Look, the monkey just wants to develop his own material, is that so wrong www.theguardian.com/science/2024... - ThreadSky

scalzi.com • 118 days ago

Look, the monkey just wants to develop his own material, is that so wrong

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/01/infinite-monkey-theorem-keyboard-tyepwriter-shakespeare-study

Comments

400trix.bsky.social•117 days ago

They’re going to win an Ignoble Prize for this one.

thedaisymoon.me•118 days ago

Universe would die before 99,99% of the population writes Shakespear tbh.

jasongrvin.bsky.social•118 days ago

I don't know why everyone is so into monkeys writing Shakespeare. He's not gonna write back. He's dead.

jimmylabe.bsky.social•118 days ago

after all, if you gave infinite monkeys infinite copies of Shakespeare, how many would read it?

misshap.bsky.social•118 days ago

How long before the monkey writes a Shakespeare fanfic that is mostly about Hamlet and Horatio making out?

oddsbodkins.bsky.social•118 days ago

Maybe, but think of the column inches it could fill for the Telegraph.

lauowolf.bsky.social•117 days ago

They aren't saying it couldn't happen

unfortunately4you.bsky.social•118 days ago

From the original paper. X-axis is the length of the work, Y-axis is time expressed as "Number of times the Universe will experience a Heat Death" Log-scale, of course

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773186324001014

It's open-access, quotes The Simpsons, and uses terms like mono-monkey combinatorics

hagra.no•117 days ago

No, not log-scale. Log-log-scale! The underlying number is BIGGG!

thatkeira.bsky.social•118 days ago

This is so rude to monkeys

peterjbangert.bsky.social•117 days ago

And anyway, all the good monkeys are working for MSM.

Not the apes of course as per the picture. They're still freelance.

jlyons1991.bsky.social•118 days ago

Sounds like someone missed the point. Saying the monkey doesn’t have infinite time just means the idea disappears altogether. If the monkey did have infinite time, however,…

jrm529.bsky.social•118 days ago

Sounds like the paper didn't even read the material. The infinite monkeys theo. was never about *one* monkey.. I mean, jeez.. "infinite monkeys" is right there in the name, after all.

jlyons1991.bsky.social•117 days ago

The idea is also that the copy of Shakespeare (or whatever) might appear at any time, not that you have to wait around for it. The monkeys are not getting any smarter. 🙂

juneussell.bsky.social•117 days ago

It was just a theory about randomness. I mean, it could’ve been a Jilly Cooper novel as an example. Or anything.

juneussell.bsky.social•117 days ago

And, anyway, that’s a chimpanzee, not a monkey.
As usual.

someone-like-you.bsky.social•118 days ago

The article is clearly false cuz the monkey will surely evolve into human and start writing its own poetry about being mocked by Guardian in just 10000000 years

davidnelsonnm.bsky.social•118 days ago

“Hold all my calls!” cried the monkey.

stephenjjohnson.bsky.social•118 days ago

Obviously the monkeys don't have a chance if the chimpanzees are hogging all the typewriters.

bayward.bsky.social•118 days ago

Turns out the best they could do was Francis Beaumont and about 1/3rd of Christopher Marlowe

frickin-dude.bsky.social•118 days ago

I'm more looking forward to the monkey's fan fiction love story between Kong and Godzilla.

glider.bsky.social•118 days ago

Why ask a creative artist to write Shakespeare all over again when a good copy typist will do it faster and better?

tarquinhh.bsky.social•118 days ago

Back I go to trying to find Hamlet in Borges' Library of Babel then.

ninjamonkky.bsky.social•118 days ago

Also probably shouldn't monkey around with Shakespeare; Apeing the Bard seems cheeky

mirthfulisles.bsky.social•118 days ago

I ASSUME there are several bot accounts on several social media platforms just tasked with posting random Shakespeare text in chunks. Surely they've exhausted the library of attributed work by now.

faeneth.bsky.social•118 days ago

Those mathematicians MISS THE POINT. It's not about an actual limited supply of monkeys typing. It's a thought experiment about UNLIMITED monkeys. If you have an infinite number of them, literally the complete works of Shakespeare are not just a probability, but an absolute necessity. Sheesh...

ricphillips.bsky.social•118 days ago

Well yes. An infinite amount of monkeys would produce the Bard’s complete works. And they would do so immediately, along with everything that was, and could ever be written. And they would also write an infinite number of copies of all those works. It’s not a very interesting assertion actually.

faeneth.bsky.social•115 days ago

That's an excellent point! They'd produce them immediately!! Yes!

zoopaul.bsky.social•118 days ago

Oddly enough, whenever I try to write it always comes out as if a monkey wrote it.

