> people flinch at inconsistencies, 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.3 is an identity and when basic identities are wrong people feel uncomfortable and don't want to proceed; if y

> people flinch at inconsistencies, 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.3 is an identity and when basic identities are wrong people feel uncomfortable and don't want to proceed; if you are working with an accountant, for instance, and they see something that is not consistent in a way they've been trained has to be consistent, they will just stop until it is consistent. This is an unsolvable problem. If your floats are base-10 "0.1 + 0.2 = 0.3" might work out, but it isn't going to fix "(1/3)3 = 1". And it gets even worse if you do anything involving π. It is mathematically impossible for a computer to handle all* reals correctly, so something has to give. Binary floats are a reasonable approximation in practice, and anyone wanting something else is free to use arbitrary-precision libraries.