory.  It's saving me a DVD rental!  If it helps I can make up other words whose canonicity is questionable! C'mon!

[El Gallo]

Well, I guess we're having the happy accident of both going away from the thread feeling like we have proven our points.

Really?  I assumed you knew you were being ridiculous and I played along.

I mean, I could have instead posted that it was an obviously different thing, since "grok" has been around for decades, is part of the vocabulary of many English speakers, and can be looked up (several links have already been posted in this thread), whereas what you posted was in a language known solely to yourself and invented a few minutes ago, but I didn't want to insult your intelligence by doing so.   

Hey now, that phrase may exist in some book somewhere.  Perhaps the Klingon Hamlet.  OK, you got me.  I made it up.  You get the gold star.  I was trying to make nice considering that this thread has all the indicia of profound degeneration.  Of course I was being silly and thought you were playing along in good fun looking to end the conversation with a mutual smile too.  Oops!  Anyway, I know that "grok" is more legitimate than "zoxr" is just like you know that "grok" is less legitimate than "master" is.  Only one person uses the word "zoxr."  About a billion use "master".  How many use "grok" I don't know, but I guarantee its much, much closer to "zoxr" than "master" even when you include the whack jobs who belong to the religion based on the book.  How many people do I need to get to say "zoxr" before it becomes legitimate?  And spot on the continuum is arbitrary, and you and I just have different standards.  I admit that I might be a bit stuffy. 

"Schizzle fo my nizzle" certainly has a slightly different connotation than "powdered cocaine" or "C17 H21 NO4" and it is used and understood on a vastly wider basis than "grok" is, and I would think less of anyone who used that in a formal presentation or in a semi-serious discussion too.

Back to GROK itself.  I never read the book, so I looked up "Grok" on wikki and this definition is supposedly given by a character in the book:

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 we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man

I mean, really.  Where's that picture of the giant roll-eye emoticon barfing out a bunch of other roll-eye emoticons when I need it?  Even if you can stomach the bull, how one can compare "almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science" to "that day I figured out EQ was just like a slot machine" escapes me.  If I was a "grokker" I wouldn't want the term to be sullied in this manner.

Please keep going.  This is like watching 2 dogs meet for the first time, growl and posture, sniff each others asses, then walk away satisfied that each one has defended his territory.  It's saving me a DVD rental!  If it helps I can make up other words whose canonicity is questionable! C'mon!

How about we both just hump your leg until someone turns the hose on us and sends us to the Board That Shall Not Be Named.

/hump

[Roac]

I never read the book

We know.  That being the case, understand that whenever any of us use grok, we aren't talking to you.  You don't get it, and you've professed your ignorance well enough.

[Stephen Zepp]

Hehe...this thread has actually turned out fun, but I think that the important thing to understand is that the concept of "grok" actually is a concept that human beings have absolutely no reference to...while that attempt at a definition by the character of the book was just that, an attempt, even still it doesn't meet the concept.

One of the underlying themes of the book is why this human being, who was raised on Mars by Martians, and then returned to earth as an adult is really on earth. He spends a lot of time trying to understand why we do what we do, and near the end of the book starts to get the "lightbulb" above his head about a lot of things, and the only term he can use to describe his complete understanding is the martian term "grok" (which means literally, to drink).

The point about why he was on earth in the first place comes to light late in the novel, when you get a flashback (that's not the term I mean, but "peering directly into the thoughts of one of the characters") into the Ancient Ones (the martian "elders" who are actually dead, but still have a discorporated conciousness) who is thinking about their past relations with the inhabitants of "the 5th planet" (the asteroid belt), and describes how they spent thousands of years "grokking them in fullness, cherishing their lives, culture, and intelligence" before they obliterated their planet.

Humans would destroy another planet only after failing to be able to understand another species (or even one of their own races), but Martians only destroyed another civilization after completely "grokking" them in fullness.

