this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Not sure how I would keep track of powers of two with my fingers but base 6 or, my current favorite, base 13 counting is easy enough to keep track.
In principle you use hands as digits, one hand representing ones the other "tens". With base 6 you count with fingers normally up to 5 and then 6 is represented on another hand. This let's you count to 35.
Base 13 works by counting bones in your digits using your thumb. Like touching finger segment and that representing a number. So one hand can count up to 12 and then 13 is marked in the same manner on the other hand. This allows to count up to 168 (13 * 13 - 1).
Utilizing all fingers in a binary manner could give 30 bit number (15 finger bones on each hand), but I have no idea how to then keep track of the number using your hands.
Powers of 2 is just counting in binary, finger up is a 1 and down is a 0 so highest you can count all the numbers up to and including is 1111111111 in binary or 1023 base 10
I think you could relatively easily go trinary, where a finger is either down, bent, or up. That would get you to 59048
What if I don't wanna get shipped to El Salvador for throwing up gang signs?