this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

But we aren't talking about one monkey. We are talking about infinite monkeys.

Infinity is already a loaded concept in our universe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Abiogenisis in shambles again

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is clownery, humanity is infinite monkeys, and we wrote Hamlet ages ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Are they arguing it wasn't random though? I mean Shakespeare had to think through the plot and everything, not just scribble nonsense on a page

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The thought experiment suggests that over a long enough period of time, every possible combination of letters would be typed out on a keyboard, including Hamlet.

They are not arguing about randomness, as it is inherent to the thought experiment. Randomness is necessary for the experiment to occur.

They are arguing that the universe would be dead before the time criteria is met. It is a bitter and sarcastic conclusion to the thought experiment, and is supposed to be funny.

In conversation, it would be delivered like this:

"You know, over a long enough period of time, monkeys smashing typewriters randomly would eventually produce Hamlet"

"The universe isn't going to last that long."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Nobody asked but I had to share this

It's important to me that everyone understands the joke, even if that understanding robs them of the joy of it. "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. It kills it".

But it's important because I suffered a lot of being left out as a kid. Others found how good it felt to be exclusive, and shoulder me out of things, or refuse to explain things, or whatever it was that made me the outcast. I could tell from their faces that they love the way it felt when they did that to me. But it hurt me a lot.

I don't want there to be any exclusivity anymore. Nobody deserves that pain. I want everyone to understand the joke, even if that prevents them from ever laughing at it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Everyone keeps forgetting that we're all just what monkeys evolved into...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Actually, both monkeys and us are what our common ancestors evolved into. Which was neither a human nor a monkey.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

Lifetime of the universe is infinitely less than infinite time. So they solved for the wrong problem. Of course it may take longer than the life of the universe, or it may happen in a year. That's the whole point of the concepts of infinity and true randomness. Once you put a limit on time or a restriction on randomness, then the thought experiment is broken. You've totally changed the equation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Fuuuuck there goes my plan to get this monkey to write Hamlet within the lifetime of the universe...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I've read there are so many permutations of a standard deck of 52 playing cards, that in all the times decks have been shuffled through history, there's almost no chance any given arrangement has ever been repeated. If we could teach monkeys to shuffle cards I wonder how long it would take them to do it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

There are 8.0658*10^67 orders you can shuffle a card deck in.

The math is easy. It's just 52! if your calculator has that function which is really 525150...32*1. There are 52 possibilities for the first card 51 for the second since you've already used one card and so on.

How many decks of cards have been shuffled over human history, or will be is beyond me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah that's the part that isn't easy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

For those who are confused, the comment meant to say

52*51*50*....*3*2*1

i.e. 52 × 51 × 50 × ... × 3 × 2 × 1

Markdown syntax screwed it up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Oh I didn't notice it did that. thanks for fixing it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Maybe it's becaue scientists have very poor imagination of the universe.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's still a chance that a monkey will type it on the first attempt. It's just very small.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

If I understand statistics correctly, it's actually a 50/50 chance.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What if it's a smart monkey?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Of our sample size, 100% of “smart” (capable of symbolic language) monkey species have already written Hamlet.

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