[jonesjohnson]

exactly!

I've been wondering about this for quite a while now. Why does everybody automatically assume that I'm using the decimal system when saying "orders of magnitude"?!

[andruby]

I'd argue that 100% of all humans use the decimal system, most of the time. Maybe 1 to 5% of all humans use another system some of the time.

Anyway, there are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

[pilchard123]

Because, as xkcd 169 says, communicating badly and then actung smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness. "Orders of magnitude" refers to a decimal system in the vast majority of uses (I must admit I have no concrete data on this, but I can find plenty of references to it being base-10 and only a suggestion that it could be sometihng else).

Unless you've explicitly stated that you mean something else, people have no reason to think that you mean something else.