User blog:Sbiis Saibian/The Great Googology Census of 2016

A Call to Counting

It is generally accepted that our "community" has grown. But by how much? And in what way. In order to get a quantitative handle on the situation I suggest the taking of a census. I believe now is a good time for us as a community to take stock of what "googology" has become.

Initially there was only a handful of people who were responsible for the content that this wiki had become the depository for. Perhaps one of the first sources was Jonathan Bowers, even though he has never identified himself as a "googologist", though his work clearly is indicative of the label. Andre Joyce served as an early source, providing the name "googology" for the "subject" as well as being the first person to self identify as a "googologist". Robert Munafo provided a website that served as one of the first compilations of information on large number names and notations, and early pioneers, such as myself and Chris Bird, began to expand upon the work of Bowers, albeit in different directions. (Chris Birds work was instrumental in providing formal notation that eventually inspired Bowers to create a explicit notation up to tetrational arrays, and my work provided a framework for what it meant to be a practicing "googologist"). At this early stage there was only a handful of "googological" websites, and self-proclaimed "googologists". In fact other than myself and Joyce I don't believe anyone else adopted the label at this point.

Then came the "2nd wave", so to speak. Now people began rushing in, fully embracing the "googologist" moniker, creating systems and then names within those systems, following the tradition established by Bowers and worked and expanded upon by myself. A series of new notations and new googologists showed up. A handful of these were great additions to the googological databanks, and the creators created the second wave of googology sites. This 2nd wave never really stopped. It continued to grow, and new "googology sites" began to pop up until there was a bit of a saturation point at which the wiki no longer reflected the entirety of available information on the internet. This is kind of where we stand today, with the exact figure of individuals identifying themselves as googologists as uncertain.

With the proliferation of "googologists" and "notations" it was inevitable that the discussion would eventually turn to what was "notable" enough to be included in the wiki. This has already begun to happen with certain notations being so poorly designed and of so little significance to the overall development of googology that their non-inclusion or deletion is being seriously considered and a community debate it has begun. This is despite the tongue-in-cheek goal of the wiki to "reach 10^100 articles". Certainly we could include every absurdity of all humanity for all known history and still not even approach this goal. However, for practical considerations this is going to be generally undesirable both a user-end side and administration side. On the one hand if the wiki were to be entirely unfiltered the law of averages would be that the majority of content would be poorly created and redundant and it would be hard to pin point what the "good stuff" is. Secondly the up-keep and management of such a place in which anyone could easily create an account and an offsite source and add their own work freely to the wiki would open us up to vandalism and it would become nearly impossible to police in any way. So we are perhaps reaching a critical juncture here.

I believe it is time for the community to take some stock of itself and making an accounting of just what is the body of "googological knowledge and craft" at this point. Whether the wiki can truly accomidate all of this content, and to what extent it is in any way obligated to host content remains open to debate, but at least we can have some cataloging of the existing material that is pending for inclusion.

Census Proposal

To this end I suggest a very informal "census". In its most general definition a census is simply an "official count or survey of a population which may or may not include more detailed information on sub-groups or individuals within that population". Here "population" doesn't necessarily refer to "people" but rather to any set. For example the "set of all coined googolisms" is the "population of googolisms". There are several ways we could go about collecting census information on googology, from counting googolisms, to notations, to websites, etc. A later series of censuses may be conducted to address these issues. For the present census however we want the simplest means to gain a rough order of magnitude of the available data supply. After giving this some thought I've come to the conclusion that the best way to achieve this is actually to count individuals rather than ideas. Individual googologists may create dozens of notations and thousands of googologisms over several platforms, but generally each work can be traced to a specific individual. So the purpose of this census is simply to tally up the number of "practicing" or "retired" googologists. Of course in order to study any population we have to actually define that population. Hence we need a very specific defintion for what a "googologist" even is. Undoubtably there will be those who disagree with my choice of definition, but we can add the proviso here that this definition exists purely for the sake of the census in question and that its scope should not be construed to extend beyond that. Others are of course free to come to their own conclusions about what qualifies as "googology" or a "googologist" and conduct their own investigations based on those assumptions.With that being said I kindly ask that the comments section not be entirely be dominated by discussion of definitions and rather be primarily focused on the data collection proposed. For the purposes of such a community discussion it might be advisable for someone to host either a blog or community meeting to discuss the issue at length and with as many people involved as possible, preferably in a moderated fashion.

Before I proceed to a definition I'd like to describe my design goals in order to justify my particular choices and avoid misunderstandings as to the nature and purpose of this survey. The very idea of what constitutes a "googologist" or "googology" has been a subject of some controversy in our community. The main contention involves whether people whose work is presented on the wiki, are ispo facto googologists by the mere fact of their works inclusion. This mainly comes up in connection with professional works recognized as "googological" in nature while the participants do not identify as "googologists" and are in no way affliated or even aware with our "community" (to be defined shortly). Of course even the notion of what our "community" is, is a subject of debate for the same reason. Technically any work which involves "positive real numbers" that might be deemed "suffiently large" (low barrier to entry) are certainly candidates for inclusion on the wiki and googology-lore. However the purpose of this survey is to gauge the growth of the phenomena specifically born on the internet and inspired by what we might call the core of googological tradition.

