Technology

So the secret to this thought experiment is to understand that infinite is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is...

The lifespan of the universe from big bang to heat death (the longest scenario) is a blink of an eye to eternity. The breadth and size of the universe -- not just what we can see, but how big it is with all the inflation bits, even as its expanding faster than the speed of light -- just a mote in a sunbeam compared to infinity.

Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity – distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. And thus we don't imagine just how vast and literally impossible infinity is.

With an infinite number of monkeys, not only will you get one that will write out a Hamlet script perfectly the first time, formatted exactly as you need it, but you'll have an infinite number of them. Yes, the percentage of the total will be very small (though not infinitesimally so), and even if you do a partial search you're going to get a lot of false hits. But 0.000001% of ∞ is still ∞. ∞ / [Graham's Number] = ∞

It's a lot of monkeys.

Now, because the monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare thought experiment isn't super useful unless you're dealing with angels and devils (they get to play with infinities. The real world is all normal numbers) the model has been paired down in Dawkin's Weasel ( on Wikipedia ) and Weasel Programs which demonstrate how evolution (specifically biological evolution) isn't random rather has random features, but natural selection is informed by, well, selection. Specifically survivability in a harsh environment. When slow rabbits fail to breed, the rabbits will mutate to be faster over generations.

How about 4 monkeys in parallel?

An ape could though.

But what if we had infinite monkeys 🤔

Let's use our braincells to fix real problems first. Like pants that don't stretch.

If a tree folds in the forest and there's no one there to hear it does it make a sound?

For this experiment scientists recruited Gilbert, no one really pays much attention to him, and it's assumed the universe won't either.

This sort of study shows you more how mathematicians think than how science or philosophy works.

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.

I feel like there has to be more to this problem than pure probability. We ought to consider practical nuances like the tendency to randomly mash keys that are closer together rather than assume a uniform distribution.

I always heard that it was an infinite number of monkeys, not just one. So one of them might get the job done in time.

Abiogenisis in shambles again

Semi related:
Here's a link to the Library of Babel website

What if it's a smart monkey?

Really, it just takes an infinite amount of monkeys one time.

This is a false flag study to undermine public support for mathematics research!