An Infinte Amount of Monkeys

Right , so i have a question thats been bugging me all day

If you had (hypothethcicly) had an infinte amount of monkeys, an infinte amount of typerighters and gave the monkeys an infinte amount of time typing on the typewriters
Would they eventualy write every book in human history

reply to post by Disgustipated


Given an infinate amount of time they could well evolve enough to write something intelligent but not necessarily our current literature word for word.
Remove evolution from the equation and the monkeys stay monkeys then probably no. It would be to hard to use the typewriter when it is clagged up with the poop being flung

Originally posted by Disgustipated

Would they eventualy write every book in human history

Hypothetically speaking, i'm pretty certain they would cannibalize one another.

What if they all just sat there and pressed the yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy key for all infinity?I always thought this was a stupid hypothesis.

They would probably smash up all the type writters.

ama

I think the real answer is yes. Is it likely? No. It would be like the chance of getting a Royal Flush in Poker 100 hands in a row multiplied by a ridiculous number. It is possible but could take billions of years to happen.

I would suspect a mathematician could even work out the equation for you?

reply to post by Blaine91555


Exactly, i would imagine sitting down to write a compilation of known historical facts would be the very last thing that a bunch of monkeys would do.

I'm even including civil wars in there, you know?

But say the monkeys just typed random letters for infinity
Which is FOREVER, ...as in..it never ends
So by chance.. they have to at least write somthing readable

Well if it was infinite then it would take no time at all, but that’s not saying much, since an infinite number of monkeys would quickly type out the finite number of possible combinations for letters.

But things changed if you only have a finite number of monkeys, say, enough to fill the earth. If you ignored spacing and capitalization, it would take longer then the lifespan of the universe. And that’s just for one book.

Though it turns out that the hardest part is actually getting the monkeys to type on the typewriters in the first place.

reply to post by Disgustipated


I'm not even certain the monkeys would get that far.

They might get to a point where they do start typing and evolve a method of communication not dissimilar from the way i'm typing right at this minute, but they'd have to philosophize about it for a few thousand years before they even get to the point of imagining a world outside of that room.

Maybe they'll devise some sort of escape, and hunt you down and eat you alive for imprisioning them in that room for so long.

But, seeing as it is a valid question, i would think that it might be possible IF, AND ONLY IF, the monkeys write what THEY THINK is fiction, and somehow transcending the laws of causality, the fiction becomes their religion and they add to it every few seconds.

I would think that if you built a billion rooms, and put a trillion monkeys in those rooms for all eternity, you'd probably end up with 1 chance out of a BILLION that ONE of those rooms will contain ONE monkey out of the great many who types the words "The Big Bang" on a new sheet of paper.


And then he'll probably poo over it and tear the machine apart.

reply to post by Disgustipated


So the primates learn English over the course of their typing? Sorry, not going to happen, regardless of the time frame.

If chimpanzees do evolve into a higher being, what is going to make them speak English or any other human language for that matter?

They may indeed be typing legible words and sentences, but only in their own language.

Infinite monkey theorem
en.wikipedia.org...

First, I'm not the best math guy. However, logically speaking--I THINK--if certain actions (x) are given an infinite amount of time to carry out their process(es) then there will be an infinite amount of answers. So I would say yes in this case because in an infinite time frame an infinite number of random (letter) sequences would occur.

[edit on 24-4-2008 by Threadfall]

Short Answer:
No. But they will produce something that is a marked improvement over a Dan Brown novel.

Long Answer:
A couple of years short of forever, the monkeys are going to evolve into a more human-like lifeform. After a few millenia of getting used to clothing, they would proceed to just download all of our literature from Piratebay.

Jon

Well, according to mathematicians, given an infinite amount of monkeys, it will be "almost certain" that they will produce any given text on first try. "Almost certain" means the probability equals one.
Read the link I posted above. It will explain better. Mathematical proof is given.






