oldest theory disproved(ot but great)

[Alzrius]

lol! I can't believe some group actually decided to leave some monkeys alone with a computer like that. It just shows who's more intelligent between them and the monkeys.

That said, even if you give an infinite humber of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, they will never produce any literary work. That's due to the principle of entropy: that things tend to break down towards chaos over time. Without conscious structured order, which those apes don't have, nothing will be produced through mere chance.

 

[Zappo]

I wonder if the monkey saw this wonderful error message...

"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down."

I hate that message...

It's even better in the Italian version of Windoze.

It sounds less or more like "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated".

What with the impending doom of digital rights management and all, we are all wondering who will be the first sad Kazaa user to see the dreaded "This user has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated".

 

[Mangrum]

In all due fairness to the monkeys, in just a month they did hit the word "sass."

 

[mistergone]

Hilarious! I have no other comment, except, in protest of threads that have tempting titles and then just list a link with no details as to its contents, I unleash this:

www.rathergood.com/moon_song

 

[Azlan]

oldest theory disproved

Oldest theory disproved? There are theories much more older than that. For example: "The world is flat." And that one was disproved many, many years ago.

Anyway... IMHO, if you put a billion monkies with a billion typewriters in a room for a billion years (or whatever the number may be), not one of those monkies will bang out a single work of Shakespeare. That's no more possible than a tornado whipping through a junkyard and assembling a F22 "Raptor" fighter jet -- even if you had a billion tornados whipping through a billion junkyards, for a billion years.



Besides, even if it were possible for one of those monkies to bang out a work of Shakespeare, would he be able to read and appreciate it? Of course not! He'd merely wipe his butt with it. No, wait: he wouldn't even do that much.

 

[Chun-tzu]

Re: oldest theory disproved

Anyway... IMHO, if you put a billion monkies with a billion typewriters in a room for a billion years (or whatever the number may be), not one of those monkies will bang out a single work of Shakespeare. That's no more possible than a tornado whipping through a junkyard and assembling a F22 "Raptor" fighter jet -- even if you had a billion tornados whipping through a billion junkyards, for a billion years.



Besides, even if it were possible for one of those monkies to bang out a work of Shakespeare, would he be able to read and appreciate it? Of course not! He'd merely wipe his butt with it. No, wait: he wouldn't even do that much.

I believe the point of the whole monkey thing is to illustrate something about sequences and huge, unimaginable numbers. Dr. Math illustrates it quite well here. Here's a small quote:

As you can imagine, there are some serious practical problems with having an actual infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters (e.g. where would you put them? what would you feed them?), but since we're mathematicians we
can gleefully ignore such considerations.

The cheap and easy answer to your question is, "yeah, they'll crank out Shakespeare's works... eventually."

As large as Shakespeare's collected works are, they are still finite. If you type at random, eventually some six-jillion-letter combination you type will end up being the collected works of Shakespeare.

 

[Angcuru]

Oldest Theory = Existance of spirits.

yet to be proved or disproved.

no matter what ANYONE says, NO MONKEY will EVER type write the collective works of Shakespear while typing randomly. The simple logic of this being that his collective works are thousands upon thousands of pages long, with Unique names and places that are used at certain intervals at precise points, with exact speech, punctuation, spacing, etcetera.

The only way this will ever be possible is if a chimp is genetically atlered to have phenomenal intelligence, be the perfect typist with a perfect photographic memory; who is constantly shown the collective works of shakespear for five straight years, and then SOMEHOW persuaded to write them out in exact page order......which MAY happen some time in the future, but would not count because it was not a random occurrance.

 

[Chun-tzu]

no matter what ANYONE says, NO MONKEY will EVER type write the collective works of Shakespear while typing randomly. The simple logic of this being that his collective works are thousands upon thousands of pages long, with Unique names and places that are used at certain intervals at precise points, with exact speech, punctuation, spacing, etcetera.

The capitalization, punctuation, spacing and so forth are completely irrelevant. The example seems to be lost on many people, who think it has something to do with monkeys or literature. It has nothing to do with either.

The example requires an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, OR a single monkey at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, either of which is inherently impossible. The result of that is an infinite string of letters and numbers and spaces and punctuation.

Somewhere within that infinite string will be every possible combination of letters and numbers. This includes the complete works of Shakespeare. This includes every piece of literature ever written. This includes every piece of literature that has been conceived, but never written. This includes this entire thread. Because that is the scope of infinity. EVERY possible combination. The complete works of Shakespeare is a single combination.

 

[Mark Chance]

The example requires an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, OR a single monkey at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, either of which is inherently impossible.

I underlined the important point in the quote above.

 

[Wicht]

Somewhere within that infinite string will be every possible combination of letters and numbers. This includes the complete works of Shakespeare.

Actually, at some point, statistically, the improbable becomes the impossible. The example (monkey/shakespeare theory) is flawed because it fails to recognize that random activity can only go so far in producing anything. I forget the actual statistical figure sometimes given, but after a certain improbability we can state with certainty that a given random event will never occur.