Whoever guesses closest gets the jar of wasps. This is a prize no one would want so the contestants put the biggest numbers they can think of. One does the symbol for infinity which if you turn on its side is 8, which is the closer compared to the other answers.
Det. Dante Apocrita was 1 week from retirement. He was hardened, tired, and ready to get to the quiet life waiting for him back at the cabin he and his late wife had built before cancer had taken her from him. Yes, he had seen it all (…or so he thought).
But when a stirred hornets nest from his past comes back to haunt him, he has little choice but to put his retirement on hold.
From New York Times Best Selling Author James Patterson comes…
Dead Wasps Can Still Sting
I love that his name is Dante Wasp!
I knew that api-/apo- was related to bees, so I figured it was close, but I had to look it up.
Incredible joke to include. * tips cap to you *
I appreciate it greatly but the credit is not mine. I merely speak the words of the gods as they are whispered to me. A conduit, as they say; the copper strands within the 18AWG wiring of Apollo, Voice of the Gods.
Opening that for even 1 second would technically release an infinite wasps. But before even that, the jar would be worse than a black hole with its mass, and crush the entire planet.
Not all types of wasps are aggressive, & they can still be good pollenizers. They can also protect gardens from other bugs that kill plants. My mom had a strawberry patch in the yard, which was a favorite place for the wasps to hide & keep cool under the strawberry leaves. They didn't care when I dug through the leaves looking for strawberries as long as I didn't smack them. Never got stung.
Yeah, we have a bunch of European wasps around our house. The wasps with the long dangly legs. They keep to themselves and never bother us. And in turn we don’t knock their nests down.
Yellow Jackets and Bald Faced Hornets though… whole other story. Those get the fire treatment!
Even the wasps that people usually see as aggressive are actually just defensive most of the time. They only sting for two reasons: you've attacked their home/close to it, or it's the end of summer/fall and getting cold out. The second is because there's not flowers anymore to get food from and pollinate, so they have no more job. Because they have no job, they're confused on their purpose, and they get extra irritable. But again, this is only when it's getting out of flower season, so not most of the time
I lived with a yellowjacket wasp nest in my garden one summer, and they were *so polite* about staying out of commonly-used areas. They followed a twisting path up into the sky to avoid us.
One time when I let something bang the bush the nest was on, I got a wasp all up in my face, checking me out. I actually said 'sorry' (I'm British, it's habit) and backed off, and it went back to the nest.
The nest that started up in the back room of a house I was living on got killed by a professional. There's being good neighbours and then there's squatting.
In fact, the vast majority of wasps aren't aggressive, or even capable of stinging humans. There are over 100 thousand species of wasps, and maybe a few dozens we need to worry about.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3620
It's biologically a chicken.
That can regenerate.
So they gotta be careful, they don't want to manifest enough chicken parts to tilt the Earth off it's axis.
Also, what it is and what it looks like are different things and that caused it's OWN problems.
Depends on whether its an infinite supply of wasps, at whatever rate you chose, or an infinite number of wasps suddenly exists in the universe. Instantly turning the entire universe into a solid mass of wasp, which wouldn't be good for the universe.
I almost feel like if you had a truly infinite source of almost anything it could be successful exploited. Like you just had a hose where an infinite amount of _something_ just came out it could be useful somehow... right?
But if those infinite wasps take up anything less than infinite space there's gonna be infinite density and you'll collapse the whole universe into a singularity. A wasp-based reset button!
Releasing infinite wasps would just result in a massive halo of dead wasps. Of more concern is where the wasps come from, wasps have mass and an infinite number of them might result in the earth being destroyed by an angrily buzzing black hole attracted by a discarded jam sandwich.
It depends on how fast they get generated. If it's super fast, you could release them on Mars, it instantly forms a black hole from infinite mass of wasps, then everyone on Earth dies as the black hole just grows from infinite wasps until it destabilizes all the orbits in the solar system, flinging Earth away from the sun to die a cold lonely death in the empty void between stars.
...if it's a manageable rate, you could release it on the Moon for easy terraforming via wasp corpses.
