We have basic words for the numbers zero to three, so why not use them to count?
- None (0)
- Single (1)
- pair (2)
- Multiple (3+ but we’ll use it as three)
So with those “digits” we can construct some numbers:
- Single
- pair
- Multiple
- Single nothing
- Single single
- Single pair
- Single multiple
- Pair of nothing
- Pair of singels
- Pair of pairs
And of course we can construct bigger numbers like:
42 = 4²×2+4¹×2+4⁰×2 = pair of pairs of pairs
128 = 4³×2 = pair of absolute complete nothinges
For this last one I just use some adjectives to repeat the “nothing” as it looks really weird with multiple nothing in a row.
The distance between Stockholm and Gothenburg is a single multiple of none multiple multiples
Could I have a single multiple of bananas please?
One of us is high as fuck and I don’t think it’s me.
I am high actually, genuinely thought it made perfect sense lmao
I bet a lot of things make sense to you when you’re high, sharkfucker420
I might be weird for this but one of my favorite things while high is to watch videos about scientific and political theory way beyond my level of understanding. It makes perfect fucking sense until I actually try and think about it. Fantastic time 10/10
OP is clearly a troll:
In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three . . . many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers.
They don’t realize that many can be a number. As in: one, two,three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS.
Terry Pratchett - Men at ArmsYes, I’m indeed a traditional Swedish troll. Here I am, I’m the one to the right with red hair on this image:
No idea why but this reminds me of
Probably because black dudes make you think of Swedish stuff
But everyone knows camels are the better mathematicians, having always used base infinity.
Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect. Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone’s instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels started from the word go by counting numbers.
Terry Pratchett - Pyramids
But why? And if we would change the base, why to 4 and not something much more useful like 12?
Base 12 gang
Base 12 being the best is probably why AI keeps trying to give people six digits per hand.
But THIS one goes to 11.
Lemmings really do be built different. You would never see this kind of raw mathematical genius on reddit
Are we trying to outmath the Danes or what is going on?
Mathematically this works just like our number system, your just not used to it
Why not use “triple” for three, which actually does mean three.
Because we also have words like quadruple, quintuple, etc which would break his theory. lol
How about treble?
If you ask someone for “multiple” of something their almost always going to give you three of that thing (or nothing). In that context multiple is just three and as @CatsGoMOW@lemmy.world pointed out, if I use triple I could as well keep going with higher numbers (quadrupole etc)
If someone asks me for “a few” I’ll give them three or four. If someone asks for “multiple” I’ll give them a handful and ask if that’s enough.
I don’t know where in the world this theory is coming from, but here, two would be “a couple” and three+ would be “a few.” Not that “a pair” (never just pair) and multiple aren’t used in other contexts, but you wouldn’t use pair and multiple in the same context. A pair is specific, multiple is an estimate.
Maybe it’s just me: had to double back on that literal use of “where in the world”.
😉
It’s just me thinking of what I ordered people near me would do. But I’m not a native English speaker so my feel for the language might be wrong; I’m from Sweden (and my mother tongue is Swedish).
If you ask someone for “multiple” of something their almost always going to give you three of that thing (or nothing).
Huh? I’ve lived a long time and that’s not something that feels familiar to me. On the other hand I do have multiple dollars in my bank account and that equation checks out.
I’m not a native English speaker so you (and everyone else here) are probably right. I thought it meant the same thing as the Swedish word “flera” whilst the proper translation seems to be “ett flertal”
I think it differs. To me, “flera” is like 3-5 maybe? Perhaps 4-10 in some cases. And I sometimes hear people use “par” to mean 3, probably short for “ett par tre stycken”, so a poorly defined 2-3 that sometimes is 3.
The victim was shot multiple times. I don’t see this as 3. I’d see this as 5 or 6 times
Yeah, your probably right; my English ain’t perfect. A few would probably have been better to use as @RainfallSonata@lemmy.world pointed out
Should be single syllables to speak. Nil, bit, pair, few.
15 is a few few. 12 is few nil.
But for more than 2 digits, I think we need something better than just spewing digits. I would propose a vowel suffix for the higher digits. Y, O, and A. So 63 becomes few-y few few, and 64 is Bit-Y or “bitty”. Don’t need to say the nils after. 65 is Bitty bit. 255 is FewO FewY few few, followed by 256 which is Bitta.
Alright, you have had enough. Pass me the blunt.
Smart, I like the shorter words. And for the suffixes your basically picking based on the digits position from the left? So you suggest the suffixes:
Place suffix 1 place 4 place 16 place Y 64 place O 256 place A I believe we’d have to continue a bit longer and maybe also have a suffix for 4th place? I would suggest using both prefixes and suffixes, maybe in this order:
Place suffix prefix 1 place 4 place A 16 place A A 64 place O A 256 place Y A 1024th place O 4096th place A O … And so on, you can probably see how you could keep going in order to express any number up to 16777216. After that we might have to start using two letter prefixes/suffixes like “la”, “ro” or whatever
Hey how many fingers were you born with? 10 probably. And now you know why we use base 10.
Although to be fair the Babylonias loved them some base 60. See also time keeping and degrees in a circle.
Dumb.
