Six Monkeys And An Old Saw

Sayten241 writes "They say that an infinite amount of monkeys typing at an infinite amount of typewriters will produce literature greater than Shakespeare. Well, it has been proven that six monkeys and one computer will produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter 's.' The end of the article states that scientifically this does prove that monkeys are more complex than random generators."

Comments

sounds familiar

[bearl]

That sounds remarkably like a development team I worked with once.

(easy joke, but necessary)

monkeys

[jlechem]

You don't even need 6 monkeys to get some of the comments that you get here on slashdot.

Re:monkeys

[schmink182]

Dilbert: "So what do you think of my paper?"
Dogbert: "Well, it has been said that one thousand monkeys with typewriters, given infinite time, could eventually write the works of Shakespeare."
Dilbert: "What about my paper?"
Dogbert: "I'd give it 6 monkeys, 10 minutes."

True but...

[Codex The Sloth]

produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter 's.'

Still more intelligent than the average slashdot poster...

Re:True but...

[meldon corintur]

The monkeys have also left a computer better condition than some that I've had to work on in tech support.

Re:True but...

[xpurple]

I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you ... oh wait, I'm #93427. Ha ha! In your face #93428!

93428? Haha, I'm 1227!

On a more serious note, it does interest me that the monkeys had a fixation with urinating on the keyboard. There may be some reason for it, this calls for another study!

monkeys and typewriters

[AdamTheBastard]

"it was the best of times, it was the blurst of time"

You stupid Monkey!

p.s. FP?

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[kent_eh]

Found years ago on somewhere on usenet

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will
eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the
Internet, we know this is not true."

Robert Wilensky, University of California

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[lommer]

I think the researchers actually went about this the wrong way. A computer is not a typewriter: there are important differences that I think would make a typewriter work better than a computer (for the purposes of producing random text anyways):
a) If you hold down a key on a typewriter, it doesn't fill 6 pages with that one character.
b) I would imagine that the mechanical action of the typewriter is more appealing to primates than silent techno-wizardry (more sensory feedback as a response to manipulating the typewriter)
c) While it might be neccesary to simplify the typewriter (think carriage returns), it's easier than simplifying and bomb-proofing a computer
d) and the list goes on...

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[vadim_t]

True, but it still leaves you with the randomness problem. Here's my theory on why this is very unlikely:

Since monkeys aren't random almost certainly nothing that makes sense will be typed. They'll find some way of having fun with say, the carriage return or jamming the typewriter. And since the distribution of QWERTY doesn't really match the usage frequency of the letters the usual "random" typing people do wouldn't make good text. For example, I'll "randomly" type something: lgkljadthglbkads. Now look at it, and you'll see pretty much all of it is in the middle row. If you try better you'll almost certainly be pressing the keys under your hands, in a not completely random order, and moving the hands around the keyboard not very randomly either. Humans don't type randomly, monkeys probably wouldn't either.

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[Anonymous Coward]

Monkeys without typewriters searching for food and shelter randomly evolved into spear chucking primates who eventually freed up enough time that their decendants could specialize in pursuits not related to gathering food, one of whom was named William Shakespear. The experiment has been run sans typewriters, and confirmed. But we already knew that.

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[MyHair]

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will
eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the
Internet, we know this is not true."

You have to give them enough time. Some monkeys have done it. That quote is hilarious anyway.

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[Reziac]

Hmmm... but a million monkeys *would* explain some of the strangely-typed spam I get...

Re:monkeys and typewriters

[Oculus Habent]

But it's not truly confirmed until it has been done twice!

What OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they were just expressing their opinion?

Re:What OS?

[PetWolverine]

Or maybe it wasn't Windows, and they were trying to find a way to crash it.

Re:What OS?

[B3ryllium]

Are you saying the fifth page would have ended with "hit"?

I don't know...

[TwistedSquare]

Four pages of the letter s would probably be modern art if the right artist had done it... Still it won't take them too long to type /. will it

And a monkey comments...

[Psychor]

ssssssss sssssssssss sss

Maybe not better then shakespeare, but.....

[1nsane0ne]

They say that an infinite amount of monkeys typing at an infinite amount of typewriters will produce literature greater than Shakespeare.

Well it looks like it wasn't better writing then shakespeare's but I'm guessing it could qualify as code better then Microsoft's.

Re:Maybe not better then shakespeare, but.....

