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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

#91

Post by tombert »

What kind of "study" would this even be? I thought the point of the infinite monkey thing was to talk about regular distributions and eventualities of every possible string showing up. I don't think anyone claimed that any relatively-long string would show up in any reasonable amount of time necessarily, but it's kind of a bizarre assertion to make.

It's sort of like stating the runtime efficiency of a Bogosort; the runtime efficiency is unbounded. Theoretically any list could be sorted on the first run, but it could also just keep sorting in an unbounded fashion for forever, though given enough time (which could be tens of trillions of years or longer), it will eventually be sorted if we assume regular distribution of random numbers.

ETA:

Ok, I read through the actual paper, and it's clearly meant more as a joke, which I don't think was made clear in this article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277318632...

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

#92

Post by marcosdumay »

shagie wrote: post #70
nachox999 wrote: post #66

we need more monkeys

I was recently reminded of The Codeless Code. In that set of stories, there's the Laughing Monkey Clan. http://thecodelesscode.com/names/Laughing+Monkey+Clan Specialists in the business tier, where monkey business usually happens. Members of this clan have a traditional fighting style which involves throwing wrenches at their opponents; this is tolerated because it is not the worst thing that Monkeys have been known…

That's only worth mentioning because the PHP stdlib is mostly written in C. The general proposition (for any language) is trivially true since 93% of ink blobs are valid Perl programs.

https://www.mcmillen.dev/sigbovik/

(And wow! Search engines are getting even less useful with time. It's incredible!)

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

#93

Post by tombert »

Digory wrote: post #77
Aardwolf wrote: post #59

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…

Yes, but the theorem is meant to explain what can happen in the universe over long time scales. The point is that there isn't enough time in the universe for all the random stuff to happen that scientists pin on random chance. The theorem was memorable, but a cop out.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the infinite monkey example outside of theoretical mathematics; I'm sure someone has, but when I've heard it, it was to describe regular distribution of random.

I think it's a very bizarre thing for these mathematicians to act like they discovered something that I don't think anyone really disputed.

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

#94

Post by bathtub365 »

qarl wrote: post #57

200,000 is quite a bit smaller than infinite.

The reporting on this paper is crazy. In the highlights section of the paper’s page on the journal’s website it says “The long-established result of the Infinite Monkeys Theorem is correct, but misleading.” but the Guardian article says “Australian mathematicians call into question the ‘infinite monkey theorem’ in new research on old adage”, which I read as contradictory to what’s in the paper.

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

#95

Post by ragnese »

Digory wrote: post #77
Aardwolf wrote: post #59

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…

Yes, but the theorem is meant to explain what can happen in the universe over long time scales. The point is that there isn't enough time in the universe for all the random stuff to happen that scientists pin on random chance. The theorem was memorable, but a cop out.

> Yes, but the theorem is meant to explain what can happen in the universe over long time scales.

I never understood it that way. I always interpreted it as a fun way to explain the mathematical truth that no matter how low a probability is, as long as it is technically above 0, the event it describes WILL eventually occur given enough time/trials/etc.

I can't see anybody ever interpreting it as a statement about the real, actual, universe. Just like I don't think anybody truly believes that flipping a real coin with non-identical sides (such as every currency coin I've ever used) must have EXACTLY 50% probability of landing on either side. Surely people can separate the mathematical ideal/concept from constraints of physical reality.

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

#96

Post by hanche »

thom wrote: post #80

What if something in monkey psychology causes them to hit the keyboard with their fist or palm every five minutes or so of typing? What if they regularly lapse into just pressing one key over and over? It seems very unlikely to me that even with infinite monkeys a work would be generated, because they're not actually random number generators.

Oh, but these are idealized monkeys that act like perfect random generators. Almost, but not quite, unlike spherical cows.

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

#97

Post by bluefirebrand »

thom wrote: post #80

What if something in monkey psychology causes them to hit the keyboard with their fist or palm every five minutes or so of typing? What if they regularly lapse into just pressing one key over and over? It seems very unlikely to me that even with infinite monkeys a work would be generated, because they're not actually random number generators.

If you had infinite monkies, what is the probability that one of them is actually a random number generator

In the set of all infinite monkies there are infinite monkies that are random number generators

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

#98

Post by hanche »

prophesi wrote: post #68
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly not infinite monkeys or infinite time. If either were truly infinite not only would this be possible, it would be mandatory and would occur infinite times.

Sounds to me that the more interesting question would be graphing out the relationship of time and the amount of monkeys needed for one to write Shakespeare.

That's done in the paper. Using a log(log) scale for time, measured in number of heat deaths of the universe. It's the most amusing part of the study.

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

#99

Post by innagadadavida »

Empirically a monkey did already creat the works of Shakespeare in a mere 13billion years. This is the time it took for the universe to form, earth to evolve to create a monkey that could write all those words down. The entire process from start to finish is way more complicated and random than anyone typing 26 character randomly into the keyboard. But I guess we are talking about uniform distributions here.
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