So you're new to googology, huh?[]
You may be. Here I will lay out to you some of the most common mistakes newbies make in googology. If you are to be recognized as a googologist who is truly good at his craft, never do these things. W.I.P
Infinity[]
Infinity. It may seem like the easy big number contest winenr to the layman, but it's a cop out to a googologist. Infinity is guaranteed to be larger than any number (even Oblivion), and it doesn't count because of that! It's a game-breaker. Oh, but guess what? You technically WOULDN'T win. The game would keep on going! Infinity+1 is allowed, you say? Well Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity! And by allowing infinity you're not actually finishing the game! You're just adding insanity! Some people would then say "but what about absolute infinity? it's the largest one" but it's so big that it leads to a paradox! So we have agreed. NO INFINITY ALLOWED!
The last number[]
Yes, people actually do this. After they realize the first rule [in three words: NO INFINITY ALLOWED] they try to come up with a last number. This is not the same as saying infinity. The people who talk about the last number know that rule and know that infinity isn't the answer, but they have a pertinent wish for the last number. They want an easy way out. Either they're desperate for victory, or they just can't comprehend some numbers. Why should some gigantical number be less real than 1? Just because you don't know it doesn't mean it's not real! Some people refuse to think that numbers as big as a googolbang exist. They think "no, numbers like that can't exist! They're human thoughts, not real numbers!" but this is due to a lack of comprehension. They're the ultrafinitists. They are few but fanatical. They're utterly convinced. But this is exactly opposite to what googology does. Googology does away with boundaries and explores the vastness of numbers! But, to truly understand that it makes sense, you need to accept that there are numbers beyond our comprehension. Suffice it to say, there is no way to come to a largest number and if you're trying to do that you're breaking the rules. Accept that.
Salad numbers[]
Salad numbers are the second biggest dread of googologists behind infinity. They're numbers made together by mishmashing random functions and random numbers. Think of it like sword making. When making a good sword, you carefully use functions until you've arrived at a really good sword. You know it's not the best possible, but you keep making better swords. When making a salad sword, however, you keep thinking of new features to add to the sword and you keep adding and mashing them in until you barely know what you wanted to make! See, a good sword [say, a grangol] was carefully crafted. A salad sword [like BOX_M] was inelegantly mishmashed and haphazardly put together. This is another mistake! Putting together random numbers, functions, etc. and then arriving to something that is barely what you imagined! And there goes the section.
Not-well defined numbers[]
Another dreadful mistake worth a googolgoogolplex facepalms. In the above case of salad numbers, at least their creators TRIED to make something. Here, they don't! If we continue our sword-making analogy, then this is the case of a sword that was never truly shown! A sword that its forger keeps bragging about without showing it! Take, for example, Sam's number. It's described as "boggling a megafugafzgargoogolplex minds" and "filling so much more than a greagol universes" but we never see what it really is! It's like a sword whose power we never see! Sure, it's bragged about, but we never see it in action! See? If you make a number, you must show us what it is. Sure, you'll brag about it as being "unimaginably big" or "giving God a giant headache" but we won't believe that until you show us the number! If, every time someone gets closer to pinpointing your number, you make it larger, you're moving the goalpost. Now, there's another kind of error I wanna talk about...
Circularity[]
Put simply, circularity is doing stuff like
1 dogazoogol=10^dogazoogol or
1 sekdomineksillion=986 kadzaminillizillion
and 1 kadzaminillizillion=100 sekdomineksillion
This stuff is bad, so avoid it.
Unclear sequences[]
An unclear sequence is a sequence without clearly defined rules A person thinking of them will usually think like this:
"1, Rayo, Oblivion... Oh, what is the 4th member of this sequence? It must be something huge. Well, my number is the googolplexth member of this sequence! Yay, nobody can beat my number! It's uncomputable!"
The problem is, a list != a sequence. A sequence must have some rule to itself. Take the Fibonacci sequence, or any other sequence for that matter! They all have a rule except this one! Now, we're going to the next mistake...
Trying to go beyond[]
It's the most aggravating thing for googologists when a person tries to go out of the very bounds of googology with their number. When they try to make their number big by somehow going outside of googology. Its most common form is:
"The smallest number not expressible in all of googology"
This is a really aggravating thing! And technically it's not even a winner! If you go outside of googology you're not even playing! The oldest version of this is "your number+1". The problem is, it's dependent on what the other person says. If they refuse to speak [as they should here] then all you end up with is 1! There's also the trick of "sum of every number on this wiki+1" but that changes. It's called a changing googologism and it's problematic [ignoring the feedback loop because the number itself is a number on the wiki]. New numbers are added, salad numbers are removed, and much more. But then you say "the sum of every number on this wiki on this date+1". Voila! You've got yourself a number. But, larger numbers are added over time. Somebody could even beat your number by saying "2*the sum of all numbers on this wiki on this date" and not even referencing it!
Conclusion[]
What have we learned so far? DON'T DO THESE THINGS. Thanks for reading!