Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Numberphile"
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You say that science fiction ignores the possibility of different number systems, but you are only considering TV and movie SF. At least when I was growing up, written SF addressed this all the time. I think the difference is because cinematic SF does not expect as much intellectually of the viewer as written SF does of the reader. Some examples, off the top of my head:
The invaders in the brilliant Niven/Pournelle novel Footfall counted by octal (base 8).
The Cyclo (or Psychlo, whatever, I stopped reading them when I found out that Hubbard was a cult leader) aliens in the Battlefield Earth novels used base 11 arithmetic.
I heard somewhere that when the Arabs introduced the west to "Arabic numerals" (which they got from India), there was, in Europe, an immediate recognition that the place value system was superior, but some dispute about what the base should be for ours. Merchants favored a very composite base (like 12), and mathematicians favored a prime base (like 7, 11, or 13). Ten had certain advantages, the fact that it was a sort of compromise between these extremes, a certain affinity with the Roman system, whose symbols were products of 5s and 2s, a biological affinity (10 digits on hands) and compatibility with the established trade systems of the near and far east.
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