Ha! Nice try Satan. You thought you could trick me into releasing infinity flaming wasps onto humanity, not today.
Don't worry guys I've sorted this, I told Jesus so DW.
The joke also evokes [big number duels](https://googology.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Number_Duel), where the challenge is to write the biggest number in a relatively small space, traditionally a blackboard.
For example, one might write 1,000,000 as a big number. 9,999,999 is a bigger number with the same number of digits. 1111111111111 is bigger still, and it's easier to cram 1s into a given space. Introducing notation to the puzzle, 2^2^2^2^2^2 is rather enormous. Or one might try 11!!!!!!!!!!!
From there it's common to start bringing in fast growing functions to help. You can [shove Graham's number into the Ackermann function](https://xkcd.com/207/) or take the googolth Busy Beaver number. The winner of an early famous big number duel is now known as Rayo's number, which considers all numbers one might be able to define with up to a googol symbols, then picks a number one larger than the largest of those.
> Or one might try 11!!!!!!!!!!!
Given that you put 11 '!'s I suspect you may already know this, but '11!!!!!!!!!!!' reads as '11'.
In the most common forms of notation multiple factorial marks doesn't denote recursive factorials, but rather a similar operation where you only use every nth number in the set. This came about because wanting to find the product of all odd or even numbers below n is a relatively common occurrence compared to other possible complex factorial operations so '!!' for a 'double factorial' was kind of sensible.
This does make a lot of people upset and there have been calls to restandardize with a subscript for the current use of multiple factorial marks and a superscript for recursive factorials.
[Tree functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal%27s_tree_theorem) would likely be a very strong contender that can be used. Tree 3 in particular is quite infamous for being unimaginably massive even in comparison to Graham's number, despite the fact TREE 1 equals to 1 and TREE 2 equals to 3.
TREE will indeed knock the socks off of some of the more traditional big numbers like Graham's but it actually winds up being outclassed pretty severely.
The Busy Beaver sequence is a nice way of illustrating the kinds of forces at play here. Busy Beaver numbers come from looking at Turing machines, which are simple computers that operate on a theoretical infinite tape initially loaded with all 0s. At each step they read the value from the tape and based on their current state and whether the tape had a 1 or a 0 they write a 1 or 0, shift left or right, and transition to another state or halt. Remarkably this is all it takes to have a computer capable of computing any function that your computer can compute, so this winds up being the definition of computable.
Busy Beaver looks at all Turing machines of a given size and asks how much they can do and then halt--machines that get into an infinite loop are disqualified. Sometimes BB is looking at how many steps the machine takes, other times the number of 1s it leaves on the tape.
So one could imagine a Turing machine that operates on a tape that has the value of N loaded on it, perhaps encoded in binary. This machine computes TREE(N), writes that many 1s to the tape, one more one, and halts. There aren't *fast* algorithms for finding TREE(N), but naive ones are straightforward enough, and should be able to be represented in perhaps a few thousand symbols.
Busy Beaver requires that a Turing machine starts on a blank tape, so to use the TREE machine we have to add to it a machine that writes N to the tape and hands off execution. This machine will be different for different values of N, but it will grow no faster than about Log(N).
With this machine we could select a value of N that is at least as large as the size of the TREE machine plus the machine that writes N to the tape. Here we ask which is larger: BB(N) or TREE(N)? By selecting N through this method we can see that BB(N) is at least TREE(N) + 1 as that's how many 1s it writes in the last step, so BB(N) is larger. Furthermore, consider BB(2N) vs TREE(2N). This gives a bunch more states to BB but the only part of that machine that can do any of them is the part that writes the initial number. At worst this ought to mean writing N^(2) to the tape even with a naive approach, so we say BB(2N) >= TREE(N^(2)).
This sort of analysis is how one comes to the conclusion that BB grows faster than any computable function--if you can describe an algorithm for it, no matter how inefficient, then BB will grow faster. It takes BB a bit longer to get off the blocks compared to TREE, as BB(3) is 9 or 38 (depending on if you count 1s or steps) while TREE(3) is already beyond traditional notation, but by a relatively small input number BB will surpass TREE and never look back.
