Waldo Posted August 1, 2011 Author Share Posted August 1, 2011 Hehe, yeah, you'd need a really big room to keep them all in... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Longcol Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 If there were an infinite number of monkeys, surely at least one of them would write it correclt on it's first attempt? So maybe a day or two, depending on how fast that particular monkey typed. In fact, given an infinite number of monkeys, wouldn't an infinite amount of monkeys, type out the book correcly on their first attempt? No - because not all the monkeys could do it therefore the number doing it would be less than infinity. The possibilities are mind bogglingly huge as it also assumes the monkey will produce a book with exactly the same number of characters as the EB, make every third letter or so a vowel, make most characters letters rather than all the other symbols on a keyboard, plus manage to hit the spacebar consistently in the right place. In short, writing requires a certain level of intelligence and isn't something that can be reproduced at random. And anyway, where are you going to get all these monkeys from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 No - because not all the monkeys could do it therefore the number doing it would be less than infinity. That is incorrect; there could be an infinite number of monkeys failing to do it and you would still have an infinite number of monkeys being successful. Infinity is not a number, and so it does not obey the usual rules when you apply mathematical operations to it. In particular, for this debate, subtract one from infinity and you still have infinity; subtract two and you still have infinity; in fact, if you subtract infinity from infinity, you still have infinity! The whole point of the "infinite number of monkeys writing Shakespeare" thought experiment was precisely to show that arguing about things that "could happen given sufficient time" is completely pointless, and that discussing what might happen in an infinite supply of possibilities is even more so. Given sufficient (ie. an endless supply of) time, absolutely everything will happen one day, but the vast majority of those everythings will not happen in the first trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion..... ...trillion years of the existence of the Universe, even assuming it lasts that long. It's theoretically possible to calculate the chance of my successfully predicting the tricast in every race run in Britain every day for the next thirty years. Nobody would bother to work out the odds, because it is not going to happen. A lot of quantum mechanics ends up in this sphere; things which theoretically might happen, but the odds of them actually happening during the lifespan of the Universe is so close to zero that it makes no difference whatsoever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dosxuk Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 No - because not all the monkeys could do it therefore the number doing it would be less than infinity. They will... 1% of ∞ = ∞ ∞ - 1 = ∞ ∞ < ∞ If you start with an infinite amount of monkeys, an infinte amount of them will be able to do a certain task, and an infinite amount of them will be unable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waldo Posted August 1, 2011 Author Share Posted August 1, 2011 No - because not all the monkeys could do it therefore the number doing it would be less than infinity. But can we apply the same logic (or laws of mathematics) to the infinite as we would to the finite? I assume you mean, 'no, there would not be an infinite number of copies of the E.B.'? The possibilities are mind bogglingly huge as it also assumes the monkey will produce a book with exactly the same number of characters as the EB, make every third letter or so a vowel, make most characters letters rather than all the other symbols on a keyboard, plus manage to hit the spacebar consistently in the right place. In short, writing requires a certain level of intelligence and isn't something that can be reproduced at random. And anyway, where are you going to get all these monkeys from? Skegness Zoo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carosio Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 The proof of evolution long pre-dates Darwin. All he did was to demonstrate a viable mechanism for it. Don't you mean the notion of evolution, rather than its proof? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_Sleeps Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Given enough time, and enough monkeys! it is said they will eventually write out the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Give one monkey 15 minutes and he can knock out a Mills & Boon. To be serious, the philosophical idea is around chaos and infinity. If you have enough time and enough random elements, at some point it will be something of structure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alcoblog Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Erm ... am I missing something here? Surely you'd only need one monkey ... an everlasting monkey, I grant you, working for peanuts 'til the end of time (infinity) This would do the same amount of work as an infinite amount of monkeys. Presumably you can't multiply infinity by itself? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Erikson Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Reminds me of this thread. Which was far more interesting and work outable than the monkey one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Don't you mean the notion of evolution, rather than its proof? I do not. The notion predates Aristotle; it was proven well before Darwin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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