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188

What's the simplest thing humans are too dumb to grasp? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by TheBananaKing@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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You ever see a dog that's got its leash tangled the long way round a table leg, and it just cannot grasp what the problem is or how to fix it? It can see all the components laid out in front of it, but it's never going to make the connection.

Obviously some dog breeds are smarter than others, ditto individual dogs - but you get the concept.

Is there an equivalent for humans? What ridiculously simple concept would have aliens facetentacling as they see us stumble around and utterly fail to reason about it?

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[–] ivanafterall@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is there a number system that's not base 10 that would be a "more perfect" representation or that would be better able/more inherently able to capture infinities? Is my question complete nonsense?

[–] bluGill@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago

Different bases would have different things they cannot represent as a decimal, but no matter what base you can find something that isn't there.

For real world use base 12 is much nicer than base 10. However it isn't perfect. Circles are 360 degrees because base 360 is even nicer yet, but probably too hard to teach multiplication tables.