Spyke
hankereply
feddit.nu

Oh, you must be using base 4. You see, Phoenix alpha uses base 10.

31
lemmy.world

There are only 10 types of people:

the ones that expected a binary joke, and

the ones that expected a ternary joke, and

the ones that expected a quartenary joke, and

...

52
discuss.tchncs.de

And it works just as well, if we reverse the roles:

🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨
🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨
🪨

Human: There are 11 rocks.

Alien: Oh, you must be using base A. See, I use base 10.

Human: No, I use base 10. What is base A?

34

This post made me decide to go to sleep because I'm too fucking tired for this shit

Thanks

27
A_Areply
lemmy.world

for that one alien, you may say :
"base 3 + 3 + 3 + 1"
For universal other sentient beings, say :
"base 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1"

6
lemmy.world

"I'm 16, but in base 1, I'm 10000000000000000 years old. My ID just needs to be updated."

6

Since in base 2 you have two numerals that are (0, 1) ...

Then, in base 1 you would have only one numeral.
if it was (1) then you could write :
( , 1, 11, 111, ...)
With a sign (-) for negative numbers :
( ..., -111, -11, -1, , 1, 11, 111, ... )

7

I think the best way I've seen was to just poke the number of holes in the dirt or draw a picture, labeling them until you get to your base switching moment.

2

Base 1 is the only universal counting system.

They are using base 1111 and base 1111111111. Instead of digits, you can represent numbers using rocks, if needed.

6

My species uses e as its base because that is proven to be mathematically optimal. In our number system, humans use base 2.3025850... (but written entirely as powers of e using our far superior elegant notation, of course!)

4

The only true base is binary. I'm not even kidding, I still sometimes convert numbers to binary for the sake of simplifying operations if I'm tired. Have you ever tried calculating square roots in binary? It's shockingly easy compared to decimal.

1
olio.cafe

Only works in written form. Unless the alien says the number as one-zero.

Also, in a bijective number system, every base is 11. (they don't have 0)

edit: not true, brainfart

-1

There is nothing about 10 in its pronounced form that means it HAS to come after 9.

10

You reached the end