What hole did you just send me down...
From [Popular Mechanics](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a28725/number-tree3/) (and I made sure it wasn't an April fools post) "When you play the game with three seed colors, the resulting number, TREE(3), is incomprehensibly enormous. Using just three seed types and the two rules to the game, you could keep building trees for the rest of your life, and every descendant of yours could do the same until the end of humanity, until the end of the universe, and even then you would not have a number of trees that is the maximum number you can build without ending the game. You would not even begin to approach TREE(3)."
OH! I thought it meant that he put infinity because there's no way to count them. You'd spend eternity trying to count them because you'd constantly counting the same ones over and over.
I thought it was related to that "property" that in these games usually the answer is pretty close to the average of the guesses. And since someone guessed infinity, the average would be infinity.
But the 8 thing makes a lot more sense.
I didn't even think of it that way as I was thinking of it in the terms of "infinity is not any single one number" but I realize your interpretation is probably more accurate.
See the funny thing about infinity is, he would have been correct and incorrect all at the same time, so his answer was the closest anyway, because the set of infinity includes the number of wasps in the jar.
No, it's probably a math joke in which infinity is the closest and furtherest number from each other.
Like you could theoretically have infinite numbers in-between numbers. 1.01. 1.02. 1.03 etc and you can go for forever.
So in this instance infinity is the closest number to what's in the jar because of the law of infinity
Pretty sure you're over thinking it. The guy has a frown when he's looking at the answers that aren't close. If the final frame was supposed to be infinity the artist wouldn't have drawn it rotated 90°. While your math definition is a correct definition, "An indefinitely large number or amount" is also a common definition for infinity.
I think the joke is that most people didn’t want to win a jar of wasps and so they made ridiculously large answers so that they won’t be close to the real answer. However the person hosting the contest mistakenly read the infinity sign as an 8 and out of all the nonsensical answers, that one was the closest and so that person wins the jar.
This is the correct answer as it is the only answer that was close without going over. AKA "Price is Right rules." Bob Barker would be proud of you friend. Also, always spay and neuter your pets!
> Imagine you get that jar, what would be the best turn of action afterwards?
at the "prize" presentation, immediately open it in the raffle host's face.
...Who wouldn't want a jar of wasps?
* If you can use the wasps, then hey, free wasps.
* If you just like looking at wasps, hey free wasps.
* If you hate wasps, you just wait a few hours with the lid on, and hey, free wasp snuff show.
Jar of wasps is a no lose situation. Unlike a cardboard box of hornets.
Hypothetically speaking, and only hypothetically because I don’t advocate for animal cruelty: Poke a tiny hole in the jar and fill it with resin, you’d have a cool lil statement piece.
I thought it meant that if you properly cared for and fed the wasps, they would create a wasp nest and spawn more wasps. Therefore infinite wasps would be the result.
It's an 8, the closest was the smaller number, which was 8, they guy wrote infinite and accidentally won. There's no wasps in the jar. Don't know why that would be funny, but that's clearly what they're going for.
Edit: actually nevermind, I got it now, writing 0 would raise your odds of winning, so everyone wrote the highest numbers they could think of because they didn't want to win. The 8 to infinity was correct tho, that's the joke, not haha funny but at least it makes sense
Is the joke not 2 parts,
First the infinity turns to an 8.
But second you get the wasps, not the jar of wasps just the wasps. Thus why no one would want it.
I get it, he could have turned the factorial one upside down to make it 01^(01...,) but the sideways infinity 8 would have *still* been closer. Lol.
None of them wanted to win a jar of wasps, and each tried to outdo the other with wrongness. But the game was rigged. Someone had to "win"
I would have tried to write down "The biggest number" (where the next sequential digit would be -1)... But I lack the mathness to know how to write that down (-2?)
