For a lot of things throughout history going back the babylonians, things were base 60, the babylonians were base 24, and a lot of stuff in English history is based around these as well, which is why you'd have "sixpence" -- their entire money system was base 240 or something nuts like that. So the idea that other cultures would set up their number naming conventions on another base than 10 then look strange because of it isn't so insane.
We use base 60 more in our lives than you think -- 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours (which is divisible by 60) in a day, 360 degrees in a circle.
If you think about it, it makes some sense -- in a world before calculators, having a base that can be divided in many ways without getting into long division would be quite efficient, even if it doesn't match our number of fingers (or the number system we're using)
@sj_zero My alphanumerical writing system is Base100. Because I am a being made of love and wonder.
As a being made of hatred and wonder, I am utterly confused.
@lord_nougat @sj_zero Oh yeah man; I invented a Base100 syllabographic system that unifies letters with numbers. And because each letter is a number, each word is, too. And it’s designed for English pronunciations. Relative to the Latin Alphabet, it has its strengths and weaknesses. But it works rather well, and has the added bonus that every word is also a number.
@lord_nougat @sj_zero Furthermore, by my calculations, it has the absolute maximum explicit information density that can possibly fit into the smallest number of penstrokes. If there is a way to pack more direct and explicit meaning into the least amount of pen-work, I can’t even begin to fathom what it could be.
@sj_zero
I don't think you can have a reliable base system higher than the number characters you use to represent it. Just ends up in confusion. That's why I'm team Dozenal for life.
@sj_zero This is what annoys me about the people who are like "metric is so much better, imperial is stupid." Criticizing something without first understanding why it's like that.
What makes a measurement system good? Common measurements should be small integer units. Feet and inches are great for human-scale things; meters are too long and cm too short. You end up with 372 cm of something, or 3.72 m, both make you want a calculator.
@sj_zero Metric seems great to kids who have never had to measure things, whose only experience with it is doing word problems in school. Being able to evenly divide something into thirds and have it be a whole number of inches is useful.
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