Category: Theory

at First Grok…

Posted on Posted in fact, lost horizon, neural knot, Theory, Valley HiTagged , , , ,

What the web didn’t know… understanding “first” — if I say “first” it isn’t always in the same context. Most people know that if I ask for the first page something occurs the “first page” isn’t the only page I am asking about. Oh well, if at first you don’t succeed, try using a person with a book at hand.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Publication Year: 1961
Premise: Valentine Michael Smith, a human born and raised on Mars, is brought to Earth as an adult. He is a “stranger” who must learn what it means to be human, and his journey challenges Earth’s culture, religion, and social institutions.
Key Themes: The meaning of love, sex, religion, and money; challenging social norms.

Origin: The term was coined by American author Robert A. Heinlein in his science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, published in 1961.
● Fictional Meaning: In the book, “grok” is a Martian word with no direct English equivalent. Its literal translation is “to drink,” but its conceptual meaning is far more profound.
● Profound Understanding: To “grok” something means to understand it so thoroughly and intuitively that the observer and the observed merge into a single entity; the observer becomes a part of the observed. It implies a deep, empathic comprehension and integration of something on a molecular or fundamental level.
● Cultural Adoption: The term was adopted by the counterculture of the 1960s and later became popular in computer programming and tech circles to describe the deep, immersive understanding required to master complex systems. Robert Anton Wilson “Schrodinger’s Cat” … Tom Wolfe “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” John Muir “Volkswagen repair manual” used in many DIY for women car workshops.

Pages p.12 "Back even before the healing which had followed his first grokking … p.14 "Smith had been aware of the visit by the doctors but he had grokked at once that their intentions were benign. p.43 lawyers and owning a planet p.57 girls … p.67 martian held still p.72 the man from mars. p.221 used as the 50s “dig”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_on_Planet_Earth

The Martian Named Smith: Book Review
Purchase Issues

Footnotes from this week

conceptual history… how long machines have been thinking… actually, how long people, aka blood-brains have been considering turning some of the workload over to other-brains.

seems much slower than first thought.

all jive. all jibe. words so far apart… Mindfulness, typically cultivated through deliberate practices, is characterized by non-judgmental attention to the present moment —

Sideband: name taken over by the weakling of tech. using as opposite of Woke, all the while being mere substitution for Grope. Make up your AWKen GREP will ya.

οἶδα the wordle RAH groped for but didnt grasp

OpenMemory treats time as a first-class dimension, letting your agent reason about changing facts.

woke before grok

seeing magenta

Posted on Posted in alt photo, dye transfer, olden modern, the fora, Theory, Valley HiTagged , , , , ,

ask around the net for dye-transfer information. seek insights, perhaps advice, what you are provided by 2025 search-AI models is counter to insight — confusion is increasing. Dilution over diffusion flourishes. Clicks are the clique formers.

One simple example. Seeking specifics about Kodak’s magenta dye used in Dye Transfer printing.

NB: search used this tree [:: Photrio -> koraks ] getting to an answer about magenta dyes used in Kodak dye-transfer, imbibition printing. Photrio is large site with over a thousand posts related to dye transfer; koraks site is listed as sigline in posts by a moderator taking part in dye-transfer related threads over the past several years. I doubt that K~ has ever made a dye transfer, certainly hasn’t synthesized the dyes. Another example of dilution of knowledge.

The inference engine of AI cannot distinguish quality, meaning accuracy, applicability, from quantity, meaning the number of referral links made over time. [the specific information provided in this conversation is based on general knowledge and does not directly cite specific pages or sections from these references.] Different models often respond that the information on [dye-transfer] is collected from practitioners internet archives.

Kodak CIS-154 Magenta Dye in Imbibition Printing
example response: I want to be transparent that my previous responses were speculative and not directly based on the Kodak publication you mentioned. Providing more details will help me offer a precise and accurate interpretation of the source material.
[I used 5 different engines... none could provide useable, correct answers.. each required, in essence, that I give them direct references, which they then could summarize.  ]

Provided that I correct enough, staying with the multiple AI engines, we get somewhere. However, I had to provide a page, a CAS number, then prompt the answer machine with guidance on selection criteria for synthesis. In other words, I had to know much more than any of the AI engines were able to source. I was provided patent references, incorrect, so taking additional time for me to read, and return to prompt for correction. The initial failure though, the one leading through the darkroom help forums sounded, to the untrained, inexperienced, like a correct answer. An answer which would be repeated by the novice.

Since the process is being used by mere handfuls who do gather and exchange information and support these aren’t significant practical matters. The failures keep the stalled busy, out of the way. The lesson is that small errors can be amplified sufficiently to distort information into a contorted arcade reflection of what was.

gelatin imbibition refsDownload