That's OK! Do you think you really understand the natural numbers?
Whereas, if you know the intrinsic definition by the axioms, you know the definition, not the numbers. Big difference that is.
I'm keen on a distinction between numbers and forumals. If you take binary numbers and succ(), you have 0, 1 and an infinity of formulas. In my book that's only two natural numbers. We commonly change base to represent eg. 16 as 0x10 - or 1000 as 1k, requiring additional figures. Figure, number - potato, potato.
What’s the operational advantage of this approach? I feel like it would wreck havoc with fundamental tools like mathematical induction..