<p>god gives you an eraser. you must erase either words or numbers from society. which do you erase?</p>
<p>This depends on whether or not it is cheating to express the concept of numbers through words.</p>
<p>pretend people are just born with that knowledge</p>
<p>numbers. </p>
<p>Hopefully it will cut down on the greed.</p>
<p>In CC, the almighty statistic rules…</p>
<p>I’d love to see one debate that doesn’t end in a statistic from Wikipedia.</p>
<p>I’d erase numbers just for the sake of that.</p>
<p>Lol, wasn’t this in The Phantom Tollbooth? I loved that book as a kid.</p>
<p>^ best book ever</p>
<p>Numbers without words are useless</p>
<p>The numbers would have to go. Given our base ten system, words can express information much more efficiently.</p>
<p>Numbers .</p>
<p>Hahaha, oh wow at everyone saying numbers</p>
<p>Numbers are the basis of everything. Mathematics is the language in which the universe was coded, the stars drawn, the planets written. You cannot erase numbers because everything, even words, are based on numbers. The idea is just inconceivable.</p>
<p>but you can have a society that doesn’t know anything about math…i think we didn’t know the number “0” until the arabs came</p>
<p>All societies have knowledge of math, even if it is rudimentary counting.</p>
<p>p.s. the Indians and the Aztecs independently discovered zero.</p>
<p>and all societies have knowledge of words, even if they’re just hand gestures or paintings on the walls :p</p>
<p>huh, didn’t know it was the indians. guess you learn something new everyday!</p>
<p>numbers can be erased because you can just spell out the numbers with words…</p>
<p>
well, yeah. i’m assuming we’re discussing the understanding of the concept of numbers, not the existence of quantities. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>i looove numbers & the idea of understanding the universe in terms of mathematics & its applications. BUT i think words are much more essential. while many animals communicate, i doubt that most have any concept of numbers beyond the most basic level of understanding quantity (and perhaps some don’t even have that). & everything’s about survival to me.</p>
<p>Most animals don’t have an understanding of anything and are nothing more than biological machines, the only self-aware animals we know of are chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins (including orca whales). </p>
<p>Anyway, words and number are both essential and very much tied to each others’ existence. I suppose what I said earlier about the idea of no numbers being inconceivable also applies to words.</p>
<p>
mmm… maybe that’s all we know so far, but i think we’d be flattering ourselves to assume that we know enough to judge definitively. </p>
<p>although i suppose we’re the ones defining sentience, so i guess we can say whatever we want. lolz!</p>
<p>You’re very right… we only know that those animals are self aware based on vision. Other animals, like whales, who aren’t optically inclined, may recognize their own voice instead. The field of animal intelligence and sentience/sapience is severely lacking in my opinion and if I was even a bit interested in biology I’d pursue it.</p>
<p>you wanna do neuroscience, i thought…? that’s grounded in biology…</p>
<p>or are you just gonna go into professional boat building for a career</p>