First I heard of this was on some Java program: If an infinite number of monkeys typed on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, then all great works of man will emerge. Its a spiffy claim, and makes sense, I think; but I would appreciate any other insights ya'll may have.

You pretty much said it there, but they will also come up with a lot of stuff we wouldn't have, given the random nature of their typing.

is there a limit? ever? can this theory disprove creationism? I think that this is a lot deeper than we can imagine

Originally posted by DrNeroCF
is there a limit? ever?
you already stated that it's infinite, and that would imply no limit
can this theory disprove creationism?
I don't think that creationism needs to be disproven, it's obvuiously bunk

but they will also come up with a lot of stuff we wouldn't have, given the random nature of their typing.

like...

as;lkjfgd akl;agojiagiorhd'hre fdosrojblgto

or my favorite...

rtoojkdfml aeowjgms'd ogjiroegnjdf;lnmg09

:p

It is only true if the monkeys are truly random.

Unfortunately their not and there for it is impossible not infinitely probable.

Originally posted by Blindman
It is only true if the monkeys are truly random.

Unfortunately their not and there for it is impossible not infinitely probable.

You can't say that with a sense of absolutness within the time given, which is infinite. Even if the monkeys aren't random, in an infinite time frame, they could do it.

It started out as just the works of Shakespeare.

The problem would be finding the Shakespeare amid the drenn. There would be an infinite number of copies of Romeo and Juliet with one typo, so you'd have to check very carefully.

We have a real advantage living in the post-typewriter age. They could do data entry directly into a word processor and the computers would announce each perfect work as it was finished.

Geeze, what if one of them wrote something even better than Shakespeare! Nobody would notice!

I don't think any line of reasoning that includes the concept of infinity is going to impress the creationists. One of the pillars of their belief is their inability to comprehend large numbers at all, much less infinity. They don't understand that five billion years or whatever really is enough time for random atomic-level interactions to result in the order we see around us. Yes, I know that there may be an infinite number of worlds that almost made it, piled high with primordial goo that didn't quite become alive. And an infinite number more that evolved to the alien equivalent of chimpanzees and hasn't made the last step up yet. The reason we're talking about it here is that "we" couldn't exist on one of those worlds so "this" could only be "happening" "here".

But trying to communicate about probabilities at that level of abstraction to a creationist is like talking to one of those piles of goo.

I find it much more fascinating that I wasn't born in (what is now) Bangla Desh because there are people just like me over there, thinking deep thoughts like us but starving. For every one of us fortunate North Americans there are about twenty people in some other country. Some of them would be just fine, especially for you younger folks who were not born in the middle of WWII like I was. But some of them really suck in terms of the quality of life.

Hey, I just remembered that we've got gorillas and chimpanzees who can "talk" in ASL. Why couldn't they be taught to type next?

Qouth the Fafnir

I don't think that creationism needs to be disproven, it's obvuiously bunk

Not to a majority in the world, actually. To express that it is obviously bunk expresses extreme ignorance. For you perhaps, I'll go so far to say, it has been debunked. You've made the choice for yourself. You however don't make such for the world.
Just an observation.


---

Anyways, as for the monkey theory. In our dear Dr. Nero C.F.'s postulate, he stated that all the works of man would be generated out of an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite amount of time. I propose a few speculations about this for people to mull over:

What if all the monkeys by chance type exactly the same thing? Call it quantum mechanics or something just for the sake of this speculation. Then you have one monkey typing for an infinitely long duration. (and we're not even yet talking about the chance of him retyping something he's typed before)

Following that small side path of the imagination, we have one monkey infinitely typing for an infinite amount of time. What if he doesn't type all the works of man? What if he types.... lets say... every work of man except Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" just out of pure luck. Now he is typing for an infinite amount of time correct? He will eventually type it sometime during infinity. But by the very nature of "infinite" being impossible to reach, it is possible he would never type Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream".

Any more interesting trailing theories of our monkey typists?


~Fatal

now we're gettin somewhere!

