Who Can Name the Bigger Number?

Regarding the game of Who Can Name the Bigger Number?, Scott Aaronson shows that while 9^9^9^9 might cut the mustard in the first couple of rounds, the numbers and the notation used to express them get much more complicated.

Exponentials are familiar, relevant, intimately connected to the physical world and to human hopes and fears. Using the notational systems I’ll discuss next, we can concisely name numbers that make exponentials picayune by comparison, that subjectively speaking exceed 9^9^9^9 as much as the latter exceeds 9.

See also the Wikipedia entry for large numbers.

• mathematics
• Scott Aaronson