The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?
Yeah, that’s why we need at least… two of them.
the paper used the entire population (200 thousand) and would take some 10 ^ 10 ^ 7 heat deaths of the universe
It could happen the very first time a monkey sat down at a typewriter. It’s just very unlikely.
from the wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
If there were as many monkeys as there are atoms in the observable universe typing extremely fast for trillions of times the life of the universe, the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small.
If we’re considering even chimps “monkeys”, there’s already eight billion of them, I think that’s enough.
Irrelevant. The heat death of the universe is a constraint unrelated to the premise of the original problem.
I don’t think it’s a constraint, it’s more like a measuring stick to try to show how ridiculously long that time is
As such, we have to conclude that Shakespeare himself inadvertently provided the answer as to whether monkey labour could meaningfully be a replacement for human endeavour as a source of scholarship or creativity. To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: “No”.
Wait …is this why AI exists? So we can type Hamlet in the face of monkey failures?
Dude. Just use a printer.
I feel like there has to be more to this problem than pure probability. We ought to consider practical nuances like the tendency to randomly mash keys that are closer together rather than assume a uniform distribution.
Doesn’t matter in the real infinite monkeys thought experiment. The chance of an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters producing Shakespeare is 100%. That’s how infinity works.
Sure, but this time I thought these things might matter because the article gives a deadline - the end of the universe.
I wonder if it would take more or less time with auto-complete.
