4 ms·
My guess at an explanation -- have to be more clear on the "contest": (1) You don't know about the BB function. (2) We put our money in the pot. (3) Secretly
by graycat 9y ago
My guess at an explanation -- have to be more clear on the "contest":
(1) You don't know about the BB function.
(2) We put our money in the pot.
(3) Secretly you write down the digits of the largest number you can think of.
(4) Secretly I see what BB(10,000) is and write down its digits. Uh, we are able to write quickly and have a lot of paper!
(5) We show our numbers, and the person with the largest number wins.
- hawkice 9y agoThere are ways to determine the relative size of numbers even when you cannot write down the digits. It's how we know TREE(3) is larger than Ackermann(20) (or maybe larger than any description of simple recursive uses of Ackermann using only Ackermann(20) symbols -- so even [It's Ackermann sub 6 applied Ackermann sub 5 times to Ackermann sub 5 and so on, where Ackermann sub 1 is the Ackermann function] doesn't get close). Notice that claim is strong enough it doesn't matter what number you start with. 20, 3, a googolplex. It's all basically the same size.
- graycat 9y agoSure.