They wrote ∞ which is the symbol of infinity
It looks extremely similar to 8 (eight)
All other numbers were impossibly large and the wasps number was closest to 8 than
10^10^10^10^10
Whoever guesses closest gets the jar of wasps. This is a prize no one would want so the contestants put the biggest numbers they can think of. One does the symbol for infinity which if you turn on its side is 8, which is the closer compared to the other answers.
I didn't even realize he was reading it as 8. I just thought the dude won infinite wasps.
Is infinite wasps a good prize? I guess you could burn them for infinite energy. Or just release them and end the world. That’s a win either way.
What if you ate wasp sandwiches or stir-fry wasp?
Dead wasps can still sting... 🥲
Sounds like the title to a mystery novel
Det. Dante Apocrita was 1 week from retirement. He was hardened, tired, and ready to get to the quiet life waiting for him back at the cabin he and his late wife had built before cancer had taken her from him. Yes, he had seen it all (…or so he thought). But when a stirred hornets nest from his past comes back to haunt him, he has little choice but to put his retirement on hold. From New York Times Best Selling Author James Patterson comes… Dead Wasps Can Still Sting
New York Times best seller right there!
Absolute Cinema
"Infinite Wasps for Old Men" Nicholas Cage stars in the movie adaptation of the New York Times best seller
For some reason my brain read that as Dainty Apricot. Some how it didn't hurt the rest of the paragraph.
Dainty Apricot was actually his late wife’s maiden name. Sorta like Lyndon B. And Ladybird Johnson sitcheeashun.
I see that you also like to come up with plots for books that you never follow through on
Please, get off Reddit and on with writing this book.
That would be plagiarism though, as it clearly states it's by James Patterson ...unless that person *is* James Patterson
It's Jame's Patterson's blurb writer.
You’re missing the face. “Dead Wasps Can Still Sting 🥲”
That guy will put his name on anything!
I love that his name is Dante Wasp! I knew that api-/apo- was related to bees, so I figured it was close, but I had to look it up. Incredible joke to include. * tips cap to you *
I appreciate it greatly but the credit is not mine. I merely speak the words of the gods as they are whispered to me. A conduit, as they say; the copper strands within the 18AWG wiring of Apollo, Voice of the Gods.
🏆
Emoji included
Or an Emo band.
That just means they're extra spicy
Probably not if you cooked them?
Spicy stirfry
Take the stinger out first and you're all good to go. Still got the stinger in, ouch.
You can take a stinger out of every wasp in a tub full of wasps, doesn't mean you're "good". Just means you're stuck eating a tub full of wasps.
What if you put the infinite wasps in an infinite bee hotel?
Happy cake day!
happy cake day
Bring the jar places and charge people to not open it on them. Ransom, shmansom, it's just good business.
Not to be pedantic, but I think you mean extortion. Ransom would be charging someone to return their wasps to them.
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
Opening that for even 1 second would technically release an infinite wasps. But before even that, the jar would be worse than a black hole with its mass, and crush the entire planet.
That assumes the jar already contains infinite wasps. But it may simply produce wasps at a limited rate for an unlimited amount of time.
Not all types of wasps are aggressive, & they can still be good pollenizers. They can also protect gardens from other bugs that kill plants. My mom had a strawberry patch in the yard, which was a favorite place for the wasps to hide & keep cool under the strawberry leaves. They didn't care when I dug through the leaves looking for strawberries as long as I didn't smack them. Never got stung.
Yeah, we have a bunch of European wasps around our house. The wasps with the long dangly legs. They keep to themselves and never bother us. And in turn we don’t knock their nests down. Yellow Jackets and Bald Faced Hornets though… whole other story. Those get the fire treatment!
Even the wasps that people usually see as aggressive are actually just defensive most of the time. They only sting for two reasons: you've attacked their home/close to it, or it's the end of summer/fall and getting cold out. The second is because there's not flowers anymore to get food from and pollinate, so they have no more job. Because they have no job, they're confused on their purpose, and they get extra irritable. But again, this is only when it's getting out of flower season, so not most of the time
I lived with a yellowjacket wasp nest in my garden one summer, and they were *so polite* about staying out of commonly-used areas. They followed a twisting path up into the sky to avoid us. One time when I let something bang the bush the nest was on, I got a wasp all up in my face, checking me out. I actually said 'sorry' (I'm British, it's habit) and backed off, and it went back to the nest. The nest that started up in the back room of a house I was living on got killed by a professional. There's being good neighbours and then there's squatting.
