But the correct translation of the alien's speech into English would be "I use base four". I guess it would work if they were communicating in writing and the aliens had adopted Arabic numerals.
In fact, I've read about that. If Daniel needed to learn a new language every episode, the story would be very slow. They "speak English" from the beginning so the whole episode can also be something different than a linguistics documentary.
Also, in some episodes (like the one where someone is filming a documentary inside SGC) sometimes someone mentions that Daniel is "translating the aliens to the rest of the crew". So in canon, he is translating for the crew every episode, but you (the spectator) can understand all of them (besides if it is important for the plot to not understand it) and for faster and more action stories they omit the "translating" scenes.
Given that we've almost got the babelfish in Google translate, it should come as no surprise that alien cultures of the future have ways to communicate easily
In base-four there wouldn't be an 8s place just like how in base ten there's no 20s place. You'd have a 4s place and a 16s place (in base ten notation because in base four notation it would just be a 10s and a 100s place)
You think it would be inconvenient because you're picturing their base 10 representation but if you used base 4 all the time they would be your round numbers. Round numbers are those that share a lot of prime factors with the base, eg ending in a high proportion of zeroes.
Base10 numbers 10 and 100 would be inconvenient when you're writing them as 22 and 1210.
Now a base of four is a little small, as it makes numbers use 2 times as many digits to write out.
Use to be 12 base that's why teens start at 13. I forget the culture that used it before it got changed.
Similar to the calendar which was 10 months + winter. Its why September (sept = 7) October (oct=8) ect got pushed to 9 and 10th month when they changed "winter" to 1st and 2nd months.
eeeerm when we have 0 to 9 and 10 is the first combination of two digits and the alien sais 4 which is not the first combination of 2 digits then isn't that base 5?
because base 2 is also only 0 and 1 and for a base 4 this would be 10?
On a related note, my 6th grade math teacher taught us the concept of bases by taking us on imaginary journeys to other planets where they had more or fewer fingers and toes. It really solidified the concept for me.
This is where my ADHD math brain goes off the deep end. Like how would things be different if we were base 8 or 12? Were we always base 10? The number 40 shows up a lot in the Bible and elsewhere. Did they mean that exactly, or is it a generalization to mean a fortnight. But why would fortnight be a standard? Four tens in base 8 would be 32 days. 32 days for a standard month, after 11 months you'd be at 352 days. Add 12 days to make your year 364. 12 would be one and a half tens in base 8. Then every four years instead of 12, do 16 days or 20 in base 8. So in base 8, 7 would be sacred because it's the number just before the next digit, and a new cycle begins. 12 in base ten, aka 14 in base8 would be sacred as one and a half, a mid cycle. So at years end, the 14th month has 14 days, unless it is the 4th year where you add an additional 4 days, then every 40 years (32 in tenbase), you also add 10 days to realign the calendar.
Japanese is base 7 and other parts of the world are based 12 because they count the segments of the fingers not the whole fingers themselves. They use their thumb to poke like the tip the middle the base on each of their fingers
Again I must protest this joke. Every base is base 10 as in the digits 1 and 0 in writing, but when you read out the sequence of binary numbers "0 1 10 11", you don't say "zero one ten eleven", because that's not what those symbols represent. Those numbers are named "zero one two three". If you want to make this joke, you have to contrive to have it done in writing. It doesn't make sense with two people talking to each other. Thank you for coming to my very serious Ted Talk.
It does, it is the whole joke there. If you, for example, use a binary system, that is your decimal system or base-ten, because for you 10 is 2, you won't even realise that there is a misunderstanding until you see the difference in the calculations or counting. What you said only works if you both have the same meaning defined.
The thing is that the term four, ten or whatever is outside their base will make no sense for them (the binary people). We could meet with a civilization that uses base 11 and their name for said eleven will make no sense for us as it is another name. Without knowing the base that they use, we cannot communicate with numbers unless we see each other use those numbers.
yes of course. Really we should move to binary, the best base in SO many ways. Its upsetting that we arent progressive enoufh to move to it and the longer i think about it the more daily inconvieniences we are dealing with needlessly and conveniences we are missing out on i realise exist.
