humans and logic

[thinkit]

In article <9g5h4c01rba at enews2.newsguy.com>, "Alex says...
>
>"thinkit" <thinkit8 at lycos.com> wrote in message
>news:9g5d3p0f0p at drn.newsguy.com...
>> humans should use a power of 2 as a base.  this is more logical because it
>> synchs with binary, which is at the very heart of logic--true and false.
>it is
>> more natural perhaps, to use decimal--
>
>Perhaps.  It seems to have been used by most cultures throughout
>the world, though far from all.  Octal was used by some American
>tribes, and some linguists believe they find decisive traces in
>Indo-European and Japanese to show that their common root (so-
>called Nostratic) used octal.  Vigesimal was clearly popular
>recently enough that French still says "seventy" as "sixty and
>ten", "eighty" as "four twenties", "ninety" as "four twenties
>and ten".  Sexagesimal, used by Sumer and Babylonian astronomers
>(they used decimal for most computation), has left indelible
>traces in our time-measurement (60 seconds to a minute, 60
>minutes to an hour) and angle-measurement (ditto).
>
>> but logic should, and will, win out.
>
>Perhaps.  It never did, so far, but it sure seemed to for LONG
>times.  For example, Parmenides used logic to prove ZERO was
>unusable nonsense (his disciple Zeno, not to be confused with
>the founder of Stoicism of course, bult beautiful paradoxes to
>illustrate his master's thesis), and thus did logic manage to
>make arithmetic almost unusable for 1,500 years in the West.
>
>Fortunately, in the end, the Eastern mystics won out, putting
>logic in its place and celebrating the Abra Kad' Abra ("air void
>of air" -- aren't these Sanskrit words STILL the ones that
>come to mind most readily when thinking of a spell of mystical
>incantation?-), Non-Being, the Void at the Core of All, etc,
>etc.  At long last, the illogic and absurd Zero got into the
>number system -- eventually, since Practicality Beats Purity,
>its use became universal.  Nowadays, of course, the adorers
>of Logic try to sweep THIS little tidbit of the history of
>science and mathematics under the carpet...:-).
>
>I highly recommend in-depth study and comparison of the
>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (a genius in his twenties
>trying to fix precisely the conditions in which Logic will
>let us speak) and the Philosophical Investigations (the
>same genius, 30 years later, explaining WHY logic will
>never work as the One True Way of human discourse...).
>
>As eminently NON-logical William Blake had written, "If
>the fool would but persist in his folly, he would become
>wise" -- few logical fools have shown the same persistence
>and greatness as Ludwig von Wittgenstein, to enable them
>to reach the wisdom of mysticism by dint of inflexibly
>consistent application of Logic...:-).
>
>
>Alex

um...?  see, this is exactly what i'm talking about.  binary is simple...this is
not.  i don't really care about a bunch of old men who wanted to argue over the
number 0.  maybe they just got tired of jerking off and decided to spew some
garbage to sound smart and score more chicks.  just my guess.

i see 0, i see 1, i see logic.  it is interesting to hear about base 8.  i've
heard the others you mentioned--but haven't heard a power of 2 in use.  only
things i can think of today are the fluid ounce and weight ounce, both powers of
two.

and i suggest a look at lojban, a logical language.  you can learn it without
referring to a bunch of old dead farts.  http://www.lojban.org .