The article says you start with a list of positive integers. It also clearly shows right in the first example of the first rule that you can go smaller than th

The article says you start with a list of positive integers. It also clearly shows right in the first example of the first rule that you can go smaller than the smallest initial value: [7, 5, 3] -> [6, 1, 5, 3] is the first legal move it shows, and you'll notice that 1 is smaller than 7, 5, or 3.