Politics aside what I'm about to say can not be denied: the "growth" of available content for inclusion on the wiki is not coming out of professional circles, but rather from people of all walks of life who have found this very wiki, or googology websites that has lead them to this wiki, and has motivated them to make user accounts and don the "googologist" moniker and make it their own. It's a seemingly ever growing web of interconnected inspiration that may at its root contain works from professional mathematics but is definitely a distinct phenomena from it. The most key distinction is that for this contingent math is merely a "tool" to try and "craft" googolisms and large numbers in general, for mathematicians "googology" is merely a trivial consequence of the nature of mathematics and is merely "diversionary" at best. Its the intended aim and general behavior that distinguishes these sub-groups within what we might call the "population of content contributors". It should also be noted that for those professionals whose work is included, it is not them who is including their work here, but it seems to be a growing trend of these self styled "googologists" to submit their own work to the wiki itself. These distinctions have been repeatedly swept under the rug by certain community members, but I feel this distinction is very important if "we", those who primarily use and follow this wiki, are to move forward as a community.

So to clarify the googology community refers to those people who are either registered users of the googology wiki, or who are aware of the wiki and consider themselves members of this wiki community or the "googology community" in general, or whose inspiration for their work can eventually be traced back to the wiki. This definition is necessarily narrow for pragmatic considerations and to avoid any ambiguity. This leaves open the question of whether or not there are other "communities" which do very much what this wiki-community does and whether or not they are aware of us. There is also the possibility of ennumerable "independents" whose work is fundamentally googological in nature, and yet who are unaware of any community of such individuals or even other googologists. The point however is that, pragmatically speaking, we need to focus on what we can know, not what we might not or never know. That being said this definition for the googology community is admittedly and purposefully incomplete and no offense to those excluded is intended. Later censuses may address these more difficult issues of extending the definition of what constitutes the larger "community" of googologists.

With that issue hopefully clarified lets discuss what is meant by a googologist within the ''community. Not every member of the community is ipso facto ''a googologist. Many are enthusiasts who, while making no contributions of their own, are none the less fans who are aware of and avid readers of the content of this wiki. What percentage of community members are googologists remains to be seen.

Here is my proposed 5-prong approach to what defines a "googologist" for the puposes of this census:

(1) Must be a member of the googology community as previously defined.

(2) Must either self-identify as a googologist, or failing that see themselves as a practioner of large number studies (as opposed to a passive observer), who may or may not use another term to identify their practice

(3) Must have actually created something googological in nature, either a notation for large numbers, a function for the purpose of generating large numbers, or names for specific large numbers. In short, produced some work with the aim of inclusion in googology-lore or wiki content.

(4) Must have some documented proof of this work on the internet, either via inclusion of works on the wiki proper, in a blog post on the wiki, or on some offsite source.

(5) The work must be in "good faith". That is, there must be a sincere attempt to have their work taken seriously, as opposed to a public display not meant to be included in googology-lore or simply meant to lampoon or mock the practice in general. This includes purposely created "nonsense words" and "math" intended to make fun without having any actual mathematical content.

The quality of the work is not a criteria for inclusion, only a consideration of the sincerity of the participant. Knowingly produced nonsense is not googology. Nonsense which is unknowingly such to the creator in a sincere attempt at inclusion is still technically googology.

Honest attempts at "clarification" on these points is welcome with the proviso that these definitions are not intended to be completely and totally unambiguous and some degree of interpretation is necessary, though I believe such absolute precision is not possible and that a lack of such precision does not mean useful information can not be gained. Make your concerns known though it may be better to contact me personally through my user page or email rather than in the comments section in order to keep things focused.

Method of Data Collection

In order to be included in the Census simply post a comment and affirm that you meet the criteria and consider yourself a googologist or practioner of large number studies in some shape or form. Please provide proof with a link to some of your googological work. Even if you are not currently a participating googologist, if you at any previous point in time considered yourself a practioner, I encourage your participation in the census. For those wishing to "nominate" another as a candidate, I would prefer that individuals only nominate themselves and that you can let those wanting to be included know that they should make the submission themselves. Obviously a nomination will be rejected if it does not meet the 5-pronged approach, or if I can find no evidence of the person or the work you are claiming nomination for.

For those who are not participating I just make a general request not to flood the comment sections with non-submission comments. Thank you in advanced for your cooperation and participation.

Presentation of Data

Those who get included will be among a list of "unofficial registered" googologists, and a tally of the total number of such individuals will be made. This information will be made public to the community either via this blog post, another blog post, or some other source if it becomes too large. The participation window will be 2016, no inclusions past that year. The Census data will be updated as my own time allows.

Disclaimers

As a necessity I have to claim the final authority on who is and is not included on the "list" since I have no commitee at my disposal for making such decisions. I will say however that I will try to be honest and fair within the best of my ability, but that ultimately its the communities call to either accept or reject my list and decide whether it was conducted in a fair and non-biased manner.

Nominations will be rejected if no information is included and I can not find any information on the nominee or their googological work.

What you get out of Participation

Regardless of whether or not your work becomes part of the wiki "canon" record, participation will be a way for you to register yourself for recognition as a googologist within the community regardless of the merit of your work (although for those intending to derail the census through spaming, the sincerity-clause will exclude those participants whose work is not in "good faith" as previously defined).

Secondly the aggragation of participation will become general community knowledge, allowing us all to guage the amount of current participation in the community, and to have a concrete number representing the current "population of googologists".

Final Words

I look forward to the results of the census. While there may be those who disagree with the design of the census and its implications for what googology is or should be, I want to say that this census is made in good faith towards the "community" however you choose to look at it. I love googology and I want to see it grow and flourish. Lets not let politics get in the way of a healthly community atmosphere.

'k, have at it!!!

Sincerely, Sbiis.ExE

CURRENT CENSUS RESULTS

REGISTERED GOOGOLOGIST'S: 0

THE LIST:

[EMPTY]