Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds
Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds
A new study reveals it would take far longer than the lifespan of our universe for a typing monkey to randomly produce Shakespeare. So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading.
The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?
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Yeah, that’s why we need at least... two of them.
40 0 Replythe paper used the entire population (200 thousand) and would take some 10 ^ 10 ^ 7 heat deaths of the universe
16 0 ReplyIt could happen the very first time a monkey sat down at a typewriter. It's just very unlikely.
42 0 Replyfrom the wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theoremIf 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.
16 0 ReplySo you're saying there's a chance.
1 0 Reply... the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small.
But not zero.
37 1 ReplyBasically nothing is ever truly zero
3 0 ReplyThe probability of lots of things is zero. The probability of a monkey typing a Chinese character on an English keyboard is zero.
Similar idea: there are an infinite amount of numbers between zero and one, but none of those numbers is two.
1 0 ReplySomeone wiser than me already said that it already has happened: 1 ape did, in fact, write the complete works of Shakespeare.
23 0 Replyape != monkey
5 0 ReplyApes are monkeys though, just like we're apes and birds are dinosaurs
2 0 ReplyWe are apes and birds are dinosaurs, but monkeys and apes are distinct categories under primates so no, apes are not monkeys.
2 0 Reply
Fair enough. I wouldn’t want to insult the Librarian.
3 1 ReplyOok
1 0 Reply
apes ⊂ monkeys, actually.
2 0 Replymonkey c monkey do
3 0 Reply
I am.
1 0 ReplyHello "Zero"!
2 0 Reply
Weird how neither of those numbers are infinities. Almost like the numbers used are unfathomably small in comparison.
10 0 ReplySo you’re telling me… there’s a chance!
Sorry, I’m sort of lampooning comments like the one above and below you where people just can’t resist focusing on the possibility, no matter how ridiculously remote it seems. For myself, there’s a point of “functionally zero odds” that I’m willing to accept and move on with my life.
4 0 Replyso you're saying there's a chance...
3 0 Reply
ok so the monkeys need to type faster
7 0 ReplyLet's put them in open spaces in offices and micro-mananage then, that'll work.
3 0 ReplyAnd we need more of them!
3 0 Reply
Irrelevant. The heat death of the universe is a constraint unrelated to the premise of the original problem.
6 0 ReplyI don't think it's a constraint, it's more like a measuring stick to try to show how ridiculously long that time is
2 0 ReplyIt's really not that long, if we can't get monkeys to write Shakespeare.
1 0 Reply
We could breed monkeys to much higher populations.
3 0 ReplyIf we're considering even chimps "monkeys", there's already eight billion of them, I think that's enough.
2 0 Replyenough to cut a few zeros of a number with 10 million of them
2 0 Reply