I understand them well enough for the purpose of asking researchers a few questions. My karma score has been 5700+ at some point. Do you think that would have been possible without having a basic understanding of some of the underlying ideas?

Yes. I attribute my 18k karma to excessive participation. If I didn't have a clue what I was talking about it would have taken longer but I would have collected thousands of karma anyway just by writing many comments with correct grammar.

Karma - that is, total karma of users - means very little.