User blog:Mh314159/The psycholog of large numbers

As a newcomer, I pause to wonder about the pyschology of big numbers. Why do we and others find them compelling? My first fascinationg goes back to an essay by Asimov called "The Lore of Large Numbers.  And recently, I was drawn back to them after a discussion with some students about Steinhaus's Mega, and then Megiston, and then Knuth up-arrows, and then Graham's number, and we all were amazed that processes existed to make numbers that were unimaginably large (and even Mega qualifies as unimaginably large).  However, we were less fascinated by TREE3. We had some idea of what the tree drawing game was that defines it, but had no way to come to grips with a process that can compute it, and the fact that it is in fact large to an unknown degree made it less interesting to all of us.  I imagine that this might not be at all true for those who work with ordinals.  For me, a number is more interesting if I can take a process that outputs that number and roll it around in my head, even if I cannot imagine the number itself. Trying to explain it to someone who finds it pointless since there can be no "largest" number, I compared it to a crossword puzzle or a sudoku, the completion of which is pointless from a practical point of view, but which is nevertheless satisfying to complete. Anyone else have thoughts about this?