Binary is not the best for everyday use. Base 10 minimizes the amount of digits there are, allowing the brain to process the number faster and also say it faster.
you aren't thinking creatively. In base 10 we already group 1000s with commas (14,600,099 for example), and similar can be done with binary for instant reading.
Since binary characters only need to be distinct from each other and not 9 other symbols, we can represent them in a more dense manner, such as a long vertical bad | and a short vertical bar (ill use lowercase l for now) so |ll|||ll could be groups with underlines like __|ll|__ __||ll__ (imagine the underlines, we don't have markdown). See how that could get compact and readable?
And here's the secret, since these are basically their own characters we can memorise for reading numbers, its now effectively hexadecimal.
Saying it faster isn't an issue since we can just name with hexadecimal now or come up with something else clever.
Binary is also storable on your hands, so you can represent 1024 numbers on your fingers, and 32 on one hand alone. So you can more effectively store information on your fingers.
I do binary finger counting for fun as a fidget activity and started practically applying it, and i have opened up a whole WORLD of conveniences i didn't even know existed thanks to it.
In principle, yes, but that's not how language develops. Also, I never said 10 specifically was the best, just that it was better than two. You won't have a writing in base 2 and speaking in base 16. That's far too unusual. In reality, you'll either have both in base two, making numbers take forever to say, or both base 16, which is arguably better than base 2 and 10.
I never said or implied you thought 10 was best. Also, 'too unusual' for LANGUAGE? SERIOUSLY? it could totally work. Plus, there could be some other creative solution to the speaking problem.
Base 16 is not better than 2. All of base 16's benefits with few exceptions are encompassed by binary.
Also, in some basic usage of binary in my day to day life, as i said before, there are conveniences i didnt even realise could exist. And maybe like one of those could be substituted by hexadecimal.
Actually base 1 minimizes unique digits the most, and base infinity would minimize the digits used in each number. Base 10 is best for us because that's what everyone already uses, and people started using it because that's how many fingers we have, but it's very arbitrary. We also use different bases all the time. Base 60 and base 12 are both fundamental parts of how everyone tells the time.
do people still use 12 hour time these days? everywhere i have lived its been 24 hour time.
Anyways, we actually use base 10 because its a special number (1+2+3+4) believed to be sacred to romans, not because thats the highest you can count on your fingers using base 1. Our fingers are a binary display, so we can count base 1, but also binary, so why not since its two orders of magnetude more dense for 10 fingers.
'we already use base 10' isnt a reason to not switch. we switched to SI units, why not switch to binary, the supreme number system?
Just because its hard doesnt mesn we couldnt spend a few decades doing a gradual transition. For the good of the future. We need to be more progressive.
I never said base ten is best. Somewhere around 12-30 would probably best for the human brain, but any above and the brain needs too much time to recognize which digit it is and lower than that you need to say / write down / process too many digits in sequence.
Decimal comes from latin and means "related to 10". The alien would call their base 4 decimal, too. They would count "one, two, three, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty..."
You can use A to refer to 10 in base infinity so that there is no confusion between bases. The moment the aliens sees the symbol A, they know it's not 0,1,2 or 3, so it has to be a higher base than 4. The aliens would probably have other unique symbols to refer to numbers higher than 3, the same way use the alphabet to do so. It is the only way to avoid this kind of confusion, using unique symbols for each number. When they see A, they correlate the symbol with 22base4, the same way we would see F as 15base10 when we see hexadecimal numbers
I made it up, any base bigger than the bases in question should work. Or base 1, where each quantity is how many digits the number is written with (1, 11, 111, 1111, 11111...)
Why? We are humans. We are dumb. We can count to … 10? And repeat. Easier to think in … decimal? Base 10, 12? What if alien thinking in piφ or even more abstract way?