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHA LOLROTFLHAHA!1111 I MAKE JOKE SI TEH MICROSOFT! I SI TEH FUNNAY!11!

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!

Re:Maybe not better then shakespeare, but.....

[son_of_rotten]

We're comparing the work of SIX monkeys with the potential work of ALL monkeys (forever never ending) and we can't see just how amazing the accomplishment of those Six was? Six monkeys as compared to infinite monkeys is pretty damned close to NO MONKEYS AT ALL!!! Wow! Those few monkeys probably came up with the monkey equivalent of the human Romance Novel. Shakespeare it is not, but a hell of a start for practically no monkeys at all. Someone should be funding a "Computers in Zoos and Rain Forests" initiative.

This is not news.

[the gnat]

Anyone who's ever had to provide tech support for a large number of college students could have described most of this behavior. The only thing missing is beer spilled on the keyboard the night before a big essay is due.

Re:This is not news.

[Dynedain]

The only thing missing is beer spilled on the keyboard the night before a big essay is due.

No, the researchers mentioned the urination....

Original BBC story, more links

[WIAKywbfatw]

This was research carried out by the University of Plymouth (that's Plymouth in the UK, not in the US) at the nearby Paignton Zoo.

And here's the original BBC News story.

I'm not sure I see any real value in their research, but I am concerned about their methodology - that's an awfully small data set (only six monkeys, and only over one month) from which to draw any concrete conclusions...

Re:Original BBC story, more links

[Guppy06]

"that's an awfully small data set"

Yeah, it wasn't even enough to determine whether they preferred vi or emacs. Or perhaps ed...

Six monkeys = rubbish. Twelve = end of the world

[WIAKywbfatw]

Didn't they learn anything from Terry Gilliam?

I bet I know who's running Slashdot

[blair1q]

Duplicate articles, server crashes, misspellings...

Educated monkeys.

It still isn't Shakespeare.

I think if you took enough Monkeys...

[dWhisper]

I've always wanted to see how many monkeys and computers it would take to get one to produce Duke Nukem Forever. My guess is that the old Shakespear Rule would get us farther than 3D Realms have.

It's always interesting to see how science proves what probably anyone could have told you would happen if you put monkeys in a room with computers.

Just goes to show..

[CausticWindow]

that it's possible to get research funds for just about anything.

I think I'm going to apply for a science grant. I'll investigate the global effects of a butterfly flapping it's wings in Syria. My hope is to finally prove Lorentz conjecture, while at the same time cash in on the imminent war in the region. I'll sell t-shirts with "I invaded Syria, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt with a butterfly on it".

I guess they don't quite grok the term "gedanken"

[ptomblin]

What's next, putting a cat in a box to see if Schrodinger was right?

(and yeah, I probably spelt both "gedanken" and Schrodinger wrong. Sue me.)

Monkey business

[magnesius666]

Who are we to judge poignant primates literature? They most certainly tried to write "Sleep dwell upon thy eyes, peace in thy breast.." but the "S" got stuck on the urine infested keyboard. I can only imagine their frustration.

Original idea

[sunaj]

If I'm not mistaken the original idea was:

An infinate number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite amount of time will produce the complete works of Shakespeare in the correct order! It is used to help people to gain some concept of infinity. In a universe that is infinite in space and time, anything can and will happen. An amazing concept when you think about it!

Re:Original idea

[bmwm3nut]

The one thing that has always bothered me about this quote is that it's not necessarly true. The monkeys could just keep typing 's' all the time forever. Here's an example that I once read about in an astrophysics book, I found it quite interesting:

Assuming that the universe is infinitely big and there are an infinite number of planets, does there necessarly have to be a planet like Earth that exists.

Initially I thought that it makes sence that given an infiniately large universe, there has to be a planet like Earth, but this is not true. The example given to me was the set of odd numbers. This set is infinite, but no matter how hard you look in that set you'll never find the number 2.

I always think about that when someone says that give an infinite amount of time something will definately happen.

Re:Original idea

[sunaj]

Yes these are valid points, except that you are talking about a specific set (even number set), having an infinite number of items (the actual even numbers). But in a truly infinite universe, there is an infinite number of sets with infinite items in each, so therefor you can and will find anything you can think of! And an infinite number of monkeys will keep typing 's' forever, but an equal infinite number will produce the works of Shakespeare in correct chronilogical order, over and over again, forever. Weird!

