I like the detail that there alien has 4(10) fingers as opposed to the 10(22) that the human has.
this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Now I get the joke.
Thanks!
Can we all use base 12?
It will be a shower of shit for like 50 years but then it will be marginally better for pretty much everyone.
42* years. Centuries are now 84 years. We are living in the 19th century! I rate this idea 12/12.
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50 years? I bet we couldn't even agree on how to write "11" & "12" on such short notice. (See: date format, encoding, etc)
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Some people argue that it would be harder to count on your fingers but we could just surgically give everyone more?
There are 12 sections on your fingers (excluding your thumb) you then use your thumb to count to 12 on one hand.
Two hands can allow you to count to 24. Which is way higher than 10. Base 12 is better!
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This would be great. I was researching why we don't have 10 based clocks and then I saw a video about why a 12 and 60 based system is actually much more convenient and now I would love a 'dozen based metric system'
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There are 10 types of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I like that the alien has 4 fingers. Fitting!
It's 10 fingers. Just keep your freaky 11 finger hands of this serious discussion
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There are only 10 ways of doing things: the right way and the wrong way. (Programming joke)
There are actually 00000000000000000000000000000010 ways of doing things (in most languages)
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Huh, that's a good point. A better universal naming system would be something like "Base x+1", with x being one integer lower than 10. So humans would use Base 9+1, and the alien would use Base 3+1.
*This has been on my mind all day and the more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes how fundamentally terrible the name "Base-10" is. How did this never occur to the people who coined the term? Even the system I suggested is flawed as it's still trying to incorporate the same bad logic.
A better system would be something like Base 9, stopping shy of the respective 10 in each system, or if it needs to be clarified, Base 9+0, as 0 is the extra digit in the first place, not 10.
we'd only be able to represent bases for numbers with one digit though because what does base 15+1 mean? the 15 could be in any base higher than 5. the clearest way would probably be to just represent it with lines or something "base ||||||||||"
Base 16 is typically represented with letters being used as the extra numerals, so it would end up being F+1. Problem solved.
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It's only 15 to us because we use base 10 (or 9+1). Like how we have 4 through 9, but that aliens in the picture only count up to 3.
In the case of a mismatch, the culture using the higher base would just translate down (Base 21+1 in the given scenario).
Single units would probably be the simplest method, but also wildly impractical as the base gets higher. You really want to count each digit just to figure out someone uses Base 100?
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All your base belong to us
Not to be that guy - just to make sure you nail it perfectly next time - it's "all your base are belong to us"
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Wow I never thought about that.
But it is always like this:
let there be any base "b"
That can represent a number by the sum of their positional digits:
number = sum(d_i * b ^ i)
where i is the position index and d_i is the digit at this position. (note: index starts with 0, from the least digit farthest to the right)
So the (decimal) number 4 in base 4 is then
1×4¹ + 0×4^0 = 10
And (decimal) number 8 in base 8 is
1×8¹ + 0×8^0 = 10
And 10 in base 10:
1×10¹ + 0×10^0 = 10
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Octal is base 8. Decimal is base A. Hexadecimal is base G. Any questions?
Jesus Christ.
I just realized that we call binary base2 and there's no 2 in that numbering system. We call hexadecimal base16 but there's no 16 (at least not like we know it). But then why is base10 base10? We have a 10...but it's not a single digit number.
Why is this reminding me of Project Hail Mary?
Every base has ten, but it's made of two digits
Binary 0, 1, 10 Ternary 0, 1, 2, 10 ... Decimal 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Hex 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10
Each has the right count of digits for its base before you go two-digit - binary has two (0, 1), etc
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What is this “8” you refer to? Here in the land of people without thumbs, 10 comes after 7.
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I get this comic which is about translation errors.
Comments are wildly off ....
....BASE!
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Only when written, which is the whole point of notation. "Ten" is still a fixed amount, and so is four.
"ten" is a fixed amount in base 10. A base 4 user may have an entirely different naming system for numbers above 3, so "ten" (which is written as 22 in base 4) could be twenty two, twoty two, dbgluqboq, or Janet. But similarly to how we don't have a single syllable, dedicated number name for decimal 22 (as in, it's composed of the number names 'twenty' and 'two'), they may not have a single syllable, dedicated number name for decimal 10 (which is '22' in base 4).
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Took me a moment
This one took me a bit.
Fuck I am so lost
A base 4 number system has 4 numbers in it: 0, 1, 2, and 3.
After 3 the next numbers are 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, etc.
A base 10 number system has 10 numbers in it, 0 through 9.
Hexadecimal is base 16: 0-9 followed by A-F
The alien using a "base 4" number system does not have a single digit for the number "4". They represent four of something with the number "10", so for them, their four digit number system is "base 10".
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The most reliable way to communicate bases would probably be using unary. Now if your alien is using unary, that might not work, but it should for all higher bases.
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