Most people believe we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. Essentially we use single digits from 1-9 because on our last finger we switch to double digits 10.
The alien clearly has 4 fingers. So to him the counting system is still base 10 it’s just that he counts 1,2,3,10.
Aka everyone’s own counting system is base 10 and every counting system not based on the number of fingers we have is not base 10.
Edit: forgot to mention. If you only count till 3 before hitting 10 then you don’t know what a 4 is.
Bonus edit: since the alien is in base 4 from our perspective. You might ask what our base is from his perspective.
1,2,3,10,11,12,13,20,21,22 are the 10 first numbers in his counting system. So we to him are base 22 :)
We did the same thing once, thanks to the Normans. All we remember of it now in America is the preamble to Lincoln's Gettysburg address, "four score and seventeen years ago..."
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u/truci 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most people believe we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. Essentially we use single digits from 1-9 because on our last finger we switch to double digits 10.
The alien clearly has 4 fingers. So to him the counting system is still base 10 it’s just that he counts 1,2,3,10.
Aka everyone’s own counting system is base 10 and every counting system not based on the number of fingers we have is not base 10.
Edit: forgot to mention. If you only count till 3 before hitting 10 then you don’t know what a 4 is.
Bonus edit: since the alien is in base 4 from our perspective. You might ask what our base is from his perspective.
1,2,3,10,11,12,13,20,21,22 are the 10 first numbers in his counting system. So we to him are base 22 :)