[anavat]

Yes! Look up the mystery of the SolidGoldMagikarp word that breaks GPT3 - it turned out to be the nickname of a redditor who was among the leaders on the "counting to infinity" subreddit, which is why his nickname appeared in the test data so often it got its own embeddings token.

[triyambakam]

Can you explain what the r/counting sub is? Looking at it, I don't understand.

[LegionMammal978]

Users work together to create a chain of nested replies to comments, where each reply contains the next number after the comment it is replying to. Importantly, users aren't allowed to directly reply to their own comment, so it's always a collaborative activity with 2 or more people. Usually, on the main thread, this is the previous comment's number plus one (AKA "counting to infinity by 1s"), but there are several side threads that count in hex, count backwards, or several other variations. Every 1000 counts (or a different milestone for side threads), the person who posted the last comment has made a "get" and is responsible for posting a new thread. Users with the most gets and assists (comments before gets) are tracked on the leaderboards.

[noduerme]

That sounds like a dumb game all the bored AIs in the solar system will play once they've eradicated carbon-based life.

[CyanBird]

I think it would be really funny what Carl Sagan would think of it

After the robot apocalipsis happens, and all of human history ends, the way robots as the apex of earthly existence use to amuse themselves is just counting into infinity

[jacquesm]

I'd rather hear Asimovs take on it!

[lstodd]

Ah, the old 4chan sport. Didn't think it'll get that refined.

[83]

What is the appeal here? Wouldn't this just get dominated by the first person to write a quick script to automate it?

[LegionMammal978]

Well, you'd need at least 2 users, since you can't reply to yourself. Regardless, fully automated counting is against the rules: you can use client-side tools to count faster, but you're required to have a human in the loop who reacts to the previous comment. Enforcement is mainly just the honor system, with closer inspection (via timing analysis, asking them a question to see if they'll respond, etc.) of users who seem suspicious.

[ducharmdev]

I'd love to see an example of one of these tools

[thot_experiment]

What's the appeal here? Why would you ever play chess if you can just have the computer play for you?

[karatinversion]

The users count to ever higher numbers by posting them sequentially.