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Finger counting gives away your nationality

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Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fairly certain I was taught the unary counting system in either kindergarten or 1st grade. And I wasn’t even in an advanced course.

Timmy has 1 rock. Johnny gives Timmy 1 rock. Timmy now has 1 rock. Jenny gives 1 rock to Timmy. Timmy has 1 rock.

– zero

0 – one

00 – two

000 – three

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#82
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an amazing way to show how paranoid people are over "dogwhistles." Witches are everywhere!

People want to have something to fear or wave pitchforks at. It's simple mob psychology, and it's scary.

Perhaps you'd care to explain why this guy has it emblazoned on his helmet. As I have pointed out many times, simply ignoring people whose ideas you find disagreeable doesn't necessarily make them go away.

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/08/08...

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#83
post #35

Every time I've heard some variation of this, the example is always three. I'm more interested in four. Does the pattern follow through? Because I physically can't hold up 3 fingers and my thumb without the pinky going up to, when I do 3, my thumb is holding my pinky down.

I think French people would do 4 with just the pinkie down. At least this specific French person does :). In my case that means the ring finger is not perfectly up, but still enough that it's clear it's raised.

From my experience most French people keep only the thumb down to signal “4”. It’s easier to do.

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#84
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did index+middle for 2. They would do thumb+index for 2, and thumb+index+middle for 3. They didn't do index+middle for anything other than maybe "peace sign". So from a distance, my "2" would look like "3" to them. It was a rural area in Germany, in the late 80's, early 90's.

Index + middle in an upward movement would probably be taken as something other than peace

No. Outside the U.K. and Ireland, nobody would take that for an insult unless you also use rude language or body language.

I actually use it every now and then, for example ordering 2 beers at a bar.

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#85
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want to have something to fear or wave pitchforks at. It's simple mob psychology, and it's scary.

Perhaps you'd care to explain why this guy has it emblazoned on his helmet. As I have pointed out many times, simply ignoring people whose ideas you find disagreeable doesn't necessarily make them go away. https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/08/08...

Because we're all idiots who got taken in on this by 4chan.

The symbol became irresistible to that guy after watching liberals lose their minds at it. If it hadn't bothered the libs, it would have no use to him.

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you'd care to explain why this guy has it emblazoned on his helmet. As I have pointed out many times, simply ignoring people whose ideas you find disagreeable doesn't necessarily make them go away. https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/08/08...

Because we're all idiots who got taken in on this by 4chan. The symbol became irresistible to that guy after watching liberals lose their minds at it. If it hadn't bothered the libs, it would have no use to him.

[deleted]

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#87
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> invention of 4chan They set out to transform a symbol, and they succeeded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#White_power_symbol If you think it isn't real because it was made up, Vonnegut's Mother Night has you covered: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

I think you're seeing a slightly different narrative. 4chan decided to make people upset about the hand sign, some major news networks obediently expressed outrage, and a whole lot of people who actively dislike said news channels discovered a whole new way to generate headlines.

They were so successful at marketing the idea that the "ok" sign meant White Power that white nationalists started using it that way and the meaning shifted. And since a lot of the 4chan people are deeply racist they were basically saying "let's take over this symbol". And they succeeded.

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Timmy has 1 rock. Johnny gives Timmy 1 rock. Timmy now has 1 rock. Jenny gives 1 rock to Timmy. Timmy has 1 rock.

– zero 0 – one 00 – two 000 – three

I think that's noary math instead of unary. or maybe nonary/nunary(can only count women in habits)/zipary/nilary/???

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#89
post #37
post #7

The correct way is to count in binary, and easily reach 1023 without needing a third hand [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary

And with two’s complement, we can even have negative numbers!

And just by touching your toes, you can do signed 10-bit addition and subtraction!

Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality

#90
post #5

There's a distinction to be made between counting on one's fingers and communicating a number with one's fingers. You can easily communicate numbers 1 through 10 to just about anyone around the globe by holding up the corresponding number of fingers. But when it comes to 11 and up, you're generally not going to be able to communicate those numbers in a universally recognizable way. (Although "flashing" one's hands to…

> You can easily communicate numbers 1 through 10 to just about anyone around the globe by holding up the corresponding number of fingers

For the numbers 6-10 China have hand gestures where number of fingers held up does not correspond to the number.

I was confused by this when I wanted to buy something and the lady crossed her two index fingers.

I took it to mean that the item was not for sale (out of stock), but later learned that this is the hand gesture for the number ten.

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