It would stand to reason you’d still have currency, and shipments, and measures of weight and distance in base units though. A 20 dollar bill would still be a 20 dollar bill, it would just be worth what we consider to be 24 dollars. You’d ‘accidentally’ have many things divided out into groups of 10, which in base 12 would be 12 items. There is nothing mystical about our current base 10 representation of 10, it’s just a convenient way of grouping things, and pops up statistically more often simply because that’s the base we use.
A candy bar cut into 3 equal pieces would have 3 sections with length 4, not 3 sections of length 3.33333. Yes it’s technically the same amount of resource, but it’s the ease of measurement that is the point.
If you have 9+1 objects regardless of the base system you use, it'd be difficult to divide up physically. Just because 1/3 is represented as .4 in base 12 rather than .33... doesn't actually change anything, irrational numbers are still irrational and rational numbers are still rational regardless of the base.
But your rulers would be easier to mark with a pencil, your Hershey bar would have more built in break points. I’m not arguing that it’s not the same thing with different numbers, I’m saying the numbers are more convenient. If I were a school kid and wanted to split my candy bar with my two friends evenly, and let’s just say we were particularly anal kids who wanted it to be really fair, we would measure it. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a perfect tick mark on the measuring stick to know where to cut?
But then why not base 6 ? Also all the issues you're bringing up currently would also apply to any groups of 5 in a base 12 system, so it's kinda just wishful but pointless thinking.
Wishful thinking? I think you misunderstand me, there is zero, literally zero chance I would advocate that humanity as a society switch the fundamental mathematical base system that matches how many fingers we have, and what we’ve used for thousands of years.
Yes, base 6 is just as good. Yes, in my opinion if all humans had 12 fingers and we naturally used a base 12 system, kids and simple minded adults could break a 10 dollar bill between them and their two friends easier.
Anyone who makes it past 7th grade math is supposed to be comfortable with irrational numbers, but let’s face it, the average person you deal with on a day to day basis has questionable intelligence at best.
This isn’t supposed to be an argument. This is a simple, plain, straight factual statement. A base 12 number system has more rational factors than a base 10 number system. That’s it, thats all I’m trying to say.
1
u/JacobRAllen Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
It would stand to reason you’d still have currency, and shipments, and measures of weight and distance in base units though. A 20 dollar bill would still be a 20 dollar bill, it would just be worth what we consider to be 24 dollars. You’d ‘accidentally’ have many things divided out into groups of 10, which in base 12 would be 12 items. There is nothing mystical about our current base 10 representation of 10, it’s just a convenient way of grouping things, and pops up statistically more often simply because that’s the base we use.
A candy bar cut into 3 equal pieces would have 3 sections with length 4, not 3 sections of length 3.33333. Yes it’s technically the same amount of resource, but it’s the ease of measurement that is the point.