If we truely take the word infinite into account than they would have to write everything we have ever written, an infinite amount of times no less.
They would also write every possible story you could imagine an infinite number of times and more.
Every single combination of letters and spaces would have to show up infinite times.

It does help evolution in a sense. It shows that no matter how unlikely something is it has to occur if there are enough chances. If the universe was inifinite there would not only be more exact earths there would be infinite earths with us living on them typing this now exactly the same.
Now the universe probably isn't infinite, but its very gigantic with trillions+ planets so the fact we are here right now is not strange at all. Someone has to be somewhere. And they probably are more places than we would imagine.

Originally posted by FatalTalon
Qouth the Fafnir



Not to a majority in the world, actually. To express that it is obviously bunk expresses extreme ignorance. For you perhaps, I'll go so far to say, it has been debunked. You've made the choice for yourself. You however don't make such for the world.
Just an observation.



I would say it expresses extreme ignorance on behalf of the majority of the world not to recognize this

First I heard of this was on some Java program: If an infinite number of monkeys typed on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, then all great works of man will emerge.

I think the scope of the word INFINITE escapes our ability to truly reference. For instance, I believe that if an infinite amount of monkeys typed on an infinite amount of typewriters, ALL the great works would emerge in every language an infinite amount of times every single nanosecond that they typed.

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a
million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire
works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

Infinate monkey theorum (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem)

"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times? You stupid monkey!"

hehehe:D

We all know that a monkey would get bored in under one minute with random typing. The action of typing would probably be replaced rapidly with other interesting actions such as, throwing typewriters, shitting on typewriters, throwing shit, throwing shitcovered typewriters, eating the paper, throwing shitcovered paper, throwing X (where X is anything that can be lifted by the average monkey).

lets take this even further: if we compare this to how the universe was created, what is (err I'm tryin to be careful wording this...) the prime mover in the monkey senario? Is it the monkeys? The person who sets up the monkeys?

clearly the answer is in the typewriters. They already contained all the letters to make a literary masterwork.
If the components for let's say DNA or RNA were present then we have our answer in this little analogy.

but what made the DNA and the RNA?

maybe I'm thinking a question more along the lines of, would it be the thing that is creating it, the typeriters, or the thing that is pulling the strings, the monkeys, or something even greater than that, like the idea of why its being created, which would be us making the monkeys type

That was quite funny spuriousmonkey :D I will be laughing on that one all day.

I think there should be an important distinction to make! On one level there are the words, and on another there is the story, or script. While statistically it must eventually happen that every single possible combination of words will be linked together in a story, and it may be seen here that this is the story. If the words in two books contain exactly the same words, in exactly the same order, then surely they are just vehicles for the same ideas, and symbols, etc.

However it must not be forgotten that each word, is a symbol and each means a different thing to each person, thus when two people read the same book, they each take away different things with them.

Originally posted by DrNeroCF
but what made the DNA and the RNA?



they probably arose from natural processes.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/121394_monkey10.html

Wasn't it Dawkins who wrote about this? Given some monkeys, sprinkle on time, tag on a typewritter yadda ya and with eons of chance they'll inevitably be spooling out a Shakespearean tome.

Its true, given the chance this *may* happen but as Mucker said the words would be what's nailed, not plot nor story. With a thousand years our simian could type 'knave', a thousand more and its ' a rose by any other name...', and with a cool billion or so he's got the whole vocabulary.

But I don't think they'll ever hit on "Romeo and Juliet" exactly.

Creationists also like to believe that evolution is something like the wind blowing a gust in a junkyard and with the trash on the floor somehow blow together a mosaic of the Mona Lisa. The problem with these christian maggots is that they insist evolution contends the mosaic could be done with one blow. Uh....no.


Says FraggleRocker:
Hey, I just remembered that we've got gorillas and chimpanzees who can "talk" in ASL. Why couldn't they be taught to type next?