[edit on 24-4-2008 by itisibrian]

One single monkey, typing quickly at a typewriter, would produce a text that would reveal the most perfect answers to the most profound questions of mankind.

It would take about one hour.

Figuring out the cipher key, which would map that textual revelation into something humans could understand, would take much longer.

#

Picture a printing press that is 100,000 characters long, run by a set of gears. Each gear drives a wheel with the 26 characters of the alphabet, plus punctuation (say 30 characters.) When each wheel goes through its cycle of letters, it clicks the wheel next to it over by one character, like an odometer on a car. This machine prints out every possible permutation of 100,000 characters.

In time, that wheel would express every possible human thought that could be stated in a sentence of 100,000 characters or less.

Among those permutations would be the cipher key that would translate what the monkey had typed (above).

In order to go through the entire cycle of 100,000 characters, going 30 lines a second, you would need a lot of time. Specifically, you would need one followed by 100,000 zeros worth of seconds (1 * 10 ^ 100000 seconds). That is a pretty long time. (The entire universe is estimated to be around one followed by twenty zeros worth of seconds 1 * 10^20 seconds) so you would need to spend as much time as the current age of the universe, multiplied by 5000, in order to finish that project** – I won’t estimate the paper and ink costs here.

#

I read about this at age twelve in an old copy of Ripley's "Believe it or Not", and after all these years I still think about that. Cool thread

**EDIT: I goofed here. The time to finish that project would not be the current age of the universe multiplied by 5000 -- it would be the current age of the universe multiplied by 10 raised to 99980th power! A much longer time, for sure.


[edit on 24-4-2008 by Buck Division]

Originally posted by Buck Division
One single monkey, typing quickly at a typewriter, would produce a text that would reveal the most perfect answers to the most profound questions of mankind.

It would take about one hour.

Well, I'll call BS on that hypothesis. But don't take my word for it, all we need is a member with a single monkey, typewriter (can you concede PC?) and a spare hour.

Oh nevermind, I haven't considered "figuring out the cipher key, which would map that textual revelation into something humans could understand." Which oddly brings us back to the topic of infinite possibilities...YOU sir are clever.

[edit on 24-4-2008 by Threadfall]

reply to post by Disgustipated


Actually, it wouldn't require an infinite amount of time, only a few hours or days perhaps. You see, given that it is an infinite amount of monkeys and typewriters, there will inevitably be a subset of monkeys that each write one book from that entire human history. Assuming writing that book would take a few days, then that's how long it would take.

People don't seem to understand what "infinite" means. It's not a large number. It's endless numbers. Endless. That means if you are playing a game of chance, no matter how slight the odds are for something to occur, given an infinite chances to occur, it must occur.

Instead of the infinite monkeys, which would also produce an infinite amount of monkey poo, have a look into The Library of Babel

extract:

Borges's narrator describes how his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for any given text some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of an infinite number of different contents.

I haven't read the original Borges story the concept comes from, but I have read an analysis of it by Kevin Kelly in his book Out of Control (mentioned in the wiki article) - the whole thing messes with your mind the more you get into it.

Kelly also takes a mental journey through the library, realizing that a book entitled "Out of Control, by Kevin Kelly" lies hidden somewhere in the library. This copy of this book is better than the one he is currently writing. His narrative takes a turn here, as he realizes that he would spend more time looking for such a book than he would actually writing such a book himself. He returns to the philosophical examination of the library by noting that hidden in the gibberish of the library, there are works beyond human capacity to write, simply by definition that it contains all possible books, of which these are a possibility. The library cannot be damaged by the destruction of any of its books because even though a single book is unique, there are also similar books differing by a single letter.

Read through the whole article, think about what it all means, and then go and lie in a dark room for while while your head hurts.

[edit on 25/4/08 by FatherLukeDuke]

[edit on 25/4/08 by FatherLukeDuke]

Well, yeah I guess if they have infinite paper and ink. My question is who is going to go into that room to find out? Hold your nose; it's going to be bad, I tell you...