Almost all of these analyses of ternary hinge on the idea of efficiency of representation, being the (number of possible symbols) * (number of digits to represent).<p>But it seems way more useful to use the log of the number of possible symbols, in which case all bases (except unary, which is non-positional) have the exact same efficiency, and the argument becomes moot. It becomes largely a question of representation in reality, and binary wins on that front.<p>More exotic non-positional number systems seem way more interesting -- Fibonacci bases or Gray bases. Even balanced ternary if we have to break out of the binary paradigm.