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The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

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[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago

Yeah, that’s why we need at least... two of them.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

the paper used the entire population (200 thousand) and would take some 10 ^ 10 ^ 7 heat deaths of the universe

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 40 points 1 day ago

It could happen the very first time a monkey sat down at a typewriter. It's just very unlikely.

[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 day ago

from the wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

If there were as many monkeys as there are atoms in the observable universe typing extremely fast for trillions of times the life of the universe, the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 36 points 1 day ago

... the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small.

But not zero.

[-] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Basically nothing is ever truly zero

[-] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 23 points 1 day ago

Someone wiser than me already said that it already has happened: 1 ape did, in fact, write the complete works of Shakespeare.

[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago
[-] Klear@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago
[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

monkey c monkey do

[-] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Apes are monkeys though, just like we're apes and birds are dinosaurs

[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

We are apes and birds are dinosaurs, but monkeys and apes are distinct categories under primates so no, apes are not monkeys.

[-] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 2 points 1 day ago

Fair enough. I wouldn’t want to insult the Librarian.

[-] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The probability of lots of things is zero. The probability of a monkey typing a Chinese character on an English keyboard is zero.

Similar idea: there are an infinite amount of numbers between zero and one, but none of those numbers is two.

[-] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

Weird how neither of those numbers are infinities. Almost like the numbers used are unfathomably small in comparison.

[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

So you’re telling me… there’s a chance!

Sorry, I’m sort of lampooning comments like the one above and below you where people just can’t resist focusing on the possibility, no matter how ridiculously remote it seems. For myself, there’s a point of “functionally zero odds” that I’m willing to accept and move on with my life.

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago

So you're saying there's a chance.

[-] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

so you're saying there's a chance...

Irrelevant. The heat death of the universe is a constraint unrelated to the premise of the original problem.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't think it's a constraint, it's more like a measuring stick to try to show how ridiculously long that time is

[-] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

It's really not that long, if we can't get monkeys to write Shakespeare.

[-] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

ok so the monkeys need to type faster

[-] 0x0@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

Let's put them in open spaces in offices and micro-mananage then, that'll work.

[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

We could breed monkeys to much higher populations.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

If we're considering even chimps "monkeys", there's already eight billion of them, I think that's enough.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

enough to cut a few zeros of a number with 10 million of them

this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
523 points (92.4% liked)

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