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No, the problem is not '0' not being a concept. There are two issues here, which are related but not the same. The conecpt of 'nothingness' is irrelevant to bot
by pfortuny 13y ago
No, the problem is not '0' not being a concept. There are two issues here, which are related but not the same. The conecpt of 'nothingness' is irrelevant to both:
1) Dealing with '0' as an ordinary number.
2) Using a positional number system, which requires a symbol or context for telling '1230' from '1023' and '1203', etc.
One tends to think that solving the first issue leads to the second. Solving the second implies in some way having already solved the first, due to the nature of positional systems.
- zdean 13y agowould it be fair to differentiate the two concepts as: 1. using "0" as a digit 2. using "0" as a number
- KMag 13y ago> Solving the second implies in some way having already solved the first, due to the nature of positional systems. Untrue. (Edit: actually true). It works perfectly well to have a decimal number system using digits 1-10 instead of 0-9. For sake of notation, let's say A is the digit representing 10. "A" = 10, "11" = 11, "19" = 19, "1A" = 20, "21" = 21, etc. Edit: actually, I misread your argument. What you argued is definitionally true.