If understanding is a nonlinear, recursive process, where each new particular understanding changes the totality, and the totality in turn changes the meaning of each particular – it is reasonable to wonder if understanding might exhibit the qualities nonlinear, recursive processes. That is, the butterfly effect may be seen in a shade of meaning of a word. The structures that govern the totality may be reveal themselves self-similarly in each particular. Understanding, though ordered, might be radically unpredictable, worked out in the process of understanding, without any shortcut.A chaotic-determinist meditation: Reality cannot be simulated at the speed or comprehensibility of reality itself. Reality outpaces all attempts at simulating the working out of its processes, but the working out of its processes is the only way to know an outcome. Reality has more variables than any simulation can accommodate, but every variable however subtle has the power to change the outcome. In principle, everything is predictable. In actuality, nothing is predictable.