No, they don't talk. If you're referring to the Kokoes and Michaels that people like to throw around saying they know to 'sign', try this:
in ASL ask the monkey what her name is and she puts her hand to her face.
Ask if she ate, she'll put her hand to her face. Does she wanna go potty? puts her hand to her face and does some fancy doodat with her thumb.
Are you single? Are you a baby eating masochist with a boob job and will you please suck my dick? and she'll put her hand to her face.

"Researchers" would like you to think they do, but they don't talk. They ape.

about that, I read this science magazine thing many years ago (when all that apes signing stuff was big, and they printed a small convo they had with the monkey, sounded a bit more complex than that to me

Says DrNero:

about that, I read this science magazine thing many years ago (when all that apes signing stuff was big, and they printed a small convo they had with the monkey, sounded a bit more complex than that to me

Subjective phenomena. Symptoms rampant among researchers and polls. Now, for flavor what you should have done was tune in and WATCHED these signing monkeys have a go at "conversation".

Dare I cliche you one? A picture's worth a thousand words, and a moving one a thousand more.

To Gendanken: Why is there always a need or a desire to bash on Christian's who believe in Creationism. I know alot of christians have became an annoyance with what they believe, but no more than evolutionists, atheists, or nihilists. I am a christian and believe in creationism, but am no less a person than you or any one else. I would rather believe that God created and loved.. then everything just is and nobody knows what was before... Evolution states, as far as I know, that everything began at the big bang... My thought is, where did all the matter come from to clump together into a ball , explode, and over x amount of years randomly be at a perfect place away from the sun with the right conditions for something to spark forth with life. Can the matter just have existed for an infinite amount of time? Can something be created from nothing? Even with looking into the history going back a google of years, what was there? was there matter? If so, Why was there matter.. Matter can't just exist can it? If so, then you may believe that Matter is your god. If it was the only thing that existed before everything else.

My point being.. It isn't very cool that you would just bash a group because of what they believe. Even an Atheist believes something. An Atheist would most likely believe that he is god, thus, making him something other than an atheist. Its not like your going around saying, oh those evolutionists are retarded, I can't believe they believe this and that. People attack what they are afraid or ignorant of.

As for the monkey's and the typewriters.... I would rather see them play donkey kong for infinity and see what happens.

take this how you want to, but who created gravity, friction? you know, the laws that exist everywhere, that were not able to be "tried out" billions of times until they were right?

To Quigly: I'm christian too, despite what some people probably think (read: the whole animals deal), very well said

Obvously, an infinite amount of time will produce anything with a non-zero probability. However, the universe is NOT infinitely old, our planet is much younger than that and many species have been here for an eyeblink of time.

The issue then becomes what do you do if one of your monkeys starts off typing randomly like all the other monkeys, but then suddenly, types the Bible followed by the Koran followed by the script to the original Star Wars movies.

When do you start accepting the existence of a non-random actor?

:)

I am a christian and believe in creationism, but am no less a person than you or any one else. I would rather believe that God created and loved.. then everything just is and nobody knows what was before..

and jolly well good for you. At least you have something. There's nothing quite as horrifying as laying awake at night with the frosty chill of uncertainty. Do I bash christians? buddhists? muslims or even pagans for that matter? NO. I've got only few years in this world to take the universe, turn it over and find it out so precious time cannot be spent wallowing in hateful bashing. Sure a wry word would slip out here or there, but that's just me. I can just as soon call my own mother a cow with a mullet. So?
I'm not a nihilist.
Nor an atheist.
Nor evolutionist.

If so, then you may believe that Matter is your god

No. Curiosity is. And there's no beating that.

As for the monkey's and the typewriters.... I would rather see them play donkey kong for infinity and see what happens.

well haven't you already? This country is riddled with living rooms filled with small monkeys playing Nintendo.


Edit: Says Dr. Nero:
take this how you want to, but who created gravity, friction? you know, the laws that exist everywhere, that were not able to be "tried out" billions of times until they were right?


Well.......like, dude, aren't threre libraries lined with bookshelves stacked with books that will, unlike me, go through the trouble of tossed salad and try to answer these questions for you only to show that they..... DON'T ........FUCKING..............KNOW?

