Here's a documentary about the monkeys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkLeto3RZrk
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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That research is worst type of reddit ACKCHYUALLY taken to academia
I fear the plague of reddit brainrot will soon make even research papers plain insufferable. Would you want to have moderator of 11 subreddits and holder of top 1% commenters achievement in your research group?
Something weird I've been noticing. Lately I've been unintentionally minimizing comments before I've finished reading them. Just happened with yours. It's like some subconscious part of my brain goes "booorrring!" half way through reading anything longer than two sentences and immediately goes for the next dopamine kick.
And I'm not knocking your comment. I was genuinely interested in what I was reading. It's just a little troubling. I dropped Reddit and Lemmy a while back because I felt like I was becoming addicted. I lasted a few months, but evidently I've fallen off the wagon.
Don’t worry I actually nurture my internet presence to be a little controversial and edgy. Not for every taste but those who enjoy we instantly are friends. It’s a filter of sorts. I want ppl who feel offended about such things to block me
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Just thinking at a high level, an infinite number of monkies should hypothetically almost instantly produce Shakespeare (or at least as quickly as they can type)
Conversely, 1 monkey would eventually produce it given infinity time.
1 monkey would likely die before producing Shakespeare
not if it’s an infinite monkey
oh absolutely, this is purely a thought experiment of course.
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One monkey may never produce it even given infinite time. It could just produce an infinite string of the letter a and never change it's mind. That's less likely that it writing hamlet, or even many hamlets... But nonetheless, it could. In fact all of the infinite monkeys could do that. If you repeated the experiment and infinite number of times, it's likely that one of them will simple produce an infinite number of infinite strings of only the letter A. Or, idk, ASCII art.
This is the same type of criticism the paper made. The real intent behind the saying is given random output (where all outputs have nonzero probability) eventually you will create anything/everything.
Its a thought experiment around infinity, probability, and art.
Yeah, I haven't read whatever paper this is talking about, but I imagine, it's looking at the saying in a more literal fashion for the sake of argument...
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What part of Infinity is a mathematician, of all people, failing to comprehend? So what if it takes until cosmological decade 1,000 or 1 million or 1mil⁹⁰⁰⁰, it's still possible on an infinite timescale, of one could devise a way for it all to survive the heat death of the universe ad infinitum.
I have read the paper, the news make it seem like something that is not. It's a tough experiment and mostly a joke. From the paper closing remarks:
Given plausible estimates of the lifespan of the universe and the amount of possible monkey typists available, this still leaves huge orders of magnitude differences between the resources available and those required for non-trivial text generation. As such, we have to conclude that Shakespeare himself inadvertently provided the answer as to whether monkey labour could meaningfully be a replacement for human endeavour as a source of scholarship or creativity. To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: “No”.
Hell, infinite monkeys over a finite amount of time or finite monkeys over an infinite amount of time does the trick.
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It's also possible that it's not possible even on an infinite time scale. A quick example: if you asked an algorithm to choose a number, and you choose 6536639876555721, but the algorithm only chooses from the infinite number of even numbers, it will never choose your number. So for the monkeys, if they are just not 'programmed' to ever be able to write a whole Shakespeare play, they will not be able to even with infinite time and infinite moneys.
Disagree. Within the confines of the thought experiment the monkeys are working with the standard alphabet and punctuation. There's no reason to assume that they would never use the letter t or something like that, especially given the infinite time scale.
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The "Infinite monkey theorem" concerns itself with Probability (the mathematical field). It has been mathematically proven that given the random input (the mathematical kind - not the human-created kind) of the monkeys, and the infinite time, the probability of the "complete works of William Shakespeare" rolling out of the typewriter in between the other random output is 1.
It's a mathematical theorem that just uses monkeys to speak to the imagination, not a practical exercise, other than to prove the maths.
You should look into another brain-breaking probability problem called the "Monty Hall Problem". Note that some of the greatest mathematical minds of the time failed said puzzle. Switching 100% increases the chance of winning. No, it won't guarantee a win, but it will increase your chances, mathematically.
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They already have, we evolved from a species you could colloquially refer to as monkeys. The ancestors of those monkeys went on to write Shakespeare
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Back in my IT support days, IPX routing had a "Count to Infinity" problem when the number of hops between sites went above 15. We used to joke that this made 16 "Infinity".
Being nerds at the time, we did napkin math to prove the Shakespearian Monkey Quotient was 256cmy (combined monkey years) for "Hamlet".
Combined Monkey Years just aren't the same since their lead singer left, I'm hoping they improve eventually.
Don't worry, the reunion tour is in 35cmy
And the study was even proven wrong in the 17th century. A finite amount of monkeys already produced Shakespeare in a finite amount of time; it took roughly 55 million years.
Source: Primates show up in the fossil records, dating to roughly 55mill years. And Shakespeare's complete works were most likely completed by William Shakespeare, a famous decendant of said primates.
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It only took a couple billion monkeys a few million years but one did eventually write out the full works of Shakespeare
This is always how I've chosen to interpret the expression. It's not a theory. It's an observation.
It's a thought experiment, not an observation. The idea is that if you have infinity and it's truly random than eventually all possibilities emerge somewhere within that.
The idea of infinite monkeys typing randomly on infinite typewriters is that eventually one of them would accidentally type out all the works of Shakespeare. Many more would type out parts of the works of Shakespeare. And many many many more would type random garbage.
If we then take that forwadd imagine for a moment the multiverse is also infinite and random, then every possible universe would exist somewhere in that multiverse.
It can be taken in other directions too. It's a way of cocneptualising the implications of infinity and true randomness.
Meanwhile actual Shakespeare had intelligence and wrote and created his works. Him being a monkey writing Shakespeare is just a sly humerous observation, but it has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the thought experiment and the idea it is trying to convey.
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The entire thing is utterly ridiculous. The meme is infinite monkeys.
The mathematician said, "But what if it was 200k monkeys?"
Reporters claim mathematician proved infinite monkeys meme is wrong.
200,000 does not equal infinite!
The whole thing is dumb if you accept a premise of "infinite monkeys". An infinite number of monkeys will type the works of shakespeare immediately, because an infinite number of them will start with the very first key they hit and continue until the end. (So it'll be complete exactly as fast as a monkey can type it, typing as fast as simianly possible, with no mistakes.) You don't even need the infinite time.
It only becomes interesting if you look at the finite scenarios.
And BTW, the lifespan of the universe is finite due to the eventual decay of all matter, including the monkeys and the typewriters. There's no infinite time.
A more interesting calculation the mathematician should have done is how many monkeys are needed to write Shakespeare in the lifespan of the universe rather than starting with 200k.
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As I pointed out elsewhere about this: it also is based entirely on probability, like cracking encryption. It could take longer than the universe will be around. But there's also the possibility they write Hamlet within a year because they got lucky.
if it's infinite monkeys then an infinite amount of them do it correct on the first try
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But monkeys never ask questions.
Science has yet to determine if monkeys would be able to type "wherefore art thou Romeo?"
infinite monkey theorem relies on the assumption that infinite banana theorem is valid
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