I've never heard that you use integers before, and when I try, it treats them all as truthy:

``` irb
irb(main):001:0> $VERBOSE
=> false
irb(main):002:0> $VERBOSE = 0
=> 0
irb(main):003:0> $VERBOSE
=> true
irb(main):004:0> $VERBOSE = 1
=> 1
irb(main):005:0> $VERBOSE
=> true
irb(main):006:0> $VERBOSE = 2
=> 2
irb(main):007:0> $VERBOSE
=> true
```