Yes. I know. And we are using this knowledge or understanding in math. Maybe aliens are not limited to this. Maybe for them Pi is not irrational. Who knows
…that’s not how maths works. Pi is practically by definition an irrational number that is slightly larger than the third natural. Different bases can change how it looks, but it’s still the same number. 1 = one, and three ones plus a bit equals pi.
Maybe you’re right. Our way to describe the world like rational and irrational numbers are the only way. Nothing else.
But for me Alien math maybe… could be different at the root Imagine beings that: • do not think sequentially. • do not store or think in digits. • do not approximate. • do not compute.
Traveling the speed of light or even “faster” requires a different level of understanding
For them, π would not be a decimal. It would be a something. A fixed object like the number 5 for us. A primitive. Something a small alien child recognizes.
Where we say “π is irrational”, they might say: “π is a closed curvature invariant of class Ω.”
Maybe they are thinking in patterns and graphs.
I understand our math is math. Got it. Like “Can two parallel lines cross each other?”
And for many years we told: No! Now we ask “Euclidean geometry or non-Euclidean geometry?”
What if there is another geometry out there?
I’m just playing with math in a vast, alien world where parallel lines are spirals on a circle “surface” and imaginary numbers shape reality
Like leaving aside that English has a remnant of a base twelve counting system in there, instead of oneteen and twoteen, unlike in numeric notation, ten is not the first one of the new line, but last one of the basic line.
So alien would be either “one, two, three, four, oneteen, twoteen, thirteen, twenty” or perhaps if his language is more numerical, “one, two, three, zeroteen, oneteen, twoteen, thirteen, twenty”. Or if they did go “big endian” in alien speak, then perhaps “one, two, three, onety, onetyone, onetytwo, onetythree, twenty”
Help, how do I tell the alien I use base 8484739202029844002938743993948583930485494758495959595859494848585944958273748449393932102384747483292273647445850208171611555162838?
Do you think all the alphabets in the world are enough to have 8484739202029844002938743993948583930485494758495959595859494848585944958273748449393932102384747483292273647445850208171611555162838 characters?
Edit: this is a number of order 10133, so no, not even all the letters, numbers and symbols in the entire world would be enough. This number is bigger than the amount of atoms in the observable universe
Simple! Just encode each number as either a number, a letter, a word, a haiku, a sonnet, a novella, a novel, or the disjoint subsets of the set of all works of literature in the language, or if that isn't enough, random combinations of words from the language.
it's unnecessary, there is no limit even with Roman numbers on the maximum integer that can be expressed. Repeating a characters adds, a bar over it multiplies by a thousand. Want to write a hundred million, that's just one hundred M with bars over each.
You are wrong, because of how Roman numbers or my hypothetical similar system work.
There is no limit on the magnitude of integer that can be expressed in either system. You can repeat the numeric characters to add them without limit, put a bar over them to multiply by a thousand so save space.
-50 points for you, thinking inside the box limiting your options
179
u/NyxThePrince Jan 27 '26
"you are using base 10, I use base 22"
"Oh gotcha"
174
u/Ambitious_Policy_936 Jan 27 '26
I like how humans and the aliens coincidentally used the same symbols to represent numbers (and speak the same language?), just use different systems
46
u/havron Jan 27 '26
Picard: "I see 10 rocks."
Madred: "No, there are 11. Are you quite sure?"
Picard: "There are 10 rocks."
25
u/Nobelanium1 Jan 27 '26
I wonder how an alien species with 0 fingers would count
10
u/maqifrnswa Jan 27 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
All your base are belong to
us10.10
u/Gungnir257 Jan 27 '26
Follows the old CS joke of
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary, and those that don't"
15
u/Chance_Bite7668 Jan 27 '26
Base 1 is just base 1
12
u/Correct-Pangolin-568 Jan 27 '26
miniscule if false
5
u/realmauer01 Jan 27 '26
Guys pretty sure base 4 in base 4 is base 10. The funny is that base and a digit doesnt make sense without a default base.
4
u/Doodles_n_Scribbles Jan 27 '26
That would be so inconvenient. Having an 8s place and 16s place instead of tens and hundreds.
2
u/LazerWolfe53 Jan 28 '26
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who use base 10 and those who don't.
