this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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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 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

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

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 42 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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 month ago (4 children)

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 month ago (1 children)

... 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 month ago (3 children)

Basically nothing is ever truly zero

[–] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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 month ago (3 children)
[–] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

monkey c monkey do

[–] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

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

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago
[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month 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 month ago

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

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month 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 month ago

So you're saying there's a chance.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

ok so the monkeys need to type faster

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

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

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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 month ago

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

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We could breed monkeys to much higher populations.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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 month ago

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