TITLE: What comes after tetration ? And after ? And after ? etc.
QUESTION [28 upvotes]: The power is to the multiplication what the multiplication is to the addition.
We can put those this way:

Addition
Multiplication
Exponentiation
Tetration

What comes after tetration? What comes whatever comes after tetration? Is this generalized and easily understandale for non-mathematician?
Note: I'm aware of this question, but it doesn't go deeper. I'm asking about the generalization of this process.
Side question:
We know that
2 + 2 = 4
2 * 2 = 4
2 ^ 2 = 4

Is 2 <sign> 2 always 4 ?

REPLY [24 votes]: Knuth's up-arrow notation is the usual generalized notation of this. It is used the following way:

If there are only two numbers with only one arrow between them, then the arrow means "Raised to the power of", e.g. $3\uparrow 4 = 3^4 = 81$.
If there are only two numbers with arrows between them (like $3\uparrow\uparrow\uparrow 4$), then you take the first of the two numbers (in this case $3$), you repeat it a number of times signified by the latter number (in this case $4$), and then between them all you put arrows, one less than what you had. So we have $3\uparrow\uparrow\uparrow 4 = 3\uparrow\uparrow 3 \uparrow\uparrow 3 \uparrow\uparrow 3$
Lastly, if there are more than two numbers, you read it from right to left. Continuing on our example, that means
$$
3\uparrow\uparrow\uparrow 4 =  3\uparrow\uparrow 3 \uparrow\uparrow \color{red}{3 \uparrow\uparrow 3}\\
 = 3\uparrow\uparrow 3 \uparrow\uparrow \color{red}{3 \uparrow 3 \uparrow 3} = 3\uparrow\uparrow 3 \uparrow\uparrow \color{red}{3^{3^3}}\\
 = 3\uparrow \uparrow \color{blue}{3\uparrow \uparrow 3^{3^3}} = 3\uparrow\uparrow \color{blue}{3\uparrow 3 \uparrow 3 \cdots \uparrow 3} = 3\uparrow \uparrow 3^{3^{\cdots^3}}
$$
which gets large. That is, it's a "power tower" of threes so tall you'd need a power tower of threes that's seven trillion tall to describe how tall it is ($3^{3^3} \approx 7\vphantom{\dfrac{1}{2}}$ trillion).
When there are too many arrows to practically write down, you use exponentiation. So $3\uparrow\uparrow\uparrow4 = 3\uparrow^34$.