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Every base is base 10 (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (22 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (18 children)

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 ||||||||||"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

that's fair, translating down is a good idea

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