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Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by scarmig on Thursday May 12, 2016 @12:08PM (#11684437)
Would a tl;dr here be:

Is BB(26) - BB(25) greater than or less than BB(25)?

Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by btilly on Thursday May 12, 2016 @02:41PM (#11685737)
I am certain it is greater. BB(n) grows super-exponentially.

In fact I would be willing to bet serious money that BB(n+1)/BB(n) is greater than BB(n) if 3 < n.

(This is, of course, assuming that one assumes that BB(n) is well-defined. That is an interesting point of philosophy given the existence of Turing machines which can't be proven to not halt.)

Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by schoen on Thursday May 12, 2016 @04:36PM (#11686585)
> In fact I would be willing to bet serious money that BB(n+1)/BB(n) is greater than BB(n) if 3 < n.

BB(n) grows faster than any computable function. In order for BB(n+1)/BB(n) > BB(n) to hold, BB(n) merely has to grow faster than a sequence whose new terms are obtained by repeated squaring (like k^2ⁿ). That's computable, indeed primitive recursive, so BB(n) definitely grows dramatically faster than it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_recursive_function

Edit: another way of looking at this is that the Ackermann function grows unbelievably faster than functions that easily satisfy the property you describe, and the Busy Beaver function grows unbelievably faster than the Ackermann function. Somehow putting it this way feels like an understatement, though!

Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by btilly on Thursday May 12, 2016 @05:34PM (#11686940)
It is unfortunately not that easy. Consider the following function, if n is even then f(n) = BB(n/2), else f(n) = BB(2n). Then f(n) grows faster than any computable function, but still if n is odd, then f(n+1) < f(n).

However you have encapsulated the reason why I would be confident of this result. :-)

Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by strictnein on Thursday May 12, 2016 @01:30PM (#11685213)
Google didn't help me. What's BB(#)?
Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by betenoire on Thursday May 12, 2016 @01:37PM (#11685260)
Busy Beaver
Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by gresrun on Thursday May 12, 2016 @02:14PM (#11685530)
Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by startling on Thursday May 12, 2016 @01:54PM (#11685380)
I think people are downvoting you because they're assuming you're not serious. :(
Re:A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years by ScottBurson on Thursday May 12, 2016 @08:56PM (#11687904)