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I like the detail that there alien has 4(10) fingers as opposed to the 10(22) that the human has.
Now I get the joke.
Thanks!
There are only 10 ways of doing things: the right way and the wrong way. (Programming joke)
There are actually 00000000000000000000000000000010 ways of doing things (in most languages)
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All your base belong to us
Not to be that guy - just to make sure you nail it perfectly next time - it’s “all your base are belong to us”
I get this comic which is about translation errors.
Comments are wildly off …
…BASE!
Clearly the human uses base 22.
That’s very clever. Maths checks out.
Only when written, which is the whole point of notation. “Ten” is still a fixed amount, and so is four.
“ten” is a fixed amount in base 10. A base 4 user may have an entirely different naming system for numbers above 3, so “ten” (which is written as 22 in base 4) could be twenty two, twoty two, dbgluqboq, or Janet. But similarly to how we don’t have a single syllable, dedicated number name for decimal 22 (as in, it’s composed of the number names ‘twenty’ and ‘two’), they may not have a single syllable, dedicated number name for decimal 10 (which is ‘22’ in base 4).
No, ten is a fixed amount in English. It has roots in base ten, but we also have eleven and twelve from other bases. (also dozen, gross, score.) In English there is no ambiguity when it comes to what number the word ten represents.
I never argued that. I wasn’t even talking about the word ‘ten’ in English but the usefulness of the word ‘ten’ in base 4.
EDIT: I see where you’re coming from: base 10 English also has a unique name for something that is not 0-9 or a power of 10 - however, the only reason to this is that they are from base 12. Obviously base 12 has unique words for numbers below the base. But not numbers above it (apart from maybe powers of 12). Which further proves the point.
My point is the difference between number system and language. We’re seamlessly converting back and forth while writing this, but there’s a specific amount in our heads that we’re trying to communicate, either by word or by number. The number is ambiguous only if you don’t know the base, while the word is ambiguous only if you don’t know the language. The meme is - presumably - in English, and they’re talking (in speech bubble form), so the misunderstanding doesn’t really happen. it’s only when a secondary ‘language’ is introduced - the numbers - that it is possible.
Ten in particular, which we usually write as a two digit number because of historical and biological context, still uniquely describes a certain amount without any relation to it being written as the first two digit number. In any language, you wouldn’t translate to one two three ten just because they usually write in base four, you’d translate to whatever their word for the number is that you’re trying to translate.
Took me a moment
Fuck I am so lost
The alien has 4 fingers, and writes base 4 as “base 10”. It’s basically just a translation problem.
Same here. I read all the comments and still don’t understand the joke.
From the aliens perspective 4 is 10 and it’s represented that way so, while having a different meaning, to the alien it is base 10.
I see that but why is it 10 from his perspective? Is it just the fact that the alien would write the number 4 with symbols for 10?
Yes, https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/bases.html has a bunch more examples to show why the base of the number system is always represented by 10, because 10 is a short hand we use for d1*b^1 + d2*b^0 where d is a digit between 0 and base-1, and b is the base. b^0 is always one and represents the first digit at the first position. b^1 is the base, so 1*b^1 = the base. And since 10 is 1*b^1 + 0*b^0 it represents the base in any number base system.
Another way to show the same thing with counting:
Base 10: 0, 1, 2, …, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12…
Base 4: 0, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, …
Any base: d1*b^0 , d2*b^0 , …, d(b-1)*b^0 , d1*b^1 + d1*b^0 , d1*b^1 + d2*b^0 , …
We assume a 1 in the 10’s place and a 0 in the 1’s represents 1,2,3,…,10 of something instead of 0,1,2,3,10 of something because from our perspective we learned numbers in base 10 with 9 digits, but the alien learned 10 means 4 of something in base 4.
And the same that 3 in base 3 is also 10, 2 in base 2 is also 10. Thus if you use the relevant base to refer to themselves, every base is base 10.
Yes
These people are explaining it well, but the things that helps the most to me is consciously de-coupling your internalized knowledge of human Numbers from what they actually represent abstractly. The numbers represent an absolute quantity.
0 =
1 = .
2 = . .
3 = . . .
That’s 4 unique characters representing incremental quantities.
If you notice on the comic, the alien has 4 digits on it’s “hands”. That’s the root cause for their base number system. Ours is that way because we we have 10 digits on our hands (most of the time, some cultures do it different, but for simplicity, that’s what the comic is implying).
Abstractly, adding another digit represents starting over and keeping track of how many times you’ve done that. So the 1 in ten says you’ve counted through all the digits 1 time. And the 0 means you’re on the first digit of the new sequence. So all they are doing is applying that logic to a base 4 system. So a collection of 4 things is therefore represented by “one zero,” 10, in base 4 because they have to, there are no more characters in that system that could do that by itself.
The weird part about it that can trip people up is that they are applying some human conventions to the comic like our script for writing numbers, which obviously an alien wouldn’t do, but we have so much inherent ingrained knowledge about what a number means that it’s hard to remember that.
🤯
“2.5, 5, 7.5, TEN! See?”
I remember someone trying to come up with a solution to this by generating a name for every single base, dunno if they’ve succeeded or not tho
10 is actually only 2. The number of people misunderstanding binary here is mind blowing xD.
Not sure of you’re trolling or not…
not base 1100; and it’s round!
Thanks. I realized the typo after I saved. Oh well.
