A new study reveals it would take far longer than the lifespan of our universe for a typing monkey to randomly produce Shakespeare. So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading.

The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

  • @AbouBenAdhemEnglish
    40•3 months ago

    Yeah, that’s why we need at least… two of them.

    • Eager EagleEnglish
      16•3 months ago

      the paper used the entire population (200 thousand) and would take some 10 ^ 10 ^ 7 heat deaths of the universe

      • Nougat
        42•3 months ago

        It could happen the very first time a monkey sat down at a typewriter. It’s just very unlikely.

          • Nougat
            36•3 months ago

            … the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small.

            But not zero.

            • @CeeBee_EhEnglish
              3•3 months ago

              Basically nothing is ever truly zero

              • Nightwatch AdminEnglish
                23•3 months ago

                Someone wiser than me already said that it already has happened: 1 ape did, in fact, write the complete works of Shakespeare.

                  • @KlearEnglish
                    2•3 months ago

                    apes ⊂ monkeys, actually.

              • @CryophiliaEnglish
                1•3 months ago

                The probability of lots of things is zero. The probability of a monkey typing a Chinese character on an English keyboard is zero.

                Similar idea: there are an infinite amount of numbers between zero and one, but none of those numbers is two.

          • @[email protected]English
            10•3 months ago

            Weird how neither of those numbers are infinities. Almost like the numbers used are unfathomably small in comparison.

          • @scarabicEnglish
            4•3 months ago

            So you’re telling me… there’s a chance!

            Sorry, I’m sort of lampooning comments like the one above and below you where people just can’t resist focusing on the possibility, no matter how ridiculously remote it seems. For myself, there’s a point of “functionally zero odds” that I’m willing to accept and move on with my life.

      • Rimu
        7•3 months ago

        ok so the monkeys need to type faster

      • @[email protected]English
        5•3 months ago

        Irrelevant. The heat death of the universe is a constraint unrelated to the premise of the original problem.

        • Eager EagleEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          I don’t think it’s a constraint, it’s more like a measuring stick to try to show how ridiculously long that time is

          • @CryophiliaEnglish
            1•3 months ago

            It’s really not that long, if we can’t get monkeys to write Shakespeare.

        • LvxferreEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          If we’re considering even chimps “monkeys”, there’s already eight billion of them, I think that’s enough.

          • Eager EagleEnglish
            2•3 months ago

            enough to cut a few zeros of a number with 10 million of them