I wanted to answer more questions this round but I ran out of steam. :')
Next update, Chapter 8 begins.
Transcript
Septemberdale asked: Idrisah, how, if at all, do Avians count on their hands? I heard it's pretty similar to binary.
Idrisah: Avians use lots of different body-counting methods.The two most common in Tiiliitian culture are knuckle counting and ternary. Knuckle counting is pretty much the same as it is for humans— counting the bones of each finger. Avians do this by pointing to each finger bone with the opposite finger. Ternary finger counting goes up to 8 on one hand (the typical number base for avians) but doesn't use binary, as the name implies. Instead of two digit morphemes there are three: lowered, raised, and crooked. Which means, essentially, this system uses base 3 to count in base 8 on a hand with two digits. Isn't that delightful?
45 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 36”
Gar G
Okay that is so cool, and was wondering how that worked!
Still confused about the second one tho, but maybe I’m just dumb 😅
Talita Fangirl :)
Im confused about why it doesnt go 01 02 10 11 12 20 21 22, similar to how it goes with binary and decimal.
Like, shouldnt 10 be greater than 01 regardless of the base?
1d4-nadg
It’s extra confusing because avians read (or at least count) right to left. So here
“10”
is read as “0 first, then 1. 0x3+1 = 1”
and
“21”
is read as “1 first then 2. 1×3+2 = 5”
1d4-nadg
Wait no, even that doesn’t seem true here? it should go
00 (hidden) 10 20
01 11 21
02 12 22
So my best guess is that the fingers aren’t strict numerical values, but just different positions of the hand for each number.
JoB
The two-digit numbering does correspond to the finger positions (0=folded, 1=straight, 2=crooked), including the positional aspect (left digit = left finger). I suspect that it is only presented here to underline Idrisah’s reference to it being a “ternary finger counting”; avians would likely associate hand position “2” with the number 2 / their written digit “Λ” directly, just like we read a hand with two outstretched fingers as “two”, rather than going through the intermediate step of rewriting the actual finger positions as “11000” (European) / “01100” (American) / “00011” (ME, IIUC).
Phasma Felis
I was thinking the same thing. It’s not what I would think of as “normal” digital ternary; if left finger = ones place, right finger = threes place, lowered = 0, raised = 1, crooked = 2, then 4 would be 1/1 (raised/raised), 1+(1×3), not 0/2 as shown here. But If it’s an old cultural practice, it doesn’t have to follow the same rules we use for arithmetic in different bases.
$ilverware
*points at Idrisah* NERD! (affectionate)
eden
honestly I can’t even imagine doing anything, let alone crafting complex space flight mechanisms with just two fingers. don’t know how avians managed. but hey! this story is about different people and cultures interacting lol
Synthaphone
I believe they use their beaks/tongues to manipulate objects in addition to their fingers, which probably helps!
JoB
Well it has sure seen its use among humans, too. :-3 Maybe not so much once hypergolic fuels are involved …
Vinemaple
I do want to ask Jay, sometime, about that finger-wrapping thing avians seem to do… looks potentially really involved and clever
JoB
> don’t know how avians managed.
Maybe the aliens who built these devices have some idea of how to get stuff done with but two fingers per hand? 😉
eden
condensending, nice. you saw the part where I acknowledged it was possible right?
eden
that’s cool! can you bring up the robots without being condescending?
JoB
I’m afraid that I don’t follow – those are not robots but extensions of, and entirely controlled by, humans. What exactly is condescending in pointing out that humans actually willingly cho(o)se to use the two-fingers approach (because it’s easier for a human to adapt to that than to construct+maintain mechanics that duplicate human hands more closely)?
eden
*did not think the first comment loaded my phone is slow
eden
okay asshole if you’re going to be like that (you know perfectly well what I was talking about. they are extensions. tools. there are fucking robots with those grips too. also fucking look at the difference between the comment you left me and the one you left synthaphone. do you see any sarcasm there? that fucking winky face emoji? you go up to someone you know, do that in real life and see how many friends you make because nobody does that unless they’re calling someone they’re correcting an idiot.
anonymous
…?
eden
this second comment too. and you know robots are “made and controlled” by humans too right? were you so worried I was that stupid that you had to specifically tell me who they were made by? you can act dense or act smart but not both
Bunn
At this point (not as in this comment chain, but as in all the pages across the comic they’ve commented on) I’ve realized JoB is someone who should probably be ignored 99-100% of the time. Despite claiming to “hate to be that guy,” almost every comment I’ve noticed (especially recently) has just been them trying to find the most pedantic flaws they can. I guess some people are so insecure about their intelligence that they have to try to prove how smart they are, but more often than not, it just exposes how little they understand about subtext and meaning.
