this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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[–] davidagain@lemmy.world -3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Natural numbers include zero

Only if you're French or a computer scientist or something! No one else counts from zero.

There's nothing natural about zero. The famously organized and inventive Roman Empire did fine without it and it wasn't a popular concept in Europe until the early thirteenth century.

If zero were natural like 1, 2, 3, 4, then all cultures would have counted from zero, but they absolutely did not.

[–] SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

american education system moment?

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think round the world, children and adults start counting from 1. It's only natural!

[–] SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think about this in terms can I have of something (indivisible), and sure enough I can have 0 apples (yeah, yeah, divisible), bruises, grains of sand in my pocket

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I think you're trying to explain to me what zero means while I'm trying to explain that it's not where numbers numbers start of from. It's where array offsets start (but making humans make that distinction instead of compilers is on obvious own goal for language designers who weren't intending to make off by one errors more frequent). It's where set theory starts, but it's absolutely not where counting starts, and number starts with counting. It's not a natural number.