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Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds (phys.org)

submitted 1 month ago by VantaBrandon@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 31 points 1 month ago (3 children)

And an infinite amount of time.

This "rebuttal" is forced contrarianism. It's embarrassing.

A thought experiment has rules, you can't just change them and say the experiment doesn't make sense...

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For what it's worth, it seems like it's this "journalist" trying to make a sensational headline

The researchers themselves very clearly just tried to see if it could happen in our reality

"We decided to look at the probability of a given string of letters being typed by a finite number of monkeys within a finite time period consistent with estimates for the lifespan of our universe,"

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Hypothesis: every science journalist should be placed in front of a bitch-slapping machine for the rest of their career. Every time they think about writing an article, they get bitch slapped. This will greatly improve the quality of science journalism.

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

The other part of it is there's not only one monkey who does Hamlet correct on the first attempt, there's two, three four, guess what - an infinite amount of them.

And another infinity that get it right after 5 minutes

Another infinity that take exactly 10 years 3 months 2 days 3 hours 4 minutes and 17 seconds

And another infinity that takes one second less than the life of the universe

And another infinity that takes a googleplex of the lifetime of the universe to complete

that's the point of the thought experiment