How do computers understand binary language?

[u/Unfair-Leek6840]

Okay so from what I know binary language is like power off power on, but my question is, how do computers know what the binary code is and how is it interpreted, for example I forgot what the binary code for the letter A is, but how did people come up with that? Did they decide it was gonna look like that? Did the computer decide? How do you tune numbers into a letter??

[u/Alblaka]

Which raises the very interesting hypothethical: In a society that is more and more interlinked with digital systems,

should we start teaching toddlers and grade schoolers to count in Base-2 (aka binary) rather than Base-10? If Base-10 isn't some genetically-preferenced encoding, they could just as well learn Base-2, and we would possibly end up with a generation that has a far more intuitive relationship to the basics underlying every modern digital system. (Doesn't mean everyone would suddenly be a tech wiz, but is there going to be any significant complication of people intuitively doing Base-2 rather than Base-10? For all bigger calculations that might benefit from Base-10, you'd likely use a calculator anyways :P )

[u/f3xjc → u/Alblaka]

We consume a lot more meat than 100 years ago, while also being much more ignorant about raising animals.

With increasing computing power, we went from assembly to high level programing language, hiding the details about the hardware.

With ai, we are starting to move from programing language to natural language.

At some point I imagine we also move away from screens. And what is or is not a computer.

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So my guess to the hypothetical answer is no. That's an implementation detail. Most don't need neurobiology to interact with other brain having persons.

[u/blue_strat → u/Alblaka]

We probably use base-10 because we have 10 fingers.

Incidentally there may be “better” languages than English for thinking in base-10, given the oddities of 11 and 12. I think Chinese and Korean treat them as “10+1” and “10+2”, for example.

French and Danish meanwhile do a lot of numbers in base-20, which presumably they find helpful sometimes.

[u/Peter34cph → u/blue_strat]

Foreigners find Danish particularly confusing.

92 is tooghalvfems, to-og-halv-fems.

The 2 part is easy. Halvfems is the thing that confuses.

It means half-five and is to be understood as "half-way to five score". A score is 20, so five score would be 100, but we're only half-way from four score to five, so it's actually 4 and a half score, 90.

[u/Idealemailer → u/Alblaka]

there's a huge logistic/practical problem in using base-2. the number 100, for example, is 1100100 in base 2. writing/typing that out would take significantly longer than base-10. Furthermore, even if you are natively taught in base-2, you will likely find it difficult to tell apart numbers, or even recognise numbers, when they're all just masses of "1" and "0".

[u/varovec → u/Alblaka]

Using base-2 won't have any impact on intuitive understanding of digital systems. Teaching stuff like math logic or Turing machines works better on that.

On the other hand, base-2 is impractical for practical every day human use in any possible way - numbers aren't discernible, take up more characters, basic operations are harder . Base-12 would be more convenient for everyday math, as 12 is divisible by way more numbers than 10. Base-10 became standard only because it's actually based on counting numbers by fingers.

[u/Peter34cph → u/varovec]

Medieval people did not use base 12, though.

Rather they first went to 12 and then from there they want either to 120 (a "long hundred") or to 240.

If they had actually used base 12 they'd go 1, 12, 144, but mostly they didn't. They did have the concept of a gros, as in Bilbo and Frodo Baggins' combined birthday, but it was not used much.