Re:Original idea

[Kunta Kinte]

Initially I thought that it makes sence that given an infiniately large universe, there has to be a planet like Earth, but this is not true. The example given to me was the set of odd numbers. This set is infinite, but no matter how hard you look in that set you'll never find the number 2.

I'm not a math wiz, but I think your two examples mixes apples and oranges.

Think of Set theory. You have a 'universe', and I don't mean the universe in your example, but the 'universe' as in the set of all possible values that can exist. Your number example *by definition* excluded the number '2' from the universe, which was the set of odd numbers. The probability of an event not in the universe occuring is always 0.

On the other hand, Earth is a planet, therefore we know that it is in the universal set of planets.

Re:Original idea

[Knife_Edge]

This is a wonderful insight. However, I have always heard arguments like this applied not simply to the existence of planets like Earth, but further extended as proof of the existence of intelligent life elsewhere. I would like to restate your point, which is that given an infinitely large set of possible circumstances, it is not required that a particular set of possibilities exist, especially if these possibilities are excluded by the definition of the set. Therefore infinity alone is not sufficient evidence of anything existing. As proof, contemplate an infinite set of odd numbers. Infinite in length, yet containing only bounded instances! This is really a me too post, but I just love this argument, and I will think about it whenever someone invokes infinity as proof.

Re:Original idea

[Violet Null]

Hrmmmm...no, technically, if something has a non-zero probability of ocurring, and there are an infinite number of chances for it to occur, it will eventually occur (and will, in fact, occur an infinite number of times, seeing as how x% * infinity is still an infinite number).

If your chance of getting an orange is 0, you will get an infinite number of apples and 0 oranges. But if it's anything greater than 0 -- anything at all -- you will end up with an infinite number of apples and an infinite number of oranges. By definition.

Re:Original idea

[arkhan_jg]

You're equally wrong about infinity. If there is a non-zero possibility of something happening within a bounded set, which is governed by infinite time or space, it WILL happen. It MUST happen, by the rules of infinity. In fact, it will happen an infinite number of times. infinity * 0.01 = infinity, infinity + 1 = infinity, even infinity - infinity = infinity.

The ONLY way for something not to happen in an infinite space, is for it to have a 0% probability. The example you give (again) is flawed; an infinite set of odd numbers has the implicit boundary condition that no even number be contained in the dataset. Therefore, there is 0% of one occuring, therefore it will not occur. The ONLY case in which it cannot occur. This is how infinity is defined to work.

Most people tend to handle infinity by thinking of it as a 'really big number'. It isn't. It's a mathematical concept, a tool. In many ways, it's more like the decimal place - something you use to get useful work done, but by itself, fairly useless.

Now, the problems come when people try to apply a mathematical theory to the real world/universe.

For starters, there are implicit boundaries. The physics of our current spot of the universe are taken to apply to all of it.

Time may be infinite in our universe, and possibly space (assuming an ever expanding universe) but energy isn't (finite number of stars, as far as we know). As the universe tends to infinity, that energy gets more and more thinly spread, until, using our own physics, any given spot has an infinitely small amount of energy, i.e. tends to 0. Practically, of course, most of it would be tied up in black holes, where we currently couldn't get at it. Either way, there's only a relatively small chunk of time where we can survive using our current energy techniques, i.e. get it all from that bloody big fusion reactor just over there.

There are other boundaries for example. If we take the predicted lifespan of our species, multiplied by the space which we could reach in that timespan, you only have a limited amount of space, even assuming a large lifespan (without extinction events) of say, 2 million years. We also assume that we don't manage to go faster than light.

Depending on what handwaving you do to generate the probabilities of planets per star, and chance of lifer per planet, the chances of finding alien life that exists in the same time/space chunk of the universe that we do, and is capable of communication with us are still pretty small.

So even in an infinite universe, we need to apply the boundary conditions that are relevent to us. And those boundary conditions are largely handwavy conjecture as to where they actually fall, but they still exist, and are pretty tight.

So basically, infinity cannot be used to prove the existence of alien life, at least not in the subset of the universe that we inhabit. But thats not for the reason that infinity is wrong, but that people use it without including their implicit boundary conditions, or that they don't understand how infinity works (which frankly is most people, and I personally have to keep banging myself on the head to get it right)

Maths lecture over...

Re:Original idea

[reidbold]

Actually an infinite amount of planets just like earth exist in your example.

Ascent of Man

[Guppy]

"that six monkeys and one computer will produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter 's.'"

