Just reading the summary of Collatz reminds me a whole lot of the Josephus problem. 3x+1 is a similar expression you'd see when you're trying to enumerate indic

Just reading the summary of Collatz reminds me a whole lot of the Josephus problem. 3x+1 is a similar expression you'd see when you're trying to enumerate indices in that problem. Dividing by two is similar to going once around the circle killing every other index. I wonder if that's been explored?