While it's a nice trick, it's a circuitous route to get to the answer, and requires considerably more stones than the number you're trying to count to. Simply laying out X stones per Y items and counting them uses no methods that the shaman's system doesn't already use, requires less stones, and doesn't require any 'good' or 'evil' silliness.

Besides, if a trick works, but it isn't understood why it works, then the users of it lose the 'ingenious' tag, methinks.

The fact that we think it is just a trick does not mean the Ethiopians did not understand it.

Or maybe that the language translation is imprecise.

Also there are "apocalypse numbers" http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ApocalypseNumber.html , "beast numbers" http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BeastNumber.html , "leviathan numbers" http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LeviathanNumber.html , and "legion's numbers" http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LegionsNumbers.html among others.

Sure. Me laying in bed listening to radio 4 is not ingenious, even though there's some ingenuity in creating radio (and the industrial infrastructure to get a radio to me).

Of course, no-one is yelling about ZOMG PC CONSPIRACY when I say how amazing it is that I can buy a radio for a few dollars.

Close enough for me. Frankly I doubt that he honestly believed every word he wrote. People in high places have to routinely perform public worship of the PC god, "all cultures are equal", etc.

Regarding the "ingenuity" see me reply above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6502665

> So how do we and that Ethiopian shaman differ? Very little, I reckon. > Very little indeed. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if he makes fewer mistakes than we do.

The article clearly dumbs down (or misunderstands)the algortihm, insulting the audience's intelligence to make a feel-good claim about the arithmetic talent of "uncivilized" Ethiopians, and is accidentally racist in the process.