So, it took six monkeys an entire month to accomplish the above.

I've seen some users that could probably do all that in the space of a few minutes -- obviously we're the more advanced species.

Re:Ascent of Man

[LouisZepher]

...Not exactly, it could mean that monkeys are more civilized than humans. Any creature can destroy something if given enough time, humans are savage enough to get the job done quicker.
Monkeys and other primates have been on this planet for a good long time, and humans a mere fraction of that time, and look what we've done in less time.

But it has already been proved in the affirmative

[Pretzalzz]

I did this little experiment. A hundred million years ago I started with a couple of million monkeys, and I let them go to see what would happen. They got off to a slow start and didn't do much for a long time except have sex and eat and sleep. But then, after waiting long enough, one of these monkey's descendents had a kid named William Shakespeare and he sat down and produced the complete works of William Shakespeare. Thereby proving my theorem, an infinite number of monkeys, given an infinite amount a time, will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. And I didn't even need an infinite amount of either monkeys or time.

Re:Federal government arts grant

[jamie]

"Remember the "artist" Serrano, who got paid $16,000 by Washington to drop a photo in a mayonnaise jar of his own urine"

The National Endowment for the Arts gave $75,000 (matched two-to-one with private money) to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Act. The Center selected a panel. The panel selected Andre Serrano. The Center gave Serrano $15,000 of Endowment money based on the quality of his work.

- "Fact Sheet on American Family Association Fundraising Advertisement," National Endowment for the Arts, February 1990 (as cited in Culture Wars, 1992, p. 152.

Serrano did Piss Christ in 1987. It is a photograph of a crucifix immersed in an amber liquid. In 1988 he won the fellowship from Awards in the Visual Arts, a program administered by SECCA. In that same year, Piss Christ was one of the works included in an SECCA traveling exhibition by AVA award winners.

So: $5,000 of Washington's money was matched with $10,000 in private donations and given to SECCA. That money, along with other sources of funding for SECCA, funds the AVA program. Serrano was given an award for his work which obviously included works besides just Piss Christ.

Just FYI :)

You are All Wrong...

[efuseekay]

The stupid researchers gave us a lousy computer, waaaaaaay outdated to do anything. For example, one of my concubine wants to play the game Quake3, but that damned thing does not even have a GUI! Pffft..

So what are we suppose to do? We did what any human would do : we shit on it. Because, adding pieces of shit to a piece of shit is not going to make it look any less bad than it already is.

Btw, I posted this using lynx and a stupid 14.4 modem that my resident science chimp had managed to hook together (Thanks Baba!). We tried for First Post, but some idiot beat us to it.

Yours,
Able,

Alpha Male Monkey,
Plymouth.

And in a related story...

[General_Specific]

But after a month, the Sulawesi crested macaques had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter "s". ... And the RIAA is now investigating to see if the monkeys have traded any copyrighted music files.

The problem

[xombo]

What if they were given more simple tasks, like somthing for someone who can't see well, see if they can learn simple things, like using the mouse, clikcing buttons, etc, communicate them where they can understand things without reading it. In conclusion: I would have done a better experiment, and if they copy my idea and don't give me gobs of $$, They should contact me todo so :D preston at moderngeek dot com

Re:I guess they don't quite grok the term "gedanke

[Piquan]

Seen in a sci-fi short story:

Gedankenexperiment: German for "funding not available"

I wonder how long....

[Trikenstein]

It'll take for that computer to show up on ebay....

neologism

[miu]

In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment

Performance science? Art experiment?

Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

RFC2795

Also, bad redneck joke:
If you took an infinite number of rednecks and an infinite number of STOP signs and had them shoot at them with an infinite number of shotguns, would you eventually get a work of Shakespeare in Braille?

Re:But it has already been proved in the affirmati

[Selanit]

And I didn't even need an infinite amount of either monkeys or time.

Heck, you didn't even need a finite number of monkeys. That "William Shakespeare" primate of yours was actually an ape, not a monkey.

And what does this prove? Why, your whole experiment's cocked up! There's a chance these "works of Shakespeare" are accurate, but it's much more likely that they're subtly off. Just blindfold one of your test subjects and have 'em pull letters out of a Scrabble bag. That'll show you. If they come up with something about the "Tagic trale of Jomeo and Ruliet, those two children of harring wouses" you'll know I was right. :-D

Yes though

[quantaman]

Well, it has been proven that six monkeys and one computer will produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter 's.'

