I will never be a real-deal mathematician, comedian, or writer. I'm good but I'm not great. I'm not good enough to go pro at those. The only career I will ever have is making rich people richer. I'm not great at that either, but you don't need to be. There is a bottomless market for that. - ThreadSky

radishharmers.bsky.social • 39 days ago

I will never be a real-deal mathematician, comedian, or writer. I'm good but I'm not great. I'm not good enough to go pro at those. The only career I will ever have is making rich people richer. I'm not great at that either, but you don't need to be. There is a bottomless market for that.

Comments

reverer.bsky.social•39 days ago

You ever think about how base b numeral systems (e.g. decimal) would be more unambiguously named by the radix predecessor b – 1 (e.g. 9), at least if inter-system alien communication were a realistic prospect? I do, and it keeps me up at night

radishharmers.bsky.social•39 days ago

No. I don't understand what you mean.

reverer.bsky.social•39 days ago

No matter, it's of no real significance, but what I mean is: an alien species using ternary would describe their numeral system as "base 10" (0, 1, 2, 10), just as we do, even though we use a decimal system (0, 1, 2, 3, ..., 10). I'm proposing we call ternary "base 2", decimal "base 9", and so on.

pizzaluvver.bsky.social•39 days ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/ExplainTheJoke/comments/1czson4/every_base_is_base_10/

radishharmers.bsky.social•39 days ago

I agree it's silly to say "base 10", but this is why I say "base ten". There's similarly ordinarily no ambiguity in interpreting base 3 to mean ternary and base 2 to mean binary, because there's no ambiguity in what "3" or "2" mean.

radishharmers.bsky.social•39 days ago

Of course, with aliens, we would have to start off with saying something like "**********" one way or another regardless, as they would not know what some symbol like "9" means off the bat either.

radishharmers.bsky.social•39 days ago

Your proposal would seemingly have us call base eleven "base 10" which both is silly and does not solve the problem it was proposed to solve.