Timeline for Given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of time, would one of them write Hamlet?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 27, 2015 at 23:01 | comment | added | Ryan Budney | @Zach466920: there's no reason to expect monkeys trapped in a room with typewriters would evolve towards something that would use typewriters for their original purpose. Presumably they would find better things to do with them in the short term. | |
| Apr 27, 2015 at 22:39 | comment | added | Zach466920 | @RyanBudney Certainly possible, consider that we were once monkeys of kind or another. We "monkeys" didn't even need a infinite amount of time to write hamlet! So it seems very likely that modern day monkeys could do the same. (I assume you accept evolution and the colloquial use of "monkey") | |
| Mar 12, 2015 at 5:05 | comment | added | MJD | Russell Maloney's short story "Inflexible Logic" concerns a slightly eccentric bachelor gentleman who borrows six chimps from the zoo and sets them to work at typewriters. | |
| Aug 1, 2013 at 8:58 | comment | added | jwg | This answer is garbage. The zero-one law is not needed to show that the probability of (one or more) monkeys typing Hamlet eventually is 1. In fact neither Borel-Cantelli nor 0-1 are needed unless we want to know the probability of Hamlet appering infinitely many times. Simply showing that it will appear once is a straightforward application of naive probability theory (find the probability that it will never appear). Even if you were mathematically correct, you haven't explained anything about the 'mathematical idealization'. All you have done is provide names (and links to Wikipedia). | |
| Dec 2, 2011 at 18:11 | comment | added | Ryan Budney | I imagine the reason is no, and for relatively simple reasons. Monkeys won't see the use of typing. After at most a few keypresses they'll either get bored or destroy the typewriter in a fit. I doubt an infinite number of monkeys could even put together a full page full of nonsense but reasonable-length words with punctuation. You could ask the same question about spiders. Put an infinite number of spiders on typewriters and they won't produce Hamlet either, mostly because most spiders lack the strength to type. | |
| Feb 3, 2011 at 11:31 | comment | added | Trufa | @Qiaochu I'm sorry! deleted my comment. I was looking for the wrong description! My bad, agan, sorry! :( | |
| Feb 3, 2011 at 10:25 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | @Trufa: I don't understand. I gave that link in the second sentence. | |
| Feb 3, 2011 at 2:25 | comment | added | Dr. belisarius | @Trufa "¿De qué otra forma se puede amenazar que no sea de muerte? Lo interesante, lo original, sería que alguien lo amenace a uno con la inmortalidad." | |
| Jan 15, 2011 at 6:13 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Jeff Atwood | ||
| Jan 14, 2011 at 3:40 | comment | added | Dr. belisarius | As Borges said, Infinites and Mirrors are evil. | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 3:50 | history | edited | Qiaochu Yuan | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 232 characters in body
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| Jan 13, 2011 at 2:19 | comment | added | Jason | @Qiaochu - I noticed that. It doesn't make the idea of an "infinite monkey theory" any less amusing though. ;-) | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 1:53 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | @Jason: of course, the theorem isn't really about monkeys. It's about a particular model of monkeys. (Mathematics cannot prove anything about the world: it can only prove things about models of the world.) One can argue, as so many are doing in this thread, for or against this model, but when people quote this result I am assuming that they are referring to the model. | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 1:31 | vote | accept | Jason | ||
| Jan 12, 2011 at 15:01 | history | answered | Qiaochu Yuan | CC BY-SA 2.5 |