The entire population of chimpanzees in the world - about 200 thousand today, will not be enough to do this until the end of the universe
According to the theorem of infinite monkeys, a monkey that presses the keys of a typewriter randomly for an infinite amount of time will eventually type all of William Shakespeare's works at random.
This well-known thought experiment is designed to help us understand the principles of probability and randomness, and the way randomness can lead to unexpected outcomes. The concept has appeared in popular culture, from the TV show The Simpsons to the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the TikTok app.
However, new research reveals that it would take an unimaginable amount of time – far beyond the lifetime of the universe – for a transparent keyboard to randomly generate the works of Shakespeare. Therefore, although the sentence is true, it is also somewhat misleading.
A group of mathematicians, led by Prof. Stephen Woodcock and Jay Paletta from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), decided to test the law under the constraints of our finite universe.
"The theorem of infinite monkeys only refers to the infinite limit, with an infinite number of monkeys or an infinite amount of time of monkey work," said Prof Heber Woodcock.
"We decided to test the probability that a certain series of letters would be typed by a finite number of monkeys in a finite amount of time, consistent with estimates of the lifetime of our universe," he noted.
The serious but entertaining study, "Numerical Evaluation of the Finite Ape Theorem," is now published in the scientific journal Franklin Open.
For the purposes of the calculations, the researchers assumed that a keyboard contains 30 keys, including all English letters and common punctuation marks.
In addition to a single monkey (chimpanzee), they also made the calculations based on the current world population of chimpanzees, numbering about 200,000 individuals, and assumed a productive typing speed of one key per second until the end of the universe in about ten to the power of 100 years - this is a 1 followed by 100 zeros .
The results reveal that there is about a 5% chance that a single chimpanzee will type the word "bananas" in their lifetime. However, even if the entire chimpanzee population were mobilized for the task, they would almost certainly not be able to type all of Shakespeare's works (about 884,647 words) before the end of the universe.
"It is unlikely that, even with improvements in typing speed or an increase in the chimpanzee population, the work of monkeys will ever become an effective tool for developing non-trivial written works," the authors joked.
"This finding places the theorem between probability puzzles and other paradoxes – such as the St. Petersburg paradox, the Zeno paradox, and the Ross-Littlewood paradox – where the idea of infinite resources yields results that are inconsistent with what we get when considering the limitations of our universe," said Associate Professor Woodcock. .
In an era of creative artificial intelligence, The Infinite Monkeys' Theorem and its final version may also prompt readers to think about philosophical questions regarding the nature of creativity, meaning, and consciousness, and how these properties manifest.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Artificial intelligence created Shakespeare and space together
To commenter GA:
Evolution also has a non-random factor as you wrote. But evolution has to start at least from a living cell (and this cell also has a replication mechanism). And the formation of a cell from inanimate matter (what is called in scientific parlance: "biogenesis") is completely random because at this initial stage there is not yet the second factor of adaptation to the environment that you mentioned, but the whole process is completely random.
There is no connection between this research and the theory of evolution.
Evolution contains 2 factors 1- randomness 2- adaptation to the environment. This study only refers to randomization.
If we add the factor of adaptation to the environment in a very reasonable time we can produce one book of Shakespeare
The fit to the environment can be a function that returns how different the random scribble is from the book of Romeo and Juliet
But the whole universe was created randomly, it's okay to think...
Which explains the logic!!! in the theory of evolution.
And that a random explosion will create a genetic sequence / a perfect living cell?
Bunches of nonsense and vanity. No one will accidentally produce anything. To be honest, it was also possible to give up on these overrated articles on purpose
There is no effect because the theory of evolution does not hold that every generation all the cards are reshuffled. Since in every generation a baby is born who inherits the genes from both of his parents, only a critical case of environmental change is the random factor and therefore when there is a non-random component and a random component it is clear that this is a non-random process, therefore the claim to absolute randomness as in the case of typing monkeys is irrelevant.
This is a very strong proof that there is a God!!!
What are the implications of this for the theory of evolution? What is the probability of a chemical soup randomly producing a human, with a thinking, seeing, hearing, digestive and reproductive system?