this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
-45 points (18.3% liked)

Showerthoughts

29325 readers
3 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Could also be using a base 3 or binary system. Or the ever elusive base 1 system.

How many of those do you have?

111

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

Technically a base 1 system cannot exist (effectively), because it would mean you were counting from zero (nothing). All base systems for real "math" have to index from null. You couldn't even count using 0, 00, 000, 0000 because how would you know if the first 0 indicated actually zero, or was it the first item? You could only identify it by the absence of all marks, which doesn't work in math or any modern setting.

Number systems are weird. I hate math sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

In an oddly appropriate way, base 1 simply uses 0s to add a place holder for each counted item. In other words ‘4’ base 1 is ‘0000’. It exists but it defeats the purpose of symbolic representation of counted items by requiring the observer to count the digits.