Not The Onion

12188 readers

642 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

Links to news stories from...
...credible sources, with...
...their original headlines, that...
...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

kescusay@lemmy.world

127

Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds (bbc.com)

submitted 5 days ago by dphile@lemm.ee to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

69 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

If there are an infinite number of trials (either infinite monkeys or infinite time), the outcome is truly random, and the desired text is finite, it must necessarily happen at some point. In fact, it'd happen an infinite number of times.

The original thought experiment clearly states infinite. As soon as you bound that in any way (such as not infinite monkeys, but 1 monkey for every atom in the universe) you're talking about another experiment entirely. Infinite means infinite, not really really big. Gotta use some critical thinking 👍

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago

If you have infinite time, you don't also need infinite monkeys.