If you try to invert exponentiation where the result of the exponentiation was 0:
5^x = 0 log_5(0) = x
Then the only thing that could produce that result is -inf, because anything greater than -inf just produces a fractional result. So if our full function is floor(log_5(karma)+1)+1, then when someone had 0 karma, they would have -inf voting power.
I believe the equation was constructed specifically to avoid that scenario (but also I don’t know the math to check it myself)
you can think of log (base b) as inverting exponentiation. Here’s a graph to refer to when reading these.
solve for x, and you get:
in other words:
If you try to invert exponentiation where the result of the exponentiation was 0:
Then the only thing that could produce that result is -inf, because anything greater than -inf just produces a fractional result. So if our full function is floor(log_5(karma)+1)+1, then when someone had 0 karma, they would have -inf voting power.