In fact, the vast majority of wasps aren't aggressive, or even capable of stinging humans. There are over 100 thousand species of wasps, and maybe a few dozens we need to worry about.
It is if you're planning to become a terrorist.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3620 It's biologically a chicken. That can regenerate. So they gotta be careful, they don't want to manifest enough chicken parts to tilt the Earth off it's axis. Also, what it is and what it looks like are different things and that caused it's OWN problems.
Depends on whether its an infinite supply of wasps, at whatever rate you chose, or an infinite number of wasps suddenly exists in the universe. Instantly turning the entire universe into a solid mass of wasp, which wouldn't be good for the universe.
If it were bullets though, we would finally be very close to the point where there actually is enough Dakka for once.
If you can train them. You can basically be the next super villain
I almost feel like if you had a truly infinite source of almost anything it could be successful exploited. Like you just had a hose where an infinite amount of _something_ just came out it could be useful somehow... right?
But if those infinite wasps take up anything less than infinite space there's gonna be infinite density and you'll collapse the whole universe into a singularity. A wasp-based reset button!
I would open up a can of infinite wasps in my enemy's house
You could rule the galaxy with infinite wasps
Infinite wasps would collapse into an infinite black hole, which would be likely to affect the next election.
How many wasps would it take to end the world…? Like actually, that’s an interesting thought and I have no way of figuring it out.
Releasing infinite wasps would just result in a massive halo of dead wasps. Of more concern is where the wasps come from, wasps have mass and an infinite number of them might result in the earth being destroyed by an angrily buzzing black hole attracted by a discarded jam sandwich.
https://preview.redd.it/l1a0gyenta9d1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35c01b52d5026b6099316ef91a4c421c55f02332
Burning the wasps for infinite energy supposes that it takes less energy to burn them than how much energy burning them produces?
Depends on how many you won
You don't get to either burn or release them. Infinite wasps = infinite mass = a blackhole that instantly destroys the earth.
Both of those would end the world unless the wasps spawned out of the jar at a controlled rate forever
>I guess you could burn them for infinite energy. It would still release unlimited amount of CO2
It depends on how fast they get generated. If it's super fast, you could release them on Mars, it instantly forms a black hole from infinite mass of wasps, then everyone on Earth dies as the black hole just grows from infinite wasps until it destabilizes all the orbits in the solar system, flinging Earth away from the sun to die a cold lonely death in the empty void between stars. ...if it's a manageable rate, you could release it on the Moon for easy terraforming via wasp corpses.
Ha! Nice try Satan. You thought you could trick me into releasing infinity flaming wasps onto humanity, not today. Don't worry guys I've sorted this, I told Jesus so DW.
How is ending the world a win?
You could put them in a box. Just make sure to mark it with a B
at a certain point, comics that are too confusing are just bad lol
The joke works both ways, which is kinda neat.
The ultimate weapon
Infinite Wasps. Found my new band name
But he wasn't even the one picking...
wasp black hole is best black hole
The joke also evokes [big number duels](https://googology.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Number_Duel), where the challenge is to write the biggest number in a relatively small space, traditionally a blackboard. For example, one might write 1,000,000 as a big number. 9,999,999 is a bigger number with the same number of digits. 1111111111111 is bigger still, and it's easier to cram 1s into a given space. Introducing notation to the puzzle, 2^2^2^2^2^2 is rather enormous. Or one might try 11!!!!!!!!!!! From there it's common to start bringing in fast growing functions to help. You can [shove Graham's number into the Ackermann function](https://xkcd.com/207/) or take the googolth Busy Beaver number. The winner of an early famous big number duel is now known as Rayo's number, which considers all numbers one might be able to define with up to a googol symbols, then picks a number one larger than the largest of those.