Phasma Felis
I’ve seen humans with missing fingers, or even an entire hand, do things I would not have expected them to be able to do. Sapient minds can adapt in surprising ways, especially if you’re born that way and learn as an infant.
eden
true, I hadn’t thought of that!
The Opossum Witch
Please take care of yourself!! I’d honestly rather you rest for as long as you need and take time for yourself!
leecetheartist
It is really really delightful and elegant too!
EnchantresEmily
“Isn’t that delightful?”
Idrisah, you are such a nerd (affectionate).
Vinemaple
Take care of yourself, Jay! If you have to take a breather, we can always LOOK AT THE AWESOME RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE AD SPACE ON THIS PAGE, HINT HINT!
oh6
Whoa, never thought of knuckle-counting before – actually easier to manage in some ways since the finger can be braced against the knuckle bone. I once read about a hand counting system that went up to 90 or so, and wondered how that was done, and this may explain it!
TamLin
Humans actually have 19 total knuckles on each hand, counting fingertips, but 5×19 is 95! So you can keep track of repetitions on one hand and count on the other up to 95 with great ease! My dad taught me that for ease of reciting something 95 times, and I still don’t do that as much as I should lol
forthebit
How do you get up to 5x? 19 on each hand and then both hands together I can get, but that’s still only 4x, isn’t it?
forthebit
Nm, after posting I reread and caught the part about “keeping track of repetitions” with one hand, so it’s one repetition per finger, hence 5x.
I guess if you used knuckles to count repetitions as well, you could get up to 19×19, or 361. That’s almost enough to count out a whole year!
Vinemaple
This is why we have so much fossilized base-12 in Western and Middle Eastern cultures, they say… the ancient Babylonians are believed to have knuckle-counted to 12 on one hand, with the thumb touching a phalange.
HAL9000
its common in asia to count with 12 instead of 10, because you count the joints in your fingers with your thumb. you can get up to 144 using two hands (one marks out your 12 count, the other the amount of times you reach 12)!
creetur
This ask makes me wonder how the other sophonts count.. what documented system does the bug ferrets have? (or multiple systems, knowing how complicated they can get)
JoB
Let me tell you about the cultural exchange that happened after the First Contact between the BFGC and the Danes …
Lilac
Chapter 8 soon Yay!!! This has been nice though, I think many stories can be elevated with some time spent alone with just the characters, “filler” if you will (not filler!!) This was a fun break!!
Teod
You almost doubled the previous record of Q&A pages and you say you wanted to do more? I enjoy the worldbuilding a lot, but a long period of no plot progression is getting me impatient.
Jay Eaton
I wanted to do more per update, the length of the update pause was never going to change. It was this or another hiatus because I’m catching up to my backlog faster than I predicted. This summer was rough for my productivity
horse
If you’re that impatient, the patreon is right there? Otherwise, you’re reading a free webcomic and getting detailed worldbuilding Q&A pages on every update day in the midst of a planned hiatus. That’s honestly above and beyond for a webcomic creator, you don’t have grounds to complain here.
eden
it’s kind of rude and entitled to be riding the artist like that… this isn’t ai dude, you can’t just snap your fingers for an instant fix, jay has a life you know
1d4-nadg
Those slow worldbuilding moments (which I’m eating up like candy but I get that they can make people impatient) are a necessity for the backlog. Publishing double pages reaaaally eats up the queue.
It’s coming back soon tho!
Plasmatic Shrimp
Honestly I expected you to run out of steam sooner. Doing this much art within a month is no joke!
I think aside from Schoolhouse Rock, this was my first introduction to base systems other than base 10. It’s interesting to see how little details like these impact the worldbuilding!
Entguarde
idrisah i love you NEVER stop being a linguistic nerd!
and sorry if this is a stupid question, but what does she mean when she says using base three to count in base eight? i’m not too familiar with numerical systems like these
JoB
The latter finger-counting system is using two fingers, each in three possible positions, which makes for nine different positions of the whole hand.
Eight of these positions are “legal”, and correspond to the eight figures their culture “really” uses (in writing, I suppose).
[The “illegal” one is “00”, i.e., an avian “fist”. I wonder whether that’s the point of ruling that one out …]
So, they have common base 8 numbers and the users of this finger-counting system represent it with “base 3” positions of individual fingers – just like a (relative?) majority of humans write base 10 numbers but do finger counting with two positions for each finger.
[quickly draws a curtain to distract from details like “but isn’t that human finger-counting method unary, rather than ‘base 2’ = binary” or “but figures go from 0 to n-1, rather than from 1 to n“]
7arty
>I wonder whether that’s the point of ruling that one out
I don’t know, avian fingers don’t seem to be a particularly good fit for punching (unlike us claw-less apes).
Septemberdale
Maybe the unused one simply means zero.