[Samwise]

How many people do I need to get to say "zoxr" before it becomes legitimate?

I'd say the majority of the people that your message is intended for.  Doesn't that sound reasonable?

In the case of "grok," your comparison to "zoxr" would be fully reasonable if you didn't know what it meant, couldn't infer its meaning from context, or felt that my usage was so wrong as to be misleading.  However, if it succeeded at conveying my point, I'd say it's pretty valid.  And I'd say that on this board it's safe to say most people would know what "grok" means.  If I were writing to a broader audience, I probably wouldn't have used it, at least not as loosely.

FWIW, the literal meaning of the word given in Stranger in a Strange Land was "drink".

(FYI, FWIW is an acronym standing for "for what it's worth.")

[Hoax]

Re-railed it eh Samwise...  nice try.   

[Samwise]

I never said I was re-railing onto the original topic, just back onto the original derail (away from Scientology and onto grok).  I think I did pretty well with that.   :-D

Once the grok discussion has been beaten to death maybe we can go back to Raph's talk.

[Evangolis]

Just to be pendantic, the original derail was PvP.  Grok was the derail after that.

Anyway, I warned you, but you wouldn't listen.  Think of all the wasted electrons that we will never get back.

The heat death of the universe is coming, and I bet you'll want those electrons then, by golly.

[Samwise]

Think of the mole people!

Though they only surface in their home state of North Dakota, the vast underground network of the Mole People’s caves stretches throughout the nation, forming the backbone of the Internet. There really is no such thing as fiber-optic cable, but rather a legion of data-packet carrying Mole People. So before you hit the Stop button on your web browser, remember: a poor, hard-working Mole Person has probably already run halfway.

[Raph]

Once we grok the universe, we'll realize we never really lost those electrons anyway.

[sinij]

This thread couldn’t get any more derailed unless someone start talking about Sirbruce sexual tendencies or furies. Wait….

[schild]

This thread couldn’t get any more derailed unless someone start talking about Sirbruce sexual tendencies or furies. Wait….

Why? Why go there? It's not funny. It's not amusing. It's just bad. Bad Sinij, bad.

[WindupAtheist]

UO pwns, everything else suxx0rz.  Also, I hate fat people, and George W. Bush is Hitler reincarnated.

*shrugs*

Just pissing on the ashes is all.

[stray]

UO pwns, everything else suxx0rz.  Also, I hate fat people, and George W. Bush is Hitler reincarnated.

*shrugs*

Just pissing on the ashes is all.

I said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm almost positive that you'd like SWG.

[WindupAtheist]

I said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm almost positive that you'd like SWG.

SWG lets you kill a morbidly obese George W. Hitler?

[stray]

I said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm almost positive that you'd like SWG.

SWG lets you kill a morbidly obese George W. Hitler?

Why yes! Yes it does.



It doesn't have much to do with Star Wars though 

[Arnold]

Does Raph think Chevron makes cars?

So, make PVP fun for everyone and you will make a trillion dollars.

Think of all the single player games you can make wih a deck of cards.  They all suck, and are just ways to pass the time when you are bored, and stuck in a situation where you have nothing else to do.

Now think of all the fun, kickass, multiplayer games that can be played with the same set of cards.

A computer is just a deck of cards.  Eventually, players and game designers will come around and figure out that the BEST, MOST FUN games are PvP.  I think a lot of he problem is tradition; we haven't always had networks that allowed multiplayer games.  Most players and designers are stuck in an archaic mindset that computer gameplay should be about human thought vs. random numbers.

Anyone ever play M.U.L.E.?  It is one of the greatest computer games of all time.  It was a pain in the ass to play, because everyone was using the same computer, but when you had a lot of human players(I think 4 was the max), it was worth the pain.

[Arnold]

If Raph had ever made anything concrete that I thought was any good, I might give more credence to his speech.  Instead, I find it to be the ivory tower ramblings of a designer whose general appeal baffles me.  I'm not sure why he's thought to be so visionary.  All he's done is state the obvious using as many words as possible.