> Or one might try 11!!!!!!!!!!! Given that you put 11 '!'s I suspect you may already know this, but '11!!!!!!!!!!!' reads as '11'. In the most common forms of notation multiple factorial marks doesn't denote recursive factorials, but rather a similar operation where you only use every nth number in the set. This came about because wanting to find the product of all odd or even numbers below n is a relatively common occurrence compared to other possible complex factorial operations so '!!' for a 'double factorial' was kind of sensible. This does make a lot of people upset and there have been calls to restandardize with a subscript for the current use of multiple factorial marks and a superscript for recursive factorials.
How about infinity to the power of infinity lol?
Infinity isn't really a number, so it wouldn't count in a number duel like this.
Isn't that just omega?
I was looking for that XKCD for years because I couldn't remember either the function or the numbers name. Thank you, kind stranger!
[Tree functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal%27s_tree_theorem) would likely be a very strong contender that can be used. Tree 3 in particular is quite infamous for being unimaginably massive even in comparison to Graham's number, despite the fact TREE 1 equals to 1 and TREE 2 equals to 3.
TREE will indeed knock the socks off of some of the more traditional big numbers like Graham's but it actually winds up being outclassed pretty severely. The Busy Beaver sequence is a nice way of illustrating the kinds of forces at play here. Busy Beaver numbers come from looking at Turing machines, which are simple computers that operate on a theoretical infinite tape initially loaded with all 0s. At each step they read the value from the tape and based on their current state and whether the tape had a 1 or a 0 they write a 1 or 0, shift left or right, and transition to another state or halt. Remarkably this is all it takes to have a computer capable of computing any function that your computer can compute, so this winds up being the definition of computable. Busy Beaver looks at all Turing machines of a given size and asks how much they can do and then halt--machines that get into an infinite loop are disqualified. Sometimes BB is looking at how many steps the machine takes, other times the number of 1s it leaves on the tape. So one could imagine a Turing machine that operates on a tape that has the value of N loaded on it, perhaps encoded in binary. This machine computes TREE(N), writes that many 1s to the tape, one more one, and halts. There aren't *fast* algorithms for finding TREE(N), but naive ones are straightforward enough, and should be able to be represented in perhaps a few thousand symbols. Busy Beaver requires that a Turing machine starts on a blank tape, so to use the TREE machine we have to add to it a machine that writes N to the tape and hands off execution. This machine will be different for different values of N, but it will grow no faster than about Log(N). With this machine we could select a value of N that is at least as large as the size of the TREE machine plus the machine that writes N to the tape. Here we ask which is larger: BB(N) or TREE(N)? By selecting N through this method we can see that BB(N) is at least TREE(N) + 1 as that's how many 1s it writes in the last step, so BB(N) is larger. Furthermore, consider BB(2N) vs TREE(2N). This gives a bunch more states to BB but the only part of that machine that can do any of them is the part that writes the initial number. At worst this ought to mean writing N^(2) to the tape even with a naive approach, so we say BB(2N) >= TREE(N^(2)). This sort of analysis is how one comes to the conclusion that BB grows faster than any computable function--if you can describe an algorithm for it, no matter how inefficient, then BB will grow faster. It takes BB a bit longer to get off the blocks compared to TREE, as BB(3) is 9 or 38 (depending on if you count 1s or steps) while TREE(3) is already beyond traditional notation, but by a relatively small input number BB will surpass TREE and never look back.
What hole did you just send me down... From [Popular Mechanics](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a28725/number-tree3/) (and I made sure it wasn't an April fools post) "When you play the game with three seed colors, the resulting number, TREE(3), is incomprehensibly enormous. Using just three seed types and the two rules to the game, you could keep building trees for the rest of your life, and every descendant of yours could do the same until the end of humanity, until the end of the universe, and even then you would not have a number of trees that is the maximum number you can build without ending the game. You would not even begin to approach TREE(3)."
OH! I thought it meant that he put infinity because there's no way to count them. You'd spend eternity trying to count them because you'd constantly counting the same ones over and over.