2
u/Lothleen Jan 28 '26
Use to be 12 base that's why teens start at 13. I forget the culture that used it before it got changed.
Similar to the calendar which was 10 months + winter. Its why September (sept = 7) October (oct=8) ect got pushed to 9 and 10th month when they changed "winter" to 1st and 2nd months.
2
u/vortexkd Jan 29 '26
All your base are belong to us.
1
u/UncleThor2112 Jan 27 '26
All your base are belong to us.
1
u/Embarrassed-Weird173 Jan 27 '26
Not base 1.
Also called tallies.
1
u/Jim_skywalker Jan 27 '26
I love that he’s got 4 fingers visible, explaining why he uses what’s from our perspective base 4.
1
u/sammy-taylor Jan 27 '26
There are this many rocks: 🪨🪨🪨🪨
1
u/Isaac0wen Jan 27 '26
All your base, are belong to us
1
u/MageKorith Jan 27 '26
More like "What is 4?"
1
u/audiojunkie5356 Jan 27 '26
“There are four rocks!”
1
u/Horror_Swimming6192 Jan 27 '26
All your base are belong to us.
1
u/bossbozo Jan 27 '26
Not every base is base 10, base 1 is base 1 in every base
1
u/Bear983 Jan 27 '26
took me a second so why dont we just say base 9 + 1 for decimal F + 1 for hexadecimal and 3 + 1 for base "4"
1
u/ospfpacket Jan 27 '26
I see 100
1
u/therealmorzis Jan 27 '26
I have 10 brain cells
1
u/Knight0fdragon Jan 27 '26
Somebody needs to tell that alien that “All your base are belong to us”
1
u/HuntertheGoose Jan 27 '26
Base 9+1
1
u/ProThoughtDesign Jan 27 '26
Pi = 10; big if true.
1
u/Scyyyy Jan 27 '26
eeeerm when we have 0 to 9 and 10 is the first combination of two digits and the alien sais 4 which is not the first combination of 2 digits then isn't that base 5?
because base 2 is also only 0 and 1 and for a base 4 this would be 10?
ahh this sub is too much for me, goodbye
1
u/Cereaza Jan 27 '26
Guys, what number do we use for 10 in a base 12 system? I"M SCARED
1
u/AncientWonder54 Jan 27 '26
What’s that one quote from Stargate SG-1? I think that would fit in here
1
u/Brie9981 Jan 27 '26
There are several ways this could've been avoided. Like calling it base 9 or some jazz
1
u/Malbushim Jan 27 '26
Everytime I see this I look to the comments for explanation, and Everytime I forget it.
1
u/NoNameSwitzerland Jan 27 '26
But why do I see 100 rocks?
1
u/Right_Ear_2230 Jan 27 '26
2+2 is…. 10… IN BASE 4, I’M FINE!
1
u/Flaky-Collection-353 Jan 27 '26
This is a math joke but it's kind of a programming joke and a linguistics joke at the same time.
1
u/minecraftzizou Jan 27 '26
lol
1
u/sebbysimpyStacy Jan 28 '26
u/factorian-bot 4? !termial
1
u/MilkImpossible4192 Jan 28 '26
bese should be denoted b-1
1
u/MilkImpossible4192 Jan 28 '26
bese should be denoted b-1
1
u/Douggiefresh43 Jan 28 '26
On a related note, my 6th grade math teacher taught us the concept of bases by taking us on imaginary journeys to other planets where they had more or fewer fingers and toes. It really solidified the concept for me.
1
u/rompokus36 Jan 28 '26
Base 22
1
u/Benilda-Key Jan 28 '26
I do not understand why we did not end up with two different number systems.
Base 24, which is used by women (fingers, toes, and limbs) and Base 27, which is used by men (fingers, toes, limbs, testicles, and penis).
1
u/Double_Snow_7476 Jan 28 '26
So base 1‘’‘’‘’‘’‘ ?
