I've read there are so many permutations of a standard deck of 52 playing cards, that in all the times decks have been shuffled through history, there's almost no chance any given arrangement has ever been repeated. If we could teach monkeys to shuffle cards I wonder how long it would take them to do it.
If a tree folds in the forest and there's no one there to hear it does it make a sound?
For this experiment scientists recruited Gilbert, no one really pays much attention to him, and it's assumed the universe won't either.
Let's use our braincells to fix real problems first. Like pants that don't stretch.
Abiogenisis in shambles again
I feel like there has to be more to this problem than pure probability. We ought to consider practical nuances like the tendency to randomly mash keys that are closer together rather than assume a uniform distribution.
Who are you, who is so wise in the ways of science?
This sort of study shows you more how mathematicians think than how science or philosophy works.
Fuuuuck there goes my plan to get this monkey to write Hamlet within the lifetime of the universe...
This is a false flag study to undermine public support for mathematics research!
I always heard that it was an infinite number of monkeys, not just one. So one of them might get the job done in time.
I just listened to a podcast about assembly theory and I think that it kind of relates here too, though maybe not. If we start randomly generating text that is the lenght of the Hamlet, then Hamlet itself would be one of the possible, finite number of possibilities that could be generated within these parameters. Interesting theory nevertheless.
If we think about a screwdriver, the theory would argue that it couldn’t simply appear out of nowhere because its structure is too specific and complex to have come into existence by chance alone. For that screwdriver to exist, a multitude of precise processes are required: extracting raw materials, refining them, shaping metal, designing the handle, etc. The probability of all these steps happening in the right order, spontaneously, is essentially zero. Assembly theory would say that each stage in the creation of a screwdriver represents a selection event, where choices are made, materials are transformed, and functions are refined.
What makes assembly theory especially intriguing is that it offers a framework to distinguish between things that could arise naturally, like a rock or even an organic molecule, and things that bear the hallmarks of a directed process. To put it simply, a screwdriver couldn't exist without a long sequence of assembly steps that are improbable to arise by chance, thereby making its existence a hallmark of intentional design or, at the very least, a directed process.
I wonder if it would take more or less time with auto-complete.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