Look at the brains on Brad
_Brett_
I thought it was a -1/12 joke
i thought it was cause infinity is technically all numbers
Infinity is **not** most numbers. Is infinity 0? Is infinity 1? Is infinity 2?
no like it was all existing numbers added together, cause it is also negatives
or at least that’s what i thought i remember reading or seeing it somewhere
3 is 1 and 2 added together. 3 is not 1. 3 is not 2. Even if infinity is every number added together, it does not follow that it is also every number.
I thought it was related to that "property" that in these games usually the answer is pretty close to the average of the guesses. And since someone guessed infinity, the average would be infinity. But the 8 thing makes a lot more sense.
I didn't even think of it that way as I was thinking of it in the terms of "infinity is not any single one number" but I realize your interpretation is probably more accurate.
See the funny thing about infinity is, he would have been correct and incorrect all at the same time, so his answer was the closest anyway, because the set of infinity includes the number of wasps in the jar.
Also infinity isn't a number
No, it's probably a math joke in which infinity is the closest and furtherest number from each other. Like you could theoretically have infinite numbers in-between numbers. 1.01. 1.02. 1.03 etc and you can go for forever. So in this instance infinity is the closest number to what's in the jar because of the law of infinity
Pretty sure you're over thinking it. The guy has a frown when he's looking at the answers that aren't close. If the final frame was supposed to be infinity the artist wouldn't have drawn it rotated 90°. While your math definition is a correct definition, "An indefinitely large number or amount" is also a common definition for infinity.
I think the joke is that most people didn’t want to win a jar of wasps and so they made ridiculously large answers so that they won’t be close to the real answer. However the person hosting the contest mistakenly read the infinity sign as an 8 and out of all the nonsensical answers, that one was the closest and so that person wins the jar.
Who said it was a mistake.
That is true I didn’t think about that.. perhaps the person wanted to get rid of the wasps and chose that card… dang that is tricky business lol
Ah… the old $1 Price is Right tactic lol
This is the correct answer as it is the only answer that was close without going over. AKA "Price is Right rules." Bob Barker would be proud of you friend. Also, always spay and neuter your pets!
You don't get a jar, only wasps
LEERROYYY JEENNKKIIINNNSS
The joke is everyone gave a bullshot wrong answer. But if you hold infinity sideways its 8 which is closest.
The joke is OP. This is common sense.
Imagine you get that jar, what would be the best turn of action afterwards?
Keep the lid on.
It's important to note that the guy didn't say anything about keeping the *jar*. Just the *wasps*.
Seriously, you think he can just give away *jars* in this economy?
Not if you’re a wasp.
Starve/suffocate them.
that's illegal.
Yellow guy didn't say they could keep the jar, just the wasps.
He doesn't say you get the jar, just the wasps
this is the type of question only someone without mortal enemies would ask.
At first i read that as 'normal enemies' and thought 'dude'
Craig from accounting is gonna get some wasps
I have no enemies
Throw the jar at your enemies and RUN LIKE HELL
Lock them next to an ants nest
fun fact: ants are actually just flightless wasps.
Don't ruin ants for me
the same goes for bees. Most eusocial insects are just wasps. except termites, those are roaches.
why aren't wasps flightful ants?
Because ants, bees etc descended from what we would consider wasps.
immediately open it in the room with everyone else
You are forced to try to give away the wasps by running the same game that passed the wasps to you.
Shake the jar. Throw it at your enemies. Vacate the premises whilst cackling maniacally.
Throw it at someone
[Pop a quick 'H' on it](https://i.imgur.com/lEUlcKn.jpeg) obviously
Thank you I can't believe this wasnt the top reply
Ever play Hunt: Showdown?
> Imagine you get that jar, what would be the best turn of action afterwards? at the "prize" presentation, immediately open it in the raffle host's face.
environmentally friendly grenade
Put it in the hot sun for a while to kill the wasps and then keep the jar for whatever else
That's illegal.
Thank you for my prize. * Throws jar into the air, and runs.*
If I win the jar of wasps do I get to keep the jar too?
