In which I attempt to answer the question "What even is a number?" for a friend. https://notebook.drmaciver.com/posts/2019-02-18-08:58.html …
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I have a vague impression that my first encounter with this was as a story about something people actually did (albeit not because numbers hadn't been invented yet), possibly in a James Herriot book. This might be a false memory though, and Google is being uncooperative.
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Plausibly it's a version of Yan Tan Tethera (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera …), which uses stones to count off multiples of 20, that has been simplified in the retelling/remembering.
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I found this in a book from 1990. Probably not the original source either, but it predates Yudkowsky's version: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jklsb5JUgoQC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=counting+with+stones+sheep&source=bl&ots=wV_G2PuvZH&sig=ACfU3U1M8XsZHSn_ANdpk_z17vxwrI0BYg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-1aqf3MXgAhU3QxUIHQKvBgE4ChDoATABegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=counting%20with%20stones%20sheep&f=false …pic.twitter.com/UD90y88BKg
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Awesome detective work! Thank you!
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