"This country is riddled with living rooms filled with small monkeys playing Nintendo."

Well now they are playing them on the airplane and in cars. I wonder what would happen after you sat a monkey down in front of grand theft auto for a year and then let him off down in miami???? I got a guess.....=)

I don't know what tabloid or radio talk show you got that off of but it's bullshit. There were already at least two gorillas and one chimpanzee who could "speak" ASL around the level of a four or five year old human back in the 1980s, probably before you were born. This is really old news. They were all over the TV, I saw them, I could tell they weren't just mimicking even though I can't read ASL, plenty of deaf people watched and verified that it was true communication.


So how much money, time and effort do you think you'd have to fork over to convince me that politicians don't lie, that america's health system is a fallacy, or that my sleeping with Garth Brooks or Al Sharpton is not the repulsive nightmare I imagine it to be?

I saw all the shows you did, Fraggle, at least I think so. Saw the footage, heard all about the 'white tiger', all that jazz and you STILL cannot convince me that that fat monkey is doing little more than meeting the immediate and extrapolating from her keeper.
There is no conversation. Period.


We can very well get into gorillas not being able to sign much like we do in ASL on account of biology and bad thumbs, but since humans with severe handicaps are known to 'mold' a language of their own that even to my alien eyes I can pick out as communication, surely the same could be said for these monkeys if in fact 'conversing' is what they're doing. I'd pick up on it, and I don't.

Its a sham of recording hits and leaving out misses, the very thing we're all guilty of concerning luck and coincidence. Nothing more, nothing less.

Originally posted by gendanken
Dare I cliche you one? A picture's worth a thousand words, and a moving one a thousand more.

A thousand per frame

1 k per frame. there r 30 fraims in a sec. the human eye sees 24 fraims a sec. we miss about 6 thousand words. thats the equivilant of being leggaly deaf or sumthin.

therefore... tv is confusing and hurts

Originally posted by Xenu
like...

as;lkjfgd akl;agojiagiorhd'hre fdosrojblgto

or my favorite...

rtoojkdfml aeowjgms'd ogjiroegnjdf;lnmg09

:p

"as;lkjfgd akl;agojiagiorhd'hre fdosrojblgto" - this was my favourite quote.

ugh, who started with the human eye sees under 30 fps? artificial vision runs somewhere under 30 and they're trying to bring it up to 60...look at an old moniter, the look at a flatscreen, you'll notice the difference...heck, even tv runs faster than that

Now, for flavor what you should have done was tune in and WATCHED these signing monkeys have a go at "conversation".

Dare I cliche you one? A picture's worth a thousand words, and a moving one a thousand more. That's crap!! Monkeys can't talk, and it's highly dubious they even have the capacity for language!! I've seen quite a few of these films, and the researchers are looking too hard!!

........America's health system is not what its supporters would like us to think, but I doubt that it would take more than a tour of the nearest inner city to convince you of that. Lots of women would love to sleep with Garth Brooks and a growing number have, so I suppose all you're saying there is that you're a straight male.


No. One: it was simply a colorful way of drilling it in you that there's nothing in this world you could possibly do to bend any opinons I have set in stone.

Some 20 years have seen countless research in this field, reasearchers from all corners have rallied to the cause and adamantly vouch its legitemacy, journals have doled out their share in the propoganda, and you, sir, have gone to the trouble of Google to blast us with triva and for what?

It all comes down the simple few seconds it takes to realize the what's what, and when it comes down to deciding whether or not a fat monkey KNOWS he's conversing or simply dabbling in doodats with his fingers its really quite simple. To detect conversation in their arm flinging is nowhere near as easy as it is to pick up on the tinge of self awareness these same animals exhibit when looking in mirrors. Now, there's evidence clear as crystal.

My personal opinion having seen them 'conversing' is that they're not doing it and that, good sir, is set in stone. Has, is, ever will be.


and

Two: I'm sure lot of women find Garthie a good lay, but I'm not much for coutry pop porkers. What's more, gendanken has, is, and ever will be a female. And that too is set in stone.