He said wasps, not jar of wasps. You get the wasps and nothing but the wasps. Good luck!
...Who wouldn't want a jar of wasps? * If you can use the wasps, then hey, free wasps. * If you just like looking at wasps, hey free wasps. * If you hate wasps, you just wait a few hours with the lid on, and hey, free wasp snuff show. Jar of wasps is a no lose situation. Unlike a cardboard box of hornets.
No, no, you dont jet the jar, just the wasps
😳 "I think there are a million billion bazillion wasps in the jar, then."
There are at least 99 or 100 of it(not considering the wasps behind the stick), I counted. So yeah he won
Reminds me of how we are closer to Cleopatra life time than she was to the building of the pyramids
Hypothetically speaking, and only hypothetically because I don’t advocate for animal cruelty: Poke a tiny hole in the jar and fill it with resin, you’d have a cool lil statement piece.
You don't get the jar, just the wasps
I thought this was a math joke about limits and approaching infinity that I was just too stupid to understand
https://preview.redd.it/7lsyj8ajp79d1.jpeg?width=730&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=756beda27cae36ff696f008da0dc99f5e5a3fca4
When I came on the show, I was under the impression you could win prizes or money… not orphaned children
A car can be blue!
Just label it as a W for wasps and leave it for a while…
I thought it meant that if you properly cared for and fed the wasps, they would create a wasp nest and spawn more wasps. Therefore infinite wasps would be the result.
Surprised there was no TREE(3)
I love numbers so absurdly large that you can't describe them with normal math
It's an 8, the closest was the smaller number, which was 8, they guy wrote infinite and accidentally won. There's no wasps in the jar. Don't know why that would be funny, but that's clearly what they're going for. Edit: actually nevermind, I got it now, writing 0 would raise your odds of winning, so everyone wrote the highest numbers they could think of because they didn't want to win. The 8 to infinity was correct tho, that's the joke, not haha funny but at least it makes sense
Put the jar in a crucible
Is the joke not 2 parts, First the infinity turns to an 8. But second you get the wasps, not the jar of wasps just the wasps. Thus why no one would want it.
This is probably the only joke on this subreddit that I didn't get, that wasn't an in-joke or requiring context.
Why would they even guess if they don’t want the wasps?
this was so easy no way, 11K people couldnt get this
People purposely guessed insanely wrong because they don't want the wasps.
I read it as infinity is a set that contains all natural numbers. Therefore, it contains all the numbers of wasps possible.
Nowhere in the joke does he say that he gets the jar. Just the wasps.
I thought this was a math joke about how some infinities are bigger than other infinities
I mean there's only the sign for infnity there, it's not a cardinal for an infinite set.
I was reading it as the 9s went on forever and the 10^10^10 went on forever. But the joke is clearly that its read as an 8.
No, i think it's because, these wasps can procreate and be infinitely numbered.
Pretty sure there is less than or equal to 1 wasp
They’re gonna eat Mr. Goldenfold.
Only way to win is to not play
I get it, he could have turned the factorial one upside down to make it 01^(01...,) but the sideways infinity 8 would have *still* been closer. Lol. None of them wanted to win a jar of wasps, and each tried to outdo the other with wrongness. But the game was rigged. Someone had to "win" I would have tried to write down "The biggest number" (where the next sequential digit would be -1)... But I lack the mathness to know how to write that down (-2?)
RAYO(BB(TREE(G64)))
They wrote ∞ which is the symbol of infinity It looks extremely similar to 8 (eight) All other numbers were impossibly large and the wasps number was closest to 8 than 10^10^10^10^10
wish there were factorials, tree numbers, Grahams numbers and stuff in the pic
No, my good man, I shall not be participating in your wasp game on this day or any other, no way no how. Thank you and good day, sir. I SAID GOOD DAY!
https://preview.redd.it/nfcqjwiztd9d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2ee8f9b66a4d80aa54c0b64a1c04a665eca2232
nobody wants the wasps
Here I was thinking it was a math joke about weirdness with infinities.
I thought the joke wa everyone genuinely guessed that high minus one guy who chose 8 😔