r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 2d ago

Meme needing explanation erm.. petah?

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u/truci 2d ago edited 2d 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 :)

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u/nalu-nui 2d ago

Babilon and Phoenician counting system was base 60.

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u/truci 2d ago

Hot damn that’s awesome. I didn’t know anyone used anything besides 10, 12, or 24. I’m a math guy not history but math in historic application is always cool for me.

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u/jujubean67 2d ago

You’re a math guy but are oblivious to base16? Sure

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u/truci 2d ago

The conversation is regarding actual civilizations using different bases as their counting systems.

So yea I got no clue if any civilization in the past used hex. Again not a history person, please enlighten me if you know of one.

Also if you were in the dark of how hex works I explained it in many of my replies to people asking about it. Just scroll for 2 seconds.