There have been two studies disprove the hypothesis infinite monkeys could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
For number-crunching purposes, the researchers assumed that a keyboard contains 30 keys including all the letters of the English language plus common punctuation marks.
As well as a single monkey, they also did the calculations using the current global population of around 200,000 chimpanzees, and they assumed a rather productive typing speed of one key every second until the end of the universe in about 10^100 years – that’s a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
The results reveal that it is possible (around a 5% chance) for a single chimp to type the word ‘bananas’ in its own lifetime. However, even with all chimps enlisted, the Bard’s entire works (with around 884,647 words) will almost certainly never be typed before the universe ends.
Given plausible estimates of the lifespan of the universe and the amount of possible monkey typists available, this still leaves huge orders of magnitude differences between the resources available and those required for non-trivial text generation.
There are not infinite monkeys. The lifespan of universes and planets are finite. The habitable period of planets is finite.
Monkeys Do NOT Randomly Type
University of Plymouth researchers actually tried to get monkeys to type.
A single computer was placed in a monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo to monitor the literary output of six primates.
The six monkeys – Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan – produced five pages of text which consisted mainly of the letter “s”.
Towards the end of the experiment, their output slightly improved, with the letters A, J, L and M also appearing.
However, they failed to come up with anything that remotely resembled a word.
At the start monkeys chose to smash the keyboard with a rock. The keyboard was badly damaged. Monkeys also choose to poop and pee on the keyboard.
A famous gorilla, Koko, was taught sign language. It seems the only way to get Shakespeare is to train monkeys and to breed them for intelligence. Ultimately evolving them towards human levels of capability.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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What part of “infinite” are you missing?
Quantum fluctuations happen all the time, and with near-infinite time or space, would cause the monkeys to type randomly, enough for complete works of Shakespeare to be made.
Quantum fluctuations might be able to produce anything, including a new Big Bang, with (near) infinite time: 10^10^120 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
For a Quantum Fluctuation, you need space, energy and time. None of those were present before the Big Bang. Arguably not even the laws of physics as we know them existed before the Big Bang.
So, no.
Irrelevant. Don’t know why you’re bringing up the Big Bang, the article is about a hypothetical group of monkeys typing, either a ridiculously long time and/or a rididulously large number of monkeys. Yes.
Humans evolved in a relatively short timeframe, so under the massively extended timeframe and evolution that would occur over the time period the real question should be when would monkeys actually invent AI, let alone write a short story.
Otherwise it’s just a pointless static random probability coin toss experiment.
I agree. I suppose Monkeys like so many other living beings on this planet, have to live up to “human standards”. We judge intelligence by what we understand. Not anything “smart”, but what we recognize. Not “insight”, but “comfort”. That’s why I think the whole SETI project is frankly, ridiculous.. We hope to hear “radio frequency signals” from other star systems? Oh, really? Lets look at that (lack of) logic. Us humans only developed powerful radio from the 1930’s.
Very quickly, we discovered more efficient ways to send said information using “jacketed” packets of radio information. The energy volume of radio transmissions dropped exponentially. Ad to the fact, any radio signal not VERY intense and focused “bleeds out”, ie: dissolves after only a few light years… Well kids, you see the problem here. We insist “intelligence” follows our rules. Uhm, not likely. Face it gang, an ET may be screaming in your face, and you may not even notice. Oops…
Perhaps, just as Shakespeare is not understood by monkey’s, can we know what they think about is understood by us? Or can we know what very intelligent life on our planet, (say dolphins and whales) are talking about? Hey gang, if we ever want to talk to “ET”, shouldn’t we try to talk to non-human life on our planet who we KNOW have complex language? 30+years ago we learned there was a pattern to Dolphin and whale echolocation signals. It just wasn’t simple sonar. It was SOME KIND OF language. If we ever figured it out, I didn’t have the clearances to know. S***, what a pity…
That picture is, by the way, giving me unpleasant flashbacks to the creepy “Ape in renaissance clothing” cover on my childhood encyclopedia.
Before any creationist comes here and tells this disproves abiogenesis, the thought experiment above is about total randomness.
Chemical processes and evolution are not totally random and once you get imperfect auto copying you get natural selection.
Then what you get is similar to a Yatzeh dice game. You also need near infinite time to throw 100 thousand dice and get all sixes.
But like in Yahtzee, if you throw dice, keep the sixes and only throw again the ones with other numbers, you can reach 100 thousand dices with sixes in less than 100 throws in average
I have been a lifelong believer in science, and I still do believe in it and follow along closely. However, I am coming to realize the fallacy of believing that science is anywhere near a pure endeavor, with many things corrupting it, including preconcieved notions, politics, self-preservation/greed, and more. There are so many problems with the current concepts of evolution that it is not funny. For instance, even if you had the monkeys create a full volume of Shakespeare, what language would it be in? How would nonsentient “cells” be able to understand it? Just having the text does not explain how to then read it, and act on it. Way too many problems left unsolved. Evolution is a religion all its own, with a human Creator.
To me, this has always seemed down to 50/50 chance. The total works of Shakespeare (or even a single work) might or might not be produced by:
A) A single monkey with infinite time.
B) Finite time and an infinite number of monkeys.
C) Infinite time and infinite monkeys.
D) A single horse in a room with a Ouija board and infinite time.
E) A Furby with infinite battery life and one million years.
I’m totally on board for D and E if anyone has a way to conduct those experiments.
Point being, it’s just a fun thought experiment.
Why did they assume the universe will end ?
As others have said, they completely misinterpreted the thought experiment so wasted their time. Doesn’t have to be monkeys, any random process carried on for long enough (doesn’t have to be the lifespan of the universe) will create any possible outcome. That is why if the universe is infinite then there will be an infinite number of copies of everyone.
I have an old, short story from R A Lafferty called “Been a Long, Long Time” which has a humorous take on the monkeys with typewriters who are being overseen by an angel as he watches the universe cycle through many big bangs.
Technically Shakespeare belonged to a distinct breed of monkeys.
Shakespeare wrote the entire works of Shakespeare.
There is no known finite limit on the allowed number of humans (or any primate)across an unlimited time period.
Ergo, an infinite number of monkeys has been shown empirically to be able to create the works of Shakespeare.
Infinite and showing empirically don’t go together for a human being. In fact, these statistics challenge your other assumption as well: that humans are a breed of monkeys.
“We disproved the infinite monkeys with infinite time producing shakespeare idiom!”
>Look inside
>finite monkeys
>finite time
This is hardly surprising.
The experiment says a monkey hitting an infinity of time, or infinite monkeys with finite time can produce something we can interpret as Shