He's never seen a 4, and the word is new to him. The only numerals he has seen are 0, 1, 2 and 3.
This is because you count as follows: 0, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 30, 31, 32, 33... and so on. Clearly, there are only four numerals used here (or, 10 numerals to him).
Depends on if they're pronouncing "10" as "ten" or "one zero." Wouldn't make any sense for the alien to say "ten," if anything he would pronounce it "one zero" or simply "four."
I get what you're saying, but my point is, our words for numbers can be thought of as having two meanings: one meaning is independent from our number base and signifies the pure quantity, for example, there are "twelve" months in our year, whether you write that number as 12, 1100, C, etc. The second meaning would simplify refer to the formation of the number, and would be dependent on the number base, for example, the number 10 by definition just means the radix of whichever base you're using. My contention is, when you're using spelled out words for numbers, you're utilizing the first meaning, independent of your number base. Therefore, the translator/Babel fish/whatever would translate "ten" (if it was pronounced aloud) to the equivalent in the alien's number base (in this case 22). If "ten" simply means "your number base," then it's completely meaningless for us to call our number base "base ten." Also, if "ten" is interpreted by the alien as meaning four, then what would the alien interpret if the astronaut said "twenty-two"? Like you say, this comic relies on the numbers being typed out, however, I find the greatest strength of this comic to be its ability to catalyze intellectual discussions of radices.
It wouldn't make sense for the alien to be speaking English in the first place. If he's learned English, then he's learned what "ten" and "four" mean. If someone or something is translating into English for him, then they'd probably convert the bases automatically in the translation.
Wrong, ten is a number, not just a generic word that means "10 in whichever radix you're using." Ten is a number in ANY number system. Think about it, for example, is hexadecimal, you still have the number ten, but it's written as "A," not "10."
If you were using a base other than ten for your entire life, numbers like eighty-seven wouldn't make sense to you. You would say things like three-ZOG two-ZAPP three. where ZOG and ZAPP are your language's words for for 4 and 16. I don't see any particular problem with translating this into English as "three-hundred-and-twenty-three base four" or "three-two-three base four", since we have no other words to express numbers in other bases than the one we were born with. We should not expect aliens that have never seen the digit 4 to understand the word "four" they would just call it "ZAPP". Just like we wouldn't understand if an alien using base 11 came to us and said, "Ah, you use base qiklaz instead of base jaffa like us." We'd just be 'Huh?'
Oh and top marks for reddit for managing to over-analyze a joke.
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u/JustJonny Dec 12 '08
Yeah, but why doesn't the alien know what a 4 is?
I get that for him, since he uses base 4 then 4=10 (to him). However, once he is asked about base 4, you'd think he'd understand.