Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds
Australian researchers have poked holes in an old thought-experiment known as the "infinite monkey theorem".
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Yeah, no, using a finite number to try and disprove a theory that is all specifically about infinite numbers isn't poking holes in anything..
It's more a "yeah, but..." than a refutation.
the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.
Which means that while mathematically true, the theorem is "misleading", they said.
Gotta read the articles 👍
Gotta read the articles 👍
No, you..
As well as looking at the abilities of a single monkey, the study also did a series of calculations based on the current global population of chimpanzees, which is roughly 200,000.
(E: never mind that, as has already been suggested to you, the theoretical thought experiment in question specifies not only infinite monkeys, but infinite time too, so they've not stuck to either parameter)
(E: never mind that, as has already been suggested to you, the theoretical thought experiment in question specifies not only infinite monkeys, but infinite time too, so they've not stuck to either parameter)
Whoah, whoah, whoah.... Big critical thinker here thinks the paper is about disproving a thought experiment?
You understand that this is impossible? Even if it were attempted, such a venture is more a philosophical one, not a mathematicians forte.
Obviously the paper is not looking at that, it's doing math
“Yes, it is true that given infinite resources, any text of any length would inevitably be produced eventually. While true, this also has no relevance to our own universe, as ‘reaching infinity’ in resources is not something which can ever happen.”
That needing to be pointed out to you is... Well you'll have to excuse me if I don't waste my energy "critically thinking" yet 👍
What exactly is misleading about the theorem? Does anyone actually expect to setup some monkeys and typewriters and get something legible?
If there are an infinite number of trials (either infinite monkeys or infinite time), the outcome is truly random, and the desired text is finite, it must necessarily happen at some point. In fact, it'd happen an infinite number of times.
The original thought experiment clearly states infinite. As soon as you bound that in any way (such as not infinite monkeys, but 1 monkey for every atom in the universe) you're talking about another experiment entirely. Infinite means infinite, not really really big. Gotta use some critical thinking 👍
If you have infinite time, you don't also need infinite monkeys.
The theorem is not misleading, it literally states infinite monkeys. Not 200k monkeys or even 200 decillion monkeys, infinite. If it's possible for the monkeys to press the keys in the right order, then the time it will take for one of them to write Shakespeare's complete works will be limited only by their typing speed.
The theorem states that given an infinite amount of time, which is outside the realm of the life of the universe.
The "theorem", if we wanna call it that, says that, given an infinite amount of monkeys and time, they could write Shakespeare.
This doesn't mean it's actually possible in the real world, it's just to say that random events can seem, from the outside, like intelligent creations. Like a cloud that looks like a pig, no one actually created it to look like that, it was just random happenstance.