• Ech
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    23 days ago

    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.

    • niartenyaw@midwest.social
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      24 days ago

      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 ||||||||||”

      • harmsy@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        Base 16 is typically represented with letters being used as the extra numerals, so it would end up being F+1. Problem solved.

      • Ech
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        24 days ago

        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?

        • niartenyaw@midwest.social
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          23 days ago

          i know about hexadecimal, but what if you need to refer to a base larger than 16? i’m not saying it isn’t possible to create symbols for every number, i’m saying if you have to describe your base with more than one digit, you encounter a problem of not knowing what base that multi-digit number is in.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            23 days ago

            well no, i know, i’m just saying that’s it’s not really that big of a problem, unless you’re using octal, and you skill issue.

            You should design base systems to be independent of each other, and hex does a really good job at this, because often times it’s prepended with 0x to imply hex.

      • Ech
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        23 days ago

        I think that would confuse things more than it would help. It’s base 5, unless it’s base 10, unless it’s base 50, etc. And then there’s the rules designating numbers 1 below certain other numbers, or 2 below, depending on the system being used. That’s a whole web of complications when communication is already murky.

        One glyph to one integer communicates the number system being used more clearly.