It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by Gamecock
What if each individual keystroke is independent of one another, which i assume is true. Why MUST the monkey eventually rewrite every book ever written? Couldnt keys be randomly struck an infinite amount of times and there never be more than a few words strung together? This seems more likely to me.
I think there are infinite possibilities out there, but they are just that, possibilities. I think it is possible for the monkey to accidentally rewrite every book ever written, but all it would take is a single wrong keystroke to throw everything off. Even with an infinite amount of tries, i just cannot comprehend this ever happening. Sure, the probability exists that it would happen, but it is very low.
Maybe its just me not understanding infinity right. I feel like i do, but i just cant logically equate infinite possibilities to infinite realities, i feel like only a few books would be rewritten (earth and humans are one of those books that happened to be rewritten).
This reply is fairly short, yet i have completely deleted and reworded it here probably 15 times, and it still doesnt express exactly what i want to. putting this stuff into words is very difficult.
Am i wrong?
Originally posted by Wandering Scribe
@ Gakus
Infinite time does not mean infinite possibilities. The monkey and the typewriter analogy is also quite faulty since those monkeys could very well randomly type the letters A, F, E, C, H, D, T, U in random intervals without any common pattern for the rest of infinite existence. If this were to happen, even though the possibility exists for them to type Shakespeare's work, it does not mean they will do so.
Take my analogy of the round-square, and the circle with corners. These two objects will never, ever, beyond the shadow of all doubt, come into existence regardless of the length of time an infinity occupies.
Infinity just does not work that way.
~ Wandering Scribe
Originally posted by Wandering Scribe
reply to post by Gakus
"infinity is forever thus making all outcomes possible."
A circle with corners fits into this modus operandi. Unfortunately, even if all of the universe expanded infinitely, and there were, as you state, an infinite number of planets then as well, my circle with corners is just as hypothetically possible as the monkey/ies typing up all the works of literature. Yet we know that my circle with corners will not happen.
Ah, the old "leading scientist" statement. Please, feel free to link any of these scientists work where they state what you are saying. The burden of proof that these scientists exist is on your shoulders since you made the claim that they do.
I don't disagree that the universe is capable of many a wondrous thing. However, everything is not possible, and as Dcatal01 mentioned, it is also not "infinite" because it is still expanding. An infinite thing cannot actually continue to expand. Such expansion negates it's infinite-ness.
Originally posted by phoenix_zephyr
I can see both points of view and I understand the mathematics behind the infinite monkey theorem. I agree with Wandering Scribe partly in that given an infinite length of time with each key stroke independant of the last, it's possible for the monkeys to type entire pages of the letter S for infinity. On the flip-side it's also possible for them to do as the theorem states, assuming infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters and paper and food and lifespan and a rather large space for all that infinite poop
However it is a nice metaphor to try and explain or make sense of a rather large series of letters and numbers in an imaginary way
As for the circle gaining corners or the square becoming rounded, surely they would no longer be a circle or a square in that case? Perhaps a better way of saying it is that anything is possible or probable within the laws and boundaries of the universe that is being observed. Or something like that
Phoenix