4 ms·

The more we keep talking about it, the more interesting I find this number. It seems to have quite the ability to generate discussion. It may be the least borin

The more we keep talking about it, the more interesting I find this number. It seems to have quite the ability to generate discussion. It may be the least boring number!

Dylan16807 4y ago
Let's imagine we have a ton of people try to come up with interesting numbers. Half of them try this keysmash method, and half of them try to come up with numbers without such randomness. Then we have them each vote for a number they find interesting. In that case, numbers like the above will get one vote. Lots of other numbers in these sequences will have tens, hundreds, thousands of votes. Are the votes wrong? Is your number really the most interesting? Is it even the most interesting number between n-10 and n+10? Throwing out half the resumes you get won't help you pick a candidate with better luck. Happening to randomly generate a number once doesn't make it interesting. Nothing in this discussion is specific to that number. All the interestingness of this discussion should be split trillions of ways across all the similar keysmash numbers.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  Calling it the least boring number was a joke, really. I do maintain two points seriously. First, that the digit frequency in this number reveals how it was generated and that characteristic lifts it off the floor of "least interesting numbers". Yes, there are a lot of numbers in this keyboard smash group. There are also a lot of primes. Second, I am going to give some credit to this number, 385734874675783289473. You can come up with a hypothetical, describe what might have happened in other universes. But, that's not what actually happened. Not all of the interestingness should be split because only one of those numbers actually showed up in this discussion in this universe. There's something unromantic about forgetting that, like a man sending a small anniversary present to every woman he went to college with because maybe he'd have ended up marrying any of them.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Well, the people you meet only exist in this one lifetime. But the numbers themselves transcend that. I think it's okay to attach a tiny bit of significance to a number that happens to be randomly generated, but I don't think it's enough to move a number up to "interesting" unless it was right on the edge.

The more we keep talking about it, the more interesting I find this number. It seems to have quite the ability to generate discussion. It may be the least boring number!

Dylan16807 4y ago

Let's imagine we have a ton of people try to come up with interesting numbers. Half of them try this keysmash method, and half of them try to come up with numbers without such randomness. Then we have them each vote for a number they find interesting. In that case, numbers like the above will get one vote. Lots of other numbers in these sequences will have tens, hundreds, thousands of votes. Are the votes wrong? Is your number really the most interesting? Is it even the most interesting number between n-10 and n+10? Throwing out half the resumes you get won't help you pick a candidate with better luck. Happening to randomly generate a number once doesn't make it interesting. Nothing in this discussion is specific to that number. All the interestingness of this discussion should be split trillions of ways across all the similar keysmash numbers.

travisjungroth 4y ago
Calling it the least boring number was a joke, really. I do maintain two points seriously. First, that the digit frequency in this number reveals how it was generated and that characteristic lifts it off the floor of "least interesting numbers". Yes, there are a lot of numbers in this keyboard smash group. There are also a lot of primes. Second, I am going to give some credit to this number, 385734874675783289473. You can come up with a hypothetical, describe what might have happened in other universes. But, that's not what actually happened. Not all of the interestingness should be split because only one of those numbers actually showed up in this discussion in this universe. There's something unromantic about forgetting that, like a man sending a small anniversary present to every woman he went to college with because maybe he'd have ended up marrying any of them.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Well, the people you meet only exist in this one lifetime. But the numbers themselves transcend that. I think it's okay to attach a tiny bit of significance to a number that happens to be randomly generated, but I don't think it's enough to move a number up to "interesting" unless it was right on the edge.