Yeah, all these types have problems, we've decided to put up with the IEEE floating point numbers, we could have chosen to have the big rationals, or drawn any other line. I don't disagree that there's no satisfying "correct" answer but it's a little disappointing that programmers so easily accept the status quo as though nothing else could be in its place.

Maybe Python having automatic big numbers like Lisps often did will help introduce new programmers to the idea that the 32-bit two's complement integer provided on all modern computers isn't somehow "really" how numbers work.