[Dildos]

Why have a base-based system at all?
Let them have separate names for the first 136-152 numbers, and nothing after that. Larger number names are different between the colonies, so they are fuzzy somewhat.
Of course, this will hinder the development of math, but what if these funghi suck at manipulating abstractions? They don't need to talk about millions, they just say "very many spores".

[derisgun]

Gee, I'll bet that even Alinestra Covelia has stopped reading this thread.

[drycleden]

There's also how they'd break magnitudes into groups. Would they be like the West, focused on orders of 3s (100 000, 10 000, 1 000) (100 10 1)?

Or like the East, in orders of 5 (1 000 000 000, 100 000 000, 10 000 000, 1 000 000, 100 000) (10 000, 1 000, 100, 10, 1)?

Would their language be more akin to the long scale (1.0e9 = thousand million), instead of the short scale (1.0e9 = billion)?

[Leaters]

My friend wants to show that a staggering amount of time has passed, and that the mushrooms can know this.

He originally thought of them as having three fingers, and three arms, and he used the term "fulfilled threes" (a tetration of 3, in this case 3 ^ (3^3)) to describe the amount of heartbeats that have gone by since the mushrooms' shared consciousness first achieved sentience.

Back deducing from this, it indicates the mushroom life form has been around for at least 241,000 years or so.

[antonyandruleit]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia


The mushrooms merely prefer to have three legs so they don't fall over on rocky terrain. There's no requirement that they have three hands and three fingers on each. In fact, part of the story is that they intentionally sprout two arms and five digits per hand and try to lumber about on two legs (clumsily) in order to put humans at ease during first contact. Damn cultural relativists!

[Suvaxal]

It's important to realize that while, NOW, we know that 16 is probably the most useful to us (in a digital age and all), the folks creating this system may not have been thinking of digital, or boolean, or anything like that; they were thinking of counting things. Thinking of how it might have come about is very important, and I suspect (as Lul explains) 12 is the most likely to have come about in this manner (or, perhaps, 60 ?).

I do like the suggestion for different groups having different bases, though - that's a good one. You could have the Asherites with base 8 (16 is probably too many digits), and the Thuites with base 6 or 12, and have them spar regularly

[Les Allen]

As important as the finger business, are the perceptions skills. How do they discriminate symbols? How can they communicate how to behave?
Dont forget that two of them, given the same expression, should manipulate it at will, but arrive at the very same result.
As number crunching math may be, it is also a behaviour description language.

If their symbols are chemical based, not visual ones, a base 2 or even base 4, DNA like, should do the trick.

[theonsushv]

60

[replicajoy]

Originally posted by snoopy369
It's important to realize that while, NOW, we know that 16 is probably the most useful to us (in a digital age and all), the folks creating this system may not have been thinking of digital, or boolean, or anything like that; they were thinking of counting things. Thinking of how it might have come about is very important, and I suspect (as Lul explains) 12 is the most likely to have come about in this manner (or, perhaps, 60 ?). yeah, 60.

danS knows his history

the elites of the society slowly abandoned it when an increasing amount of people needed to use numbers and dumbed it down by dividing it with 5, to base 12

base 16 sucks, not dividable with 3 or 6, much harder to memorize in common use

[Tusanoc]

I think that was in base 3.

[RarensussyRen]

This is science fiction at large!
Why center the discussion in man like fingers? Mushrooms don’t even "think" like primates.
How is the world seen by mushrooms?
Do they will use a unified number concept?
A “pair”, a “couple”, “both”, these words are avatars for the unified two. Historically, the unification is recent. Our common language still remembers the old ways.

[anatmob]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia


Yes, but is that "12 bucks" in base 16, 12, or 6? b16: 12 bucks
b12: 10 bucks
b6: 20 bucks

Though, it's still the same amount...

[insightmike]

Why a numeric system based on a polynomial?
Why not on primes, direct!
...17,13,11,7,5,3,2,1

Any integer prime decomposition is unique.

3== ...000100

15==...0001100


21== ...00010100

0== ...0000000000

1== ...0000000001 (convention: Last digit is always zero, except for the unit quantity. Alternative convention: Last digit is always one, except for the zero quantity. Convention in use is easy to spot, just by looking)

Some recursiviness is needed:
4== ...00000[...00010]0

and so on.

- - -
As far as I've been told, this is the system used by the aldebaran astrotraders. Its imune to space radiation, mutations, relativistics effects and economic woes.

[Lapsinuibense]

tbh I'm waiting for someone to even create a fictitious race that used base zero...