Pick any number that's not 4 and repeat it twice. For the next 2 after that pick any number that's not that previous number and repeat it twice. So on.
It's not like i had any difficulty coming up with that sequence i wrote to that point.
1 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 4 4 5 5 6 6 8 1 2... as an example of how trivial it is to continue to this.
I get that if you limit yourself to '1' or '2' you force the choice of next number but even then there's two possibilities of this sequence (start on 1 vs start on 2).
I guess you could say the Kolakoski sequence is special in being the “simplest” version of such a sequence (ignoring the finite trivial case {1} xD)
You are still choosing random numbers here. The Kolakoski sequence has zero randomness whatsoever.
Do we care similarly about the version of this that starts on 2?
2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2...
2, 2, 1, 1,
Again no randomness. Just a variant of the above and trivial to continue this.
This is just the Kolakoski sequence starting from the second term.
Ahh that makes sense. Thank you!