[somat]

I sort of wish we had went with base 12 instead of base 10 for our counting system.

Based on the number of base 12 systems it was a near thing. Don't get me wrong using base 12 units in a base 10 number world is several sorts of cursed. but if we had went with base 12 numbers and cleaned up some of the stupider unit variants into a SI I could see it working well.

And before someone brings up the 10 fingers thing, I don't buy it. One. we have 8 fingers. and Two. for the most part the people who actually needed to count(the shepherds counting their sheep) did it in base 12, thus why it was so common. The method as I understand it is to count on your finger bones using your thumb as a marker, this gets you to a dozen, then use the other hand to keep your twelves place to get to a gross. There is the normal off by one error when counting, but nobody wants base 13 so do the standard thing and ignore it.

But really it is just fun fantasy, There is nothing wrong with base 10 (but the lack of divisors sort of sucks) and the way effectively the whole world regardless of language uses the exact same arabic derived numbering system is pretty neat.

[sheept]

Personally I'm a bigger fan of base 6[0], which have many of the benefits of base 12, but the digits of simple fractions like 1/5 and 1/7 render more nicely in base 6 than base 12.

[0]: https://www.seximal.net/ is one advocate

[Zecc]

> we have 8 fingers

In English. I'm Portuguese, so I have twenty fingers.

[trillic]

10 fingers….

[tashbarg]

… means I can show the numbers from 0 to 10 with my fingers. But base 10 means I only have digits from 0 to 9.

… would 10 fingers not be a better argument for base 11?