[Timwi]

I honestly think that most of the problem arises from the fact that we just culturally start counting at 1 when talking about everyday things. As it stands, we're all used to it that way, and then computers come along and show us that counting from 0 is often more useful. So we adjust, but only for computer programming purposes.

If our species had established counting from 0 as the norm right away (element #n is the one that has n elements before it; you think of the number as the number of steps you have to move away from the starting point), then I suspect the reverse would not be true: I don't think anyone would find a situation in which counting from 1 is so much more convenient that it's worth going against the grain of established norm.

So in summary, I think we only think of counting from 1 as natural because it's in our culture. And it's in our culture because ancient superstitious humans had an irrational problem with the number 0.

[umanwizard]

I absolutely agree with you. People want to start with 1 because English (and presumably a lot of other languages) happen to use the word "first" to refer to the first element of a sequence, and not for any logical reason independent of arbitrary human language.