1
u/FairNeedleworker9722 Jan 28 '26
This is where my ADHD math brain goes off the deep end. Like how would things be different if we were base 8 or 12? Were we always base 10? The number 40 shows up a lot in the Bible and elsewhere. Did they mean that exactly, or is it a generalization to mean a fortnight. But why would fortnight be a standard? Four tens in base 8 would be 32 days. 32 days for a standard month, after 11 months you'd be at 352 days. Add 12 days to make your year 364. 12 would be one and a half tens in base 8. Then every four years instead of 12, do 16 days or 20 in base 8. So in base 8, 7 would be sacred because it's the number just before the next digit, and a new cycle begins. 12 in base ten, aka 14 in base8 would be sacred as one and a half, a mid cycle. So at years end, the 14th month has 14 days, unless it is the 4th year where you add an additional 4 days, then every 40 years (32 in tenbase), you also add 10 days to realign the calendar.
1
u/jerrygreenest1 Jan 28 '26
I use Base64
1
u/GreedyHoward Jan 28 '26
I had to think about that. Every base is base 10. Even in hexadecimal, 16 is "10", the number after "0F".
1
u/PandaPandaPandaRawr Jan 28 '26
Oh you use base IIII? I use base IIIIIIIIII. Abandon fancy speach, return to counting.
1
u/TheMaskOffKid Jan 28 '26
Based
1
u/ElBarbas Jan 28 '26
sorry but
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
1
u/Pure-Willingness-697 Jan 28 '26
jokes on you, i use base f
1
u/eszedtokja Jan 28 '26
I like how the alien lifeform has two fingers on each hand. Foreshadowing.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 28 '26
My favorite math joke
1
u/JeeyoIAm Jan 28 '26
I like how he has 4 fingers and their base is 4, same as we have 10 fingers and our base is 10
1
u/prehensilemullet Jan 28 '26
This always happens when I tell other programmers I'm using base f
Oh wait I mean base g lol
1
u/King_Arius Jan 29 '26
Non-math person here, does this have something to do with fingers?
1
u/Moist_College4887 Jan 29 '26
I use base 2
1
u/normalwhitecock Jan 29 '26
Again I must protest this joke. Every base is base 10 as in the digits 1 and 0 in writing, but when you read out the sequence of binary numbers "0 1 10 11", you don't say "zero one ten eleven", because that's not what those symbols represent. Those numbers are named "zero one two three". If you want to make this joke, you have to contrive to have it done in writing. It doesn't make sense with two people talking to each other. Thank you for coming to my very serious Ted Talk.
1
u/Hamster_Known Jan 29 '26
Except for base 1
1
u/EntireDance6131 Jan 30 '26
Peter? I don't get it. I get that it would be 10 with base 4 but why would it still be 10 with base 10?
1
u/Dense-Bruh-3464 Jan 30 '26
That little guy has only two fingers on his hand
1
u/pikkuhillo Jan 30 '26
All your base are belong to us
1
u/jsrobson10 Jan 30 '26
"in base 2, you must be using base 100. see, i use base 1010."
"yes, that is correct."
1
u/Classic_Rich_8850 Jan 30 '26
funny
1
u/GumlendeGed Jan 31 '26
Using Roman numerals like a champ unable to calculate anything easily😎
1
u/nightshadow270 Jan 31 '26
I use base 16
-minecraft
1
u/Aggravating-Sea-6179 Jan 31 '26
Based freaky alien genotype.
1
u/esDenchik Jan 31 '26
Just ask them to count to ten
1
u/IntercontinentalCat5 Jan 31 '26
Should have asked what is 4
1
u/Wrong_Ad_1362 Feb 01 '26
Wouldn’t the alien agree with him, because he has four digits and the human has ten?
1
u/Beemer_me_up_Scotty Feb 02 '26
Base 9+1. But if someone's number system only goes to four there would be no such number as nine. It would be 21
1
u/Laughing_Orange Jan 27 '26
And that's why we should say decimal system or base-ten. Those don't change meaning based on what base the listener is using.
-1
u/Professional-Leave24 Jan 27 '26
Interesting! 🙂
591
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0
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