The computer was never actually hacked... hmm cracked... err broken into... was not taken over by a human remote attacker with their own computer trying to gain unauthorized privaleges on the machine! So we have conclusivly proven that six monkeys are more effective than MSCAs at keeping a computer intact^H^H^Hsecure!

Slashdot only needs one monkey

[Dolphinzilla]

To post duplicate stories at a prodigious rate

I think it was meant metaphorically.

[Samir Gupta]

I don't think the "monkeys" saying was a real scientific hypothesis, but rather a literary illustration.

In any truly random numeric sequence with a uniform distribution, it can be mathematically proven (among other things) this implies that any finite length string must eventually appear (so, the works of Shakespeare would eventually pop up). But, it's quite difficult to prove that anything is random by a strict mathematical definition, btw, although there are quite a few randomness conjectures that seem to be true at this point, such as that the digits of pi are "random".

Living things and biological or even mechanical processes in general are notoriously non-random -- even though they may not be completely deterministic (I'll leave that one up to the philosophers and theologians to debate). For instance, if you asked a human to generate a random sequence, he/she would have a bias against generating repeated ("11111111111...") or seemingly orderly sequences ("123456..."), so this bias would cause the human sequence to be inherently non-random.

The best random sequence generators have been natural background noise or radioactive decay, and you can actually get hardware that uses such natural processes to generate what seems to be random... so perhaps the monkeys should be replaced with radioisotopes, and maybe you will get that Shakespeare!

Wrong monkeys...

[curious.corn]

Primates aren't all the same crop. I'm not shure why they chose sulawesi crested macaques but I'd like to see how bonobo would have performed. Their behaviour is often described as particularly elaborate and are able to learn languages and make use of tools. Especially intriguing is that they require a lot of parental care before becoming independent individuals. Similarly to humans, these primates require long training to have a successful adult life and therefore maintain 'infant' traits for quite a time much like us, naked apes.

This is 1 instance where I wish I was a scriptkidd

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

With back orifice installed on the machine. Would have to have timed it right, when no one would notice, but something like this...

Day 1: That stupid zookeeper really pisses me off, giving us a machine running windows. Sure, we're a few million years slow in evolving, but goddammed, we're not *that* stupid. And on a Packerd Bell, no less.

Day 2: From our cage, I could just barely see the zookeeper molesting the goats in the petting zoo again. Sick.

Day 3: Was afraid that they might catch on to me, but seems they are illiterate. The animal feeder must have pissed on the keyboard again, and you know damn well we'll get blamed for that one. Oh well, I managed to pick his pocket and grab the Visa card. Won't his wife be shocked when she sees the 12,000UKP bill for www.hotmansex.co.uk.

Day 4: Managed to scrounge up some weapons grade plutonium, but this machine isn't fast enough to simulate the H compression in the elliptical chamber. May have to do the math in the dirt with a piece of twig. Next on list: Think of a way to frame some arabs for the detonation.

Re:But it has already been proved in the affirmati

[netsharc]

But, you forgot about the typewriters. Back to square one for you!

Another report...

[An Onerous Coward]

Thanks to Phoenix quicksearch, I was able to type "news monkey computer" into my location bar, and got this from Google news.

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/05/09/monkey_typist s030509

My favorite lines:

"The first thing they did was to bring a large stone and try to smash up the computer," said Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology. "But I think that can be seen as a very definite act of creativity."

[...]

And even if there was little an editor could do with the results, the monkeys have found a publisher. Their collected works will be printed as Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Randomicity

[Chester K]

four pages worth of the letter 's.'

The problem with truly random data is that you can't really be sure. That four pages of the letter 's' could very well be what starts out the "monkey at a computer" random stream.

test is flawed

[newsdee]

Any human would do the same thing if they were not taught how to write and how to fire up an FPE (First Person Eater).

I really wonder how a monkey would react to a videogame. Not a very complex one, of course...

[Re:True but...] Far better than I

[LiberalApplication]

Far more intelligent than I.

The other day at work, I tried to defecate on my workstation, but I couldn't figure out how to undo my belt buckle. I wound up with an unpleasant package to tote home. My project manager was so displeased that she threw her feces at me, screamed, and beat at her chest before jumping into a tree and vanishing.

Then the president of our company came, shot us all with tranqulizer darts, and when I awoke, I found that had been neutered.

Oh the pitiful life of a software developer.

