3 ms·

Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare

14 points by draegtun 15y ago

schrototo 15y ago
While this project is clearly a joke and the article has fun with it, the statement It is also a practical test of the thought experiment that wonders whether an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters would be able to produce Shakespeare's works by accident. is rather idiotic. Nobody "wonders" whether this'll work. Of course it'll work. It's a mathematical certainty. It just... takes a while.
- amalag 15y ago
  It's a mathematical certainty that it will happen in an infinite amount of time, which is like saying it is infinitesemly possible or in layman's terms, impossible. They have reduced that infinite amount of time by having the works of Shakespeare at hand and then selectively choose the words that fit. Kudos to BBC for printing pseudo scientific dung from the so called scientific community.
mrcharles 15y ago
It seems like cheating to me that he's just matching small strings against the whole. I was always under the impression that this kind of thing would require them to hit the right keys in order, start to finish, to create a work. But if it's just matching a few words at a time...
- corin_ 15y ago
  Yep, you could take it a step further and check after every one character rather than every 9, that should speed things up nicely. My already low expectations of online content from the BBC dropped further after reading this.
jtdowney 15y ago
The article is pretty interesting. My favorite part is the last paragraph: Also in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard.
- corin_ 15y ago
  I wouldn't use the word "interesting", but like you I did chuckle at that last bit.
- libria 15y ago
  I find the last bit the most poignant observation there. "Monkeys pounding on the keyboard" has been taken to mean an unintelligent being diligently typing at random. That experiment showed that one monkey probably leaned on the "s" key for a bit and that's it. If we literally meant (generations of) monkeys with indestructible keyboards, it seems more likely that they would evolve intelligence far sooner than they would bang out complete sentences on accident.

14 points by draegtun 15y ago

While this project is clearly a joke and the article has fun with it, the statement It is also a practical test of the thought experiment that wonders whether an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters would be able to produce Shakespeare's works by accident. is rather idiotic. Nobody "wonders" whether this'll work. Of course it'll work. It's a mathematical certainty. It just... takes a while.

amalag 15y ago
It's a mathematical certainty that it will happen in an infinite amount of time, which is like saying it is infinitesemly possible or in layman's terms, impossible. They have reduced that infinite amount of time by having the works of Shakespeare at hand and then selectively choose the words that fit. Kudos to BBC for printing pseudo scientific dung from the so called scientific community.

mrcharles 15y ago

It seems like cheating to me that he's just matching small strings against the whole. I was always under the impression that this kind of thing would require them to hit the right keys in order, start to finish, to create a work. But if it's just matching a few words at a time...

corin_ 15y ago
Yep, you could take it a step further and check after every one character rather than every 9, that should speed things up nicely. My already low expectations of online content from the BBC dropped further after reading this.

jtdowney 15y ago

The article is pretty interesting. My favorite part is the last paragraph: Also in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard.

corin_ 15y ago
I wouldn't use the word "interesting", but like you I did chuckle at that last bit.
libria 15y ago
I find the last bit the most poignant observation there. "Monkeys pounding on the keyboard" has been taken to mean an unintelligent being diligently typing at random. That experiment showed that one monkey probably leaned on the "s" key for a bit and that's it. If we literally meant (generations of) monkeys with indestructible keyboards, it seems more likely that they would evolve intelligence far sooner than they would bang out complete sentences on accident.