Miscellaneous thoughts related to base-twelve

If you haven't already, read my previous posts, "The case for base-twelve" (Part 1 and Part 2)

FINALLY we can get this whole
counting thing sorted out...

So no, I don't think switching to base-twelve is a feasible idea. I do lament the fact that it's not what we're using right now, though. It strikes me as a more elegant system, and it's a shame that happenstance has pretty much dictated that it'll never be the system we use. Unless, maybe, all of civilization collapses and the society that rises from the rubble happens to use it... But wishful thinking will get me nowhere.

One way I console myself over the fact that a modern, real-world base-twelve system will never be is to imagine a fictional society that uses it. Helpfully, I already happen to have a fictional society on hand. I can't recall if I've alluded to it before, but basically my friend and I have an imaginary continent in the North Pacific, on which I have an imaginary country called Morsenia. The whole thing sounds silly, and it is, but it's basically a collaborative thought experiment that gives us a mental playground for all sorts of hypotheticals. It's constantly-evolving geopolitical fan-fiction, more-or-less. Most of the concepts explored are political and historical, but in developing our countries' stories there's plenty of room for mulling on all sorts of subjects, like language, religion, and biogeography. All-in-all it's a fun excuse to learn a bunch of new things in a variety of subjects as you go about the business of building a believable country and culture.

In the past Morsenia was much more of a Mary Sue; I'd basically take all the things I think are good or cool ideas, say my country did them, and things would inevitably work out pretty well (so they were a wealthy, high-tech nation with a huge standing army filled with tilt-rotor aircraft and digital camo; but also they were somehow isolationist and relatively peaceful). I've made a lot of progress griming it up and throwing wrenches into the works to make it a little more believable (now they're poor and use decades-old weapons and equipment), but I still definitely use it as an intellectual testing ground for ideas I think might work well in real life. Base-twelve is one of those.

The case for base-twelve, Part 2

(If you haven't already, read Part 1, where I explain why we're going through all this trouble.)

An important thing to understand before we move on: what we tend to call a "number" is actually comprised of several different aspects. It has a value, which is the count of things it represents; it has a symbol, which is made up of the numerals 0-9 which can be arranged in single- and multi-digit fashion; and it has a name. In day-to-day life, when we don't bother with anything other than the standard base-ten system, the three aspects seem essentially tied to each other. However, once we start considering other systems we find that the three aspects are actually separate. In base-ten the symbol "10" coincides with this many things: (o o o o o o o o o o), but in another system it wouldn't (and it may or may not be called "ten").

In light of those distinctions, I'm going to employ a certain formatting scheme in this post that will hopefully make it easier to compare base-ten with other systems. If I write out the name of a number with letters then I'm referring to the value. So by "ten" I mean a group of this many things: (o o o o o o o o o o). On the other hand, if I were to write "10" then I'm referring to the symbol formed by the digits themselves, and not a specific value or count of something. It gets a little less clear when we get to the name, since I'm already using the spelled-out word to indicate the value. But generally, if I put the word for the number in quotation marks I'm probably talking about it specifically as a name rather than as a representation of the value. A little confusing, but hopefully it'll make sense in context.

Now, if we were planning to switch to any system between base-one and base-nine we'd be all set for symbols: we'd have a few extra hanging around that we wouldn't need anymore. But since we're talking about switching to a system higher than base-ten, we're gonna need a couple more single-digit numerals to fill in the new gap before we reach "10" (which, remember, is twelve things in base-twelve). For now, we can just swipe a couple symbols from the Greek alphabet*. Doing so could give us a series of number symbols that looks like this:  

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, γ, ψ, 10

Two values that were formerly represented by double-digit symbols, ten and eleven, are now represented by single-digit symbols, and the symbol "10" has been reassigned to represent a dozen of something.

The case for base-twelve, Part 1

Image Source

This is going to be another of my pet rants (like this one)—the kind that people who know me in real life may have heard five or six times now. I'm going to go into waaaaay more detail than I ever have in person, though. So maybe getting it all out of my system on the internet will mean they won't have to hear it anymore? (HAH!)

It's a favorite of mine because it challenges some of our most basic assumptions and because the solution I advocate for is at once sensible yet terribly impractical. Basically, my point through the whole thing is that, instead of ten, we should be counting to twelve.

I'm by no means the first person to suggest it but, even so, I don't think the fact that there's an option has occurred to most people. It's just not the sort of thing you'll encounter unless you're involved in computer science (nope), are really into mathematics/number theory (nope), or are just a huge dork with too much time on your hands (ding-ding-ding!). In fact, I don't want to alarm you, but the ideas in this series of posts may very well BLOW YOUR MIND. :O (They had that effect on me when I was first introduced to them, anyway.)

The symbol "10," regardless of how many things it actually represents, is very important. As the first double-digit number it basically says, "Okay, at this point we've finished one 'set' of things, and now we're starting over with a new 'set.'" So a number like "27" basically means, "two complete 'sets,' plus seven."

The big question I'm asking here is, Why is this many things: (o o o o o o o o o o) considered a full set? In other words, Why is ten the first two-digit number?

The truth is that there's no good reason, perhaps other than the fact that we happen to have ten fingers to count on. But you may notice that that's not a very good reason. If human beings were all like Homer Simpson then eight might have been considered a full set and thus represented by "10"—it's troublingly arbitrary.

While the way we count seems incredibly natural to us, it's actually just one of many (infinite, really) possible systems. It's called base-ten, or decimal. You could hypothetically have a system based on any value (base-ten, base-seven, base-five-hundred, whatever)—it just means you start two-digit numbers when you've reached the amount named after "base-". They wouldn't all be equally convenient, however. And that's kind of my point: some systems are more useful than others, and in my opinion the one we use, base-ten, is not the best. Base-twelve (duodecimal) is far superior.