SSSS

[identity0]

SSaSS SSfaSss SSS
sfssSa SfSSa SsSssSsSSS
SSs SSSSfS sSSSs sssSs aSSsf
SsaSs sSsgSSsrs SSreS aSSssSShS S
SSsSSsS

first monkey post!

What kind of compy?

[ArsonPanda]

So they beat this thing with a rock, then pissed on it, and it still worked well enough to run a word processor? I want one of those. I looked an mine funny once and the hard drive exploded.

Obvious isnt it?

[jamesjw]

The dominant monkey obviously saw the threat of technology, they saw what it'd done to the more advanced "hairless" apes, they just didnt want to expose themeselves to Itnernet sweepstakes, deals on sharp kitchen knives, penis growth shams etc..

We can learn something from this Monkey.. only problem is a basic rock would do little damage to the IBM Model M keyboard im using..

Damnit IBM, damnit all to hell!!

Amount vs. Number

[CracktownHts]

They say that an infinite amount of monkeys typing at an infinite amount of typewriters will produce literature greater than Shakespeare.

One thing's for sure - an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce Strunk and White's The Elements of Style

Born to kill

[nate nice]

They mentioned that the lead monkey started bashing the computer with a rock as the monkey's first action with this computer. It's amazing how survial is encoded in everything like that...something foreign comes into a domain and fear is the first instinct brought upon it. You can expect that from a monkey, but humans have this reaction as well often. In a way it depresses me that we are not far from monkeys in this respect.

It should be noted I liked how the leader monkey was first to approach the computer...if only the worlds leaders would be the first in combat I'm sure we would have a lot less fighting.

Awesome keyboard !

[TimmyDC]

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies. Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.

Wow .... Water/Urine-proof keyboard ! I wonder if that's what Microsoft use in iLoo

obligatory story

[lpret]

Oh yes, I do support for college students and I've responded to a guy whose keyboard wouldn't respond, he said that something sticky was all over it.

When I found over 20 gigs of pr0n on his computer, I was able to diagnose what was going on. And then I threw up.

And this is news?

[MbM]

If you look up the infinite monkey theorem in the jargon file you'll run across this quote:

Other hackers maintain that the Infinite-Monkey Theorem cannot be
true - otherwise the exponenntial expansion of AOL would have
reproduced the entire canon of great literature by now.

Our Precioussssssssss.........

[elid]

We wantssssssssss it.....it's oursssssssss.....our precioussssssssss......

not yet proven...

[revividus]

it has been proven that 6 monkeys and 1 computer...

No, no, this isn't proof. We need to at least take another six monkeys and another computer and see if this happens again.

Although, I've always had the nagging suspicion that an infinite number of monkeys typing at an infinite number of typewriters would produce an infinite number of broken typewriters...

Meaningless

[KFury]

Clearly the author has no concept of infinity.

Heck, give six Elizabethans quills and ink and they'll probably make a mess too. The point is that if one of the six managed to type even two characters, then an infinite number could probably write shakespeare.

More to the point, when dealing with infinities, even probabilistic modifiers like 'probably' are meaningless. If it's at all feasable, then one of an infinite number would do it, even if they had to evolve out of the trees, invent tragedy and comedy, conquer England, and live in London to do so.

Re:But it has already been proved in the affirmati

[DarKrow]

Yeah, but only in base 13

This story is misrepresentative

[rocketfairy]

What it REALLY shows us is that 6 monkeys make for an impressive security-audit team. After all, they determined how to secure a Windows machine: urine, and a rock.

Windows Paper Clip

[jonv]

Shame Microsoft clippy wasn't there to help them. "It looks like your writing the complete works of shakespeare"

Further reading ...

[jpkunst]

I found Infinity and the mind by Rudy Rucker an interesting book about the mathematical concept of 'infinity', written for a non-specialized audience.

JP

Re:no, no, no, no, NO!

[thynk]

Given an inifinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, they will instantaneously produce the complete works of shakespeare, along with every other potential written work of the universe.

So doesn't that blow alway the concept of copyrights? Or is the RIAA going to go sue an infinite number of monkeys for an infinite ammount of money?

Interesting.

slashdotting monkeys

[axxackall]

They forgot to connect that computer to Internet. Otherwise:

• they would slashdot down many random servers, including Google with all its caches;
• here, on Slashdot, we would see many fresh, smart, intelegent posts, although often with some smelling we would not like;