You can communicate anything with two answers: Affirmative and Negative. For ease, saying "Yes." and not answering is the same as yes and no. Only being able to say "I am Groot." or nothing is the same. A "statement" and "not-that-statement" being the only two options are fine. Whatever it takes.
Imagine me asking what you want for dinner. Could I get the answer if all you can say is "Yes." Eventually. There are a lot of permutations, but we can go down the list. Or I can be smart, start categorizing the food. Make the algorithm smarter. Cheat. But we still only get one of two options from you. A yes or no.
You can dictate any book to me with those two options. It'll take forever, but it'll get done. English just uses language with a higher base (base ~171,476 in the Oxford dictionary) to save some time, but you can't just translate that to another language 1:1. If you are getting to the base of it all, a binary language, yes or no, is how you make sure everything works at the end of the day.
The simplest computer is a switch of yes, no and we can do anything we want at that level. We've just gotten better about efficiency and cutting corners to make our lives easier with other bases.
ocher_stone t1_j9vbx45 wrote
Reply to ELI5: Why do we only use 1 and 0 for binary? Could we create a trinary system introducing an extra '2'? by No-Mammoth-1638
Yes. Why do we use binary though?
You can communicate anything with two answers: Affirmative and Negative. For ease, saying "Yes." and not answering is the same as yes and no. Only being able to say "I am Groot." or nothing is the same. A "statement" and "not-that-statement" being the only two options are fine. Whatever it takes.
Imagine me asking what you want for dinner. Could I get the answer if all you can say is "Yes." Eventually. There are a lot of permutations, but we can go down the list. Or I can be smart, start categorizing the food. Make the algorithm smarter. Cheat. But we still only get one of two options from you. A yes or no.
You can dictate any book to me with those two options. It'll take forever, but it'll get done. English just uses language with a higher base (base ~171,476 in the Oxford dictionary) to save some time, but you can't just translate that to another language 1:1. If you are getting to the base of it all, a binary language, yes or no, is how you make sure everything works at the end of the day.
The simplest computer is a switch of yes, no and we can do anything we want at that level. We've just gotten better about efficiency and cutting corners to make our lives easier with other bases.