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[–] 130 points 3 months ago (36 children)

FYI a normal human can count to 31 on one hand using binary.

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  • [–] 37 points 3 months ago (13 children)

    and China has well established hand gesture for 0-9 on one hand.

    and even if you don't know that, it's quite easy to count to 12 using finger segments.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    I have a well-established hand gesture for 1!

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    You should see my binary hand gesture for 4!

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I chuckled at 4 (my favorite number!) when I just tried out counting to 31

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    China? The 0 to 9 single handed gestures are used for a lot outside of that. Like divers use that, all kinds of trades, and the military.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Use ternary. Up, down, half bent. I think that gets you to 242

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (9 children)
  • [–] 29 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Rather than assigning each finger the same value of 1, assign them values of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. Then there's some combination of fingers that can represent any value from 0 to 1+2+4+8+16=31. It's like using digits to count instead of tally marks.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    32 different combinations.

    2⁵ = 32.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It’s 2026. You can write the top voted nerd joke and still be dead wrong about the math. We’re in the “You’re absolutely right” era now.

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