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No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time. That’s the whole point.
by andrewstuart 2y ago
No-one ever said it would happen within a finite time period, only that it would happen given infinite time.
That’s the whole point.
- kypro 2y agoYeah exactly, it's a thought experiment about infinities... Is someone going to publish a study concluding that Hilbert's Hotel couldn't be built on Earth too? Why are people even spending money on this research? What are they trying to prove/disprove?
- stavros 2y ago> Why are people even spending money on this research? What are they trying to prove/disprove? That it takes much fewer than infinite humans and infinite time to produce the most pedantic paper possible.
- SalmonSnarker 2y ago> Why are people even spending money on this research? "This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors."
- dcminter 2y agoIt's just barely possible that this is not an entirely serious paper. Scientists like to have fun too, you know? Not to mention that frivolous research has been known to pay surprising dividends.
- hermitcrab 2y agoMaybe they are after an Ig Nobel prize?
- jessekv 2y agoI suspect that many academic papers are a petty move to win an argument that started one day over lunch.
- The_Blade 2y agoi disagree rabble rabble rabble rabble
- 082349872349872 2y agoFranklin Open, whatever it may be, could well have slightly higher standards than Arxiv, but it isn't exactly Nature or Science... (but try telling that to The Grauniad!)
- card_zero 2y agoPerhaps they're finitists, or ultrafinitists?
- ykonstant 2y agoMany years ago someone complimented me saying I am extra fine; your comment makes me think I'll start identifying as an extrafinitist ╰(∀)╯
- madaxe_again 2y agoAlso Zeno’s paradox is clearly untrue because Achilles would just kill the tortoise after a few days of running back and forth, starving.
- tombert 2y agoIt doesn't appear that they got any money for this, so I'm more forgiving of mathematicians just dicking around with something for fun. Still, it's a very bizarre assertion to make; it's like they're trying to debunk something that no one claimed. ETA: Maybe they were trying to prevent the Mr Burns' of the world from trying to experiment: https://youtu.be/no_elVGGgW8 https://youtu.be/no_elVGGgW8
- tines 2y agoIt's funny that so many people are confused about why this was written. The monkeys argument was originally used against the theory of evolution; "what's the probability that a monkey banging on a typewriter will type out Hamlet? It'll never happen, and that's why evolution is impossible." Then, someone made the counter-argument that given enough time, the monkey will type out Shakespeare. This paper argues that as long as the time is finite on the order of the age of our universe, the monkey will not type out Shakespeare.
- thih9 2y agoThe paper doesn’t say that either. They only call the original theorem misleading. I understood that their point is the same as yours - that infinity won’t happen in a finite time period. > The long-established result of the Infinite Monkeys Theorem is correct, but misleading. > Non-trivial text generation during the lifespan of our universe is almost certainly impossible. > The Finite Monkeys case shows there will never be sufficient resources to generate Shakespeare. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773186324001014 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277318632...
- chasd00 2y agoI don’t see how the original is misleading. The word “infinite” isn’t hidden or anything… unless the definition of infinite is misleading but I think it’s use here is pretty clear.
- thih9 2y ago“Infinity” on its own is clear, but in tandem with monkeys it could get confusing. If you remember that a monkey here is also a theoretical construct then I guess all is fine. But otherwise monkeys need at least a universe to function and that is finite. Perhaps it would have been seen as less confusing if it was a demon[1] that enters random letters instead. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_(thought_experiment) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_(thought_experiment)
- jdthedisciple 2y agoFlawed point if it is used to justify the random speciation of evolution. If they can't type out shakespeare, how can evolution randomly yet correctly type out billions of base sequences of dna in just a cple mil yrs?
- cortic 2y agocorrectly is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, and the selection process in evolution is not random.
- jdthedisciple 2y agoNot the selection itself is random, but the existence of genetic variants to select from randomly arises due to random genetic mutations according to the theory
- Retric 2y agoThe critical difference is evolutionary only needs relatively short sequences to be randomly generated, and there’s many valid sequences. Building a book by generating a single random text string is practically impossible, but if you lock in any given word that’s correct and retry that’ll quickly get something. You’ll have most 8 letter or shorter words correct after 1 trillion runs, and many 9 letter words. It wouldn’t be done, but someone could probably read and understand the work at that point. Further it’s possible for a few even longer words to match at that point. People think it’s unlikely that specific sequences happened randomly, but what they ignore is all the potential sequences that didn’t occur.
- jdthedisciple 2y agoThe many valid sequences are relatively nothing compared to the infinitely many invalid ones, right? > You’ll have most 6 letter or shorter words correct after 1 billion tries. You think that's "quick" for dna which is made up of billions of 6-base-sequences and for a species that can only reproduce sexually once every decade or so at best?
- madaxe_again 2y agoWell, with an infinite number of monkeys, it could happen in a finite time. As you say, this paper seems to miss the point.
- akira2501 2y agoIt's sort of like calculating the probability of a hash collision. The speed at which the monkeys type is also a factor.
- andrewstuart 2y agoHow fast do monkeys type?
- amelius 2y agoJust give them a typewriter that records the position of where the key is pressed to a million bits accuracy, convert that to a series of ASCII characters (through a hash function), and the monkeys will type very fast.
- chasd00 2y agoThat’s really funny. Give the keyboard a big enough buffer to hold Shakespeare and flush it to the screen on startup. With infinite monkeys and therefore infinite buffers the monkeys don’t even have to type!
- KineticLensman 2y ago>> For the timescale calculations, we assume that a monkey typist presses one key per second every second of the day
- akira2501 2y agoAlong an infinite timeline more than one big bang may arise.
- amelius 2y agoYeah, but now you have another problem: the universe must reinvent monkeys.