UO.

I win with two letters and a period.  Kthnx.

[Arnold]

I would have been snoozing halfway through that speech.  Folks have got to learn the get to the point first, and then explain those points in more detail.

The entire thing was great!  I've seen exceprts to "A Theory of Fun", and this address was much more succinct.  He really cut to the heart here.

[Arnold]

The difficulty part is why games like UO had such a rough time at it.  A lot of the people who played were going to lose, and KNEW they were going to as soon as they logged in.  That part is no fun.  Going up against a roughly similar opponent(s), however, is constantly cited as one of the most exciting parts of that game.

So.  We can all expect a massive overhaul to how PvP works in SWG come next patch, right? :P

But that's what hooked me on UO.  I started off with an assumption of how the game worked, and changed my outlooked.  I learned not to take things head on, in my young days.  I learned to not take the beaten path.  I learned to use hiding and tracking to identify possible aggressors.  I learned to go out naked, hunt for skins, build up a set of armor as I hunted, and sell the rest to make money.  If I died, I lost nothing, and I was a less valuable target to someone who had to macro off murder counts at night in order to stay blue.

Eventually I WAS strong enough to take the heads up approach, but the human opponent factor is what hooked me to that game, when I had dumped lots of DIKU-style text MUDs very quickly, for being too repetetive and boring.

[Arnold]

Take PvP for example.  Hardcore PvP'ers look for easy marks, easy patterns.  They are uninterested in someone of equal skill.  UO, EQ, DAoC ... pick your acronym, and the PvP has followed the general pattern of "let's go gank newbies and get l33t" for more hours per day than most people work a job.

You are completely uninformed on this matter.  You are confusing hardcore PvPers with griefers.  Hardcare PvPers want a good fight.  Griefers want to pick off people who can't defend themselves, to make them upset.  Sure, the hardcore guys can, and do kill defenseless people at times when they play in an open world, but those aren't really the main targets.  They tend to be mouthy newbies, people with stupid names, or griefers.

[Arnold]

What you really want is thematically consistant PvP.  You want rules, but only so long as they make sense for the setting.  You don't want to stop pursuing your enemies because they have gone into a Safehold; you want to stop pursuing your enemies because they somehow stopped you.

You are trying to reinvent the wheel here, there is a term for "thematically consistant PvP" and it is open-PvP.

Not quite.  "Open-PvP" means a server full of retards running around and shooting each other screaming "OMG LOLZ".  (See: Faces of Mankind.)  This is certainly consistent with some themes, but not with any that would make a fun game for the average human being.

Faction systems, where factions can attack each other but not their own members, are one form of "thematically consistent" PvP. The theme in that case is war between those factions, as opposed to an open grief-fest.

You never played UO:SP.  There was FAR less "OMG LOLZ" than on the regular servers.  An armed society is a polite society.

[Arnold]

-Almost every game that involves 2+ people is player vrs player.  Sports, board games, table top, computer games hell most of our entertainment on tv or in the movies are stories of competition.

The important thing here is that the games you listed are not persistent.  We've been around this issue a number of times, but let's take chess for an example.  I can start playing chess with my friend who is a very good chess player.  He will whip my ass.  However, every time he does, we reset the board and play again.  My prior asswhippings have no impact on current game.  I get better and better, to the point where I can win some games against him.

The same holds true for some persistant games.  You'd be a fool to think that every good PvPer in a persistant game had started playing on release.  Time and time again, I've seen a "no name" pop up who just started kicking ass.  We just need more games that don't have such a big disparity of player power based on time played.

In oldschool UO, combat gear was, for the most part, player made, cheap, and dispposable.  A newbie could jump right in and start learning the ropes of PvP.  Sure, it would take longer for the newbie to recover, financially, but it was very doable.

[Samwise]

Wow.

Septuple necro post for the win.