User blog comment:PsiCubed2/Are We Inadvertently Encouraging Salad Numbers?/@comment-27260252-20170609151713/@comment-30754445-20170613082110

Everything is relative, Chrono.

This wiki may be more beginner-friendly than the academia, but it is still pretty heavy on technical jargon.

It's funny, really. This place started as a place for hobbyists to whimsically create big numbers, but after years of developing new systems and methods our "googology" became an actual field of study with it's own technical jargon. The original hobbyists became experts :-)

And there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's wonderful. But I also think that acknowledging this transition is important. We are at a different place now, and trying to do things the way we did them 10 years ago is probably not a very good idea.

Speaking of transitions: I think the original motto of "trying to make the biggest number you can" should be amended. It's misleading. Maybe that's how googology started, but today it is much more than that. Such a creed also gives the newcomers an impression of competition which - I think - is unhealthy.

(even if this competition is only with yourself. People should strive to understand the world of large numbers, rather than just rush forward in an effort to beat personal records)

I think googology can be likened to a martial art. Sure you can have competitions in Judo and Karate and whatever, but the important thing is the transformative journey. Once you reach a certain level, you'll never look at numbers the same way again.