81–90 of 164 posts
The law of large numbers is still correct. Nowhere is there a requirement that the large numbers be smaller than the various physical constants of the universe.p
it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times!?!?!
The theorem is called "infinite monkey theorem". That means infinite amount of time. A googol years is not infinite, it's infinite times smaller than that. In an infinite amount of time they will write Shakespeare works (if they type randomly enough and not with some bias like never typing certain combinations of letters) Also, at least the article could have said what the actual probability is then? Are we talking 1…
Yeah, I might be naive, since they're professional mathematicians and I'm not, but their conclusion feels like saying that they "tested" the concept of infinity and found that it's simply unreachable. To me, the infinite monkey theorem is an abstract idea and not something that needs to be "tested", though it's certainly fun to run the numbers.
The theorem is called "infinite monkey theorem". That means infinite amount of time. A googol years is not infinite, it's infinite times smaller than that. In an infinite amount of time they will write Shakespeare works (if they type randomly enough and not with some bias like never typing certain combinations of letters) Also, at least the article could have said what the actual probability is then? Are we talking 1…
Yeah, I might be naive, since they're professional mathematicians and I'm not, but their conclusion feels like saying that they "tested" the concept of infinity and found that it's simply unreachable. To me, the infinite monkey theorem is an abstract idea and not something that needs to be "tested", though it's certainly fun to run the numbers.
They have arbitrarily shifted the goal posts to fit their conclusion: > working out that even if all the chimpanzees in the world were given the entire lifespan of the universe, they would “almost certainly” never Who assumed the original adage had the constraint of the universe’s lifetime.
A monkey with keyboard already wrote Shakespeare, duh. Other monkeys called it Shakespeare.
In other words: it's "easier" to make better monkeys than to scale up to produce something valuable. Or in other other words: random generation is highly unlikely to produce something valuable. Or in other other other words: the amount of useful information in "the library of babel" is miniscule compared to noise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're comparing chalk and cheese to an extent, a perfect copy of Shakespeare's work can exist in exactly one way but DNA isn't required to be copied perfectly, DNA can change without necessarily killing the organism or otherwise rendering it unable to reproduce. Additionally evolution is not a random process, while mutations are random the process by which the mutations are selected is not - it depends on whether th…
I would like to see someone use the most generous parameters possible and simulate the statistics of the first cple amino acids evolving into our homo sapiens sapiens chromosome set randomly over the course of just 4b years. (selection is irrelevant here; we could even just model it as always-select-for-beneficial-mutation for extra graciousness). Mind you, even if a beneficient mutation occurs, it is still not guara…
Why would it have to re-occur again and again? If the mutation is beneficial to the reproductive success of an organism, by definition their mutation will be passed on with no need for it to occur again by chance. The percentage of the population with the mutation would grow, potentially very quickly if it was a strong advantage over the previous generations. You're also characterising evolution as if to get from amoebas to humans you require a series of billions of independent coin-flips which isn't an accurate model, rather each generation is building on that which preceded it. Take the eye as an organ for example, it predates humanity by a very long time and was not independently evolved by humans - there was no need for it to have been since those genes already existed.
The predictions of evolution are generally supported by the available evidence at any rate, if you'd like to overturn it you'll have to propose a theory that explains the evidence more compellingly.
The theorem is called "infinite monkey theorem". That means infinite amount of time. A googol years is not infinite, it's infinite times smaller than that. In an infinite amount of time they will write Shakespeare works (if they type randomly enough and not with some bias like never typing certain combinations of letters) Also, at least the article could have said what the actual probability is then? Are we talking 1…