Comment on 2+2=4 but what if 4 didn't exist?
empireOfLove@lemmy.one 1 year agoTechnically a base 1 system cannot exist, because it would mean you were counting from zero (nothing). All base systems have to index from null. You couldn’t even count using 0, 00, 000, 0000 because how would you know if the first 0 indicated actually zero, or was it the first?
Number systems are weird. I hate math sometimes.
markr@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In an oddly appropriate way, base 1 simply uses 0s to add a place holder for each counted item. In other words ‘4’ base 1 is ‘0000’. It exists but it defeats the purpose of symbolic representation of counted items by requiring the observer to count the digits.