davidaugust.bsky.social•118 days ago

Who knew the universe was not a fan of monkey-written Shakespeare 😝

f6x.bsky.social•117 days ago

Has the monkey thought about incorporating AI into their work process, though?

gordonfernie.bsky.social•118 days ago

Why did they illustrate this article with a chimpanzee and not a monkey?

sleepship.bsky.social•118 days ago

I thought Twitter already proved this?

nickzoic.bsky.social•118 days ago

Yes, but if you had an *infinite* number of monkeys (and typewriters) ... they'd collapse into an infinite array of black holes, and Shakespeare would be lost inside the event horizon.

arfisk.bsky.social•118 days ago

Marty Feldman once put this experiment to the test, and was v disappointed with the results.
"You clots!" He yelled "You've written the Bible."

nohillside.ch•118 days ago

How many universes would it need to have a monkey write Scalzi?

svetbeard.bsky.social•118 days ago

“Infinite Monkey Theorem” disproven by demonstrating that a finite number of apes could not produce Shakespeare. I may not be a mathematician, but I don’t think that’s how a proof works. Sounds like someone’s gunning for an igNobel and the fame, money, and glory therein.

radlein.bsky.social•118 days ago

new scalzi book, monkey headshot on cover: STARTER AGENT*

* to the stars

atprenger.bsky.social•118 days ago

I mean, pretty sure the universe is going to die before I finish my novel, too.

hagra.no•117 days ago

This is a paper more suited for a journal like Annals for Improbable Research than a real research journal. There is nothing new here, except maybe for the numerical estimate. I myself have given exam problems about the expected time for a monkey to type BANANA. Hint: A looong time.

hagra.no•117 days ago

But it is amusing, I'll concede that.

stevebuttercase.bsky.social•118 days ago

“When shall we thrrr mt agntmblf?”

So close.

treybushart.bsky.social•118 days ago

I never understood why don't they just hire monkeys with a faster wpm.

locengineer.bsky.social•118 days ago

Yeah, but what about Apes?
THIS IS NOT A MONKEY
🤬🤷‍♂️🙃⛑️

andymeyers10.bsky.social•118 days ago

Per Bob Newhart:
To be or not to be. That is the Gazorninplat.

https://youtu.be/Ngmf8G5xKas?si=0n9-R5ALeGOcJtuE

rewantremethick.bsky.social•118 days ago

To paraphrase Eddie Izzard: What if you gave the monkey a gun?

sanmei.bsky.social•117 days ago

Ah, and now I'm remembering the Infinite Monkey Simulator. Even trillions of simulated years into it, the farthest they ever got was about 20 characters.

diana15.bsky.social•118 days ago

https://gofund.me/6b194133

stephcherrywell.com•118 days ago

I mean, if we're introducing realism into this thing, the monkey's lifespan is going to become much more of a problem than the universe's.

yamara.bsky.social•118 days ago

You kind of only need the one monkey, if they’re an immortal who traverse the multiverse.

But do they have that kind of dedication to their art? Aye, that’s the rub.

coyoteangel.com•117 days ago

Clearly, more AI-enhanced monkeys are called for. Lots more. More. More. More! TOO MANY!

bigstape.bsky.social•118 days ago

It's always the Australians ruining the party

yeahbutnahbut.bsky.social•118 days ago

what if we get the monkeys to drive Teslas instead?

soylencer.bsky.social•118 days ago

What if a bunch of monkeys all pour out of a CuberTruck, dressed in various Cheap Suits Which Look Expensive and various Expensive Casual Which Looks Cheap, and we teach them to sign a bunch of buzzwords and give them literal dog whistles as a bit?

monarchhench21.bsky.social•117 days ago

At least the monkey would still craft a better, more cohesive story than an AI algorithm.

garius.bsky.social•118 days ago

Universe would die, before Monkey Shakespeare got a second series at Netflix, study finds.

jodami.bsky.social•118 days ago

And even Thelma got a second series.

Poor monkey.

ardalis.com•118 days ago

I guess we just need infinite monkeys…

jlroberson.bsky.social•118 days ago

Scientist 1: Hey he seems to have written some Thomas Kyd though
Scientist 2:

feliciarondo.com•118 days ago

the only hole I'd poke in the infinite monkey "theorem" is that it actually happened in real-life in the finite amount of time that has transpired thus far - humans evolved from monkeys and one of those monkeys created the entire collected works of Shakespeare

hagra.no•117 days ago

That only highlights the fact that extremely unlikely events happen all the time. This is because the number of possible events is so mindbogglingly huge, yet only a small number of them actually happen. (Now someone is gonna say multiverse.)

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