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Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#11

Post by thih9 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #4

No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.

The paper doesn’t say that either. They only call the original theorem misleading. I understood that their point is the same as yours - that infinity won’t happen in a finite time period.

> The long-established result of the Infinite Monkeys Theorem is correct, but misleading.

> Non-trivial text generation during the lifespan of our universe is almost certainly impossible.

> The Finite Monkeys case shows there will never be sufficient resources to generate Shakespeare.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277318632...

Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#12

Post by 082349872349872 »

kypro wrote: post #6
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.

Yeah exactly, it's a thought experiment about infinities... Is someone going to publish a study concluding that Hilbert's Hotel couldn't be built on Earth too? Why are people even spending money on this research? What are they trying to prove/disprove?

Franklin Open, whatever it may be, could well have slightly higher standards than Arxiv, but it isn't exactly Nature or Science...

(but try telling that to The Grauniad!)

Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#14

Post by card_zero »

kypro wrote: post #6
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.

Yeah exactly, it's a thought experiment about infinities... Is someone going to publish a study concluding that Hilbert's Hotel couldn't be built on Earth too? Why are people even spending money on this research? What are they trying to prove/disprove?

Perhaps they're finitists, or ultrafinitists?

Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#16

Post by 082349872349872 »

soco wrote: post #13

A monkey with keyboard already wrote Shakespeare, duh. Other monkeys called it Shakespeare.

pedantry: that monkey was ~250 years before keyboards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Hansen_Writing_Ball

Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#17

Post by jdthedisciple »

andrewstuart wrote: post #4

No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.

Flawed point if it is used to justify the random speciation of evolution.

If they can't type out shakespeare, how can evolution randomly yet correctly type out billions of base sequences of dna in just a cple mil yrs?

Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#18

Post by jessekv »

kypro wrote: post #6
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.

Yeah exactly, it's a thought experiment about infinities... Is someone going to publish a study concluding that Hilbert's Hotel couldn't be built on Earth too? Why are people even spending money on this research? What are they trying to prove/disprove?

I suspect that many academic papers are a petty move to win an argument that started one day over lunch.

Re: Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

#19

Post by cortic »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #17
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.

Flawed point if it is used to justify the random speciation of evolution. If they can't type out shakespeare, how can evolution randomly yet correctly type out billions of base sequences of dna in just a cple mil yrs?

correctly is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, and the selection process in evolution is not random.
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