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?
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.
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.
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
But not zero.
Basically nothing is ever truly zero
Someone wiser than me already said that it already has happened: 1 ape did, in fact, write the complete works of Shakespeare.
ape != monkey
Fair enough. I wouldn’t want to insult the Librarian.
apes ⊂ monkeys, actually.
Apes are monkeys though, just like we’re apes and birds are dinosaurs
I am.
Hello “Zero”!
Weird how neither of those numbers are infinities. Almost like the numbers used are unfathomably small in comparison.
So 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.
ok so the monkeys need to type faster
And we need more of them!
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008x567/p0gyfc9x.jpg
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
We could breed monkeys to much higher populations.
If we’re considering even chimps “monkeys”, there’s already eight billion of them, I think that’s enough.
enough to cut a few zeros of a number with 10 million of them