yes, but my point is, that negative numbers are an abstraction. you can count 3 apples, but you can't count -3 apples because they are not in front of you to count. they are hypothetical negatives, living in some ghost world. negative *number* what does number mean? it means to count, and counting means addition, 1 and 1 and 1 and 1... it's not that they have no use because they "don't exist" neither do any kind of numbers. real numbers are just as bad, everything seems to indicate that there is a finite precision to the substance of this universe, which is the opposite of what a "real" number is. "real" should be the integers, because this highlights the fact that there is no such thing as perfect in this universe, only approximations with varying levels of precision. negatives definitely are the opposite of addition though. you add one, you subtract one, and you are back to zero. so subtracting 1 is the temporal negative of adding 1. same as multiplying, they are opposites in one way, and the same in another, as scalars, they are the same, as vectors, they are opposite. anyway, nothing stopping anyone from making an arbitrary number of symbols and making a number base out of them based on their sequence in a place of representation. it's just not really the same as a number, if you don't specify base, which is implied by representation.