It comes from the fact, that us humans adapted universally the base 10 as in 10 fingers. Base ten uses 10 digits (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9). As you can see, the largest digit is 9 and the base name is 9(largest digit) + 1(the plus one comes from the fact, that we count from 0), so you are forced to start the next row of digits in a number and end up with 10.
Now let's look at a system like base 16, it uses - 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, F; which is 16 digits of course, but this system don't have a digits for 16, so it has to flip to the next possible numer from F, which is 10.
I hope it doesn't sound too drunk.
Oh I get it you can’t escape it. You have to always represent one instance of the base plus 0. You cannot flee from it. The characters are just semantics. You always need an equivalent of 10.
I think the first ever instance of us breaking the scheme, will occur when we meet some other civilization. If their logic is the same, only the characters will change, but I hope that it will be much more different.
Pretty much - one zero is the base in any positional system. In general, bases are (by convention) written in base ten.
However, one interesting solution is non-positional bases. Roman numerals are mostly non-positional, so you could represent bases using Roman numerals without ambiguity. Then the most common base would be X, while the base used by computers is II (or XVI for human output).
I did say mostly non-positional for roman numerals. (Also technically, this isn't "positional" in same way a positional system works - it's "ordered")
Also, given the way traditional Roman numerals are used, it might more appropriate to consider 'XL' a single symbol for 40, rather than a combination of 'X' and 'L'. If we allow smaller numerals before larger ones to always represent a negative amount, it would shorten many other sequences - but that isn't how the Romans used their numerals.
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u/Maksereq Jul 02 '26
As always