User blog comment:Sbiis Saibian/Order of the Kasnerites/@comment-30754445-20170114212905

It seems to me that these two "branches" of googology are much more similar to one another than most people think.

A person cannot be a good "Kasnerite" without a solid understanding of the general topic of large numbers. And the best way to seriously learn the general topic of large numbers, is to create your own notation.

At any rate, the thing that differentiate googologists from the academia is simple:We are big numbers fans. We don't study them for some practical purpose or to solve some mathematical problem, but simply explore the world of large numbers for its own sake.

By doing that, we've already gone where the academia does not dare to go. As incredibly as it sounds, there is no official field of mathematics which is solely devoted to large numbers. So many of the things people here have discovered are - as far as I know - unique.

Shall I remind you who holds the most records in the Busy Beaver competition right now? Even little things, like my own continuous w^w-level notation, seem to have no analogue in the mainstream literature. There seem to be plenty of low-hanging fruits that are ripe for the taking, simply because nobody at the academia gives a **** about large numbers.

And yes, the whimsical is also part of what we do. But if we really want to base our "tradition" on the works of people like Jonathan Bowers, then we should remember that Bowers wasn't only whimsical. His serious contribution to our understanding of large numbers was enormous. And the same is true for your own work, Sbiis (in fac,t I can't believe I'm actually talkiing to you, after being a fan of yours for so many years).