 "What's so bloody great about twelve?" you may be asking yourself. Well, I'm happy to explain...

Here There Be Chickens: GeoGuessr

This post is going to have a lot of pictures. Click any of them to enlarge them.

A couple of the PC gaming sites I visit pointed out this lovely browser-based game today: GeoGuessr. Basically it takes you to a random street somewhere in the world using Google Street View, and you have to figure out where you are. It's a simple idea but quite fun: it gives you a new way to experience the already-addicting Street View by testing your general geography knowledge and deduction skills. Wondering whether I'd get able to get around in a random place is the kind of thing I tend to daydream about, so I love the idea of the game.

Since it's based on Google Street View* you won't find yourself in the middle of an untraversable desert or stranded on an iceberg; you'll always be on a street. That still leaves a lot of places for you to find yourself, though. It could be in a city:

Or someplace a little more remote:

And then it's up to you to look around for clues. The most obvious one is often the vegetation. That and the color of the soil in the second image led me to believe I was in Australia. That was correct, but since I don't have much familiarity with that country and because I couldn't find anything else useful nearby, my guess was pretty imprecise (I basically clicked in the middle of the country, whereas I was actually in the north).

Cities offer a lot more information, though, and I'll take you through my process for that first image:

A Game of High-Stakes Bureaucracy

I suppose you'd be justified if you think the idea of a game based on checking papers at a border-crossing sounds like it could be a little boring. But if you're like me, then the forthcoming game Papers, Please will quickly start to win you over. It begins when you realize that far from simply pestering commuters at a rather benign border-crossing in Northern Europe or some such place, you're actually working for the paranoid government of a fictional Soviet-era republic just reopening its borders after a bitter war. Then there are the visuals, the stark simplicity of which evoke both old school gaming and the bleak, repressive world in which the characters live. And while it does of course involve the repetitive, machine-like tasks that constitute the job, the game is primarily concerned with capturing the humanity of the situation—that of your character and of the countless souls who come before you with the hope of making it into the country.

I first heard about the game over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun and was very much intrigued, but instead of trying the beta I decided to hold off until the full game was released. Then tonight Nerd³ posted a play-through of the first few levels and I was at the download page before the video was done. As the RPS article extolls (but which I couldn't really appreciate until I saw it in action) there's a certain appeal just in the "tangibility" of the game. Despite it being about checking forms it's actually quite engaging to play, both from the interactivity and the sense of power over people's lives. You manually take their documents and spread them on your desk as you compare names with names, numbers with numbers, and photos with faces. And then of course there's punching down that great big stamp, leaving an indelible mark of your judgment and sealing their fate one way or the other.

A little poem about murder

The image to the right turned up in my Facebook feed tonight. I almost looked right past it, but the last line happened to catch my eye and upon reading the rest I was disgusted.

Generally I don't start religious or political discussions on Facebook but I do make exceptions, so I thought for a while on whether this case should be one of them. In the end I decided it wasn't worth it. But I still find the whole thing quite infuriating, so I'm going to vent my frustration here.

As you can see, in addition to being a shitty poem it has the audacity to claim that the reason for the increase in school shootings is the fact that official moments of prayer have been done away with in many schools.

First of all: who the hell thought a blithe little poem such as this was an appropriate way to broach the subject of the violent deaths of children? It's so hideously disrespectful that I can hardly believe it's real.

Next, you may have noticed that I was somewhat particular in my description of the state of prayer in schools. The poem claims that it's "illegal ...  to bring the Lamb of God to school, or even speak His name," but that's an outright lie. Nowhere in the United States is it illegal for a student to mention God in school—the Abrahamic one or otherwise. Nor is it illegal to pray in schools. All that's happening is that "moments of prayer" are being replaced with secular "moments of silence;" if a student wants to pray during a moment silence, they're perfectly able to. The fact that this poem is lying through its teeth doesn't do much to secure the position on the moral high ground that it so obviously thinks it deserves.

My main problem with it, though, is how intellectually insulting it is. It takes a complex and tragic problem and has the arrogance to proclaim that all it comes down to is that people aren't praying enough to the author's particular deity. Basically, all you atheists and Buddhists and Jews have the blood of scores of children on your hands for not praying, or praying wrongly. Other than being incredibly offensive, it's a lazy approach to a serious problem. If we were to throw our hands up and decide this was our "solution" we'd be condemning many more children to death. Our kids deserve serious thought put toward real solutions, not cop outs and excuses.

And lastly I can't help but mention the horrible light in which this poem puts its own God through its claims. According to the poem, the allegedly omnipotent God sits by and watches as children are brutally slain because a prayer quota hasn't been met. Sorry, little Katie, He might say, if you'd only prayed a little harder I might have stopped that bullet...

I've got no use for any god that operates like that, and I've gotta wonder about anyone who thinks that sort of behavior is deserving of worship.

Grimes - Oblivion

I think part of what originally drew me to this song was that the second half reminds me of the old GoldenEye and Perfect Dark soundtracks from the N64. :P

Even apart from that I like the song, though, and quite a few others from Grimes. Both she and her music are cute and goofy, with a nice hint of creepy.

(If you want a comparison for the old N64 games, I think the similarities are especially obvious in this one from GoldenEye and in this one from Perfect Dark. It's actually to the point where I really wonder if it can be a total coincidence, but even if it's not I'm totally okay with that; I think those games' soundtracks are an excellent place to draw influence from. Their music [by Grant Kirkhope] was one of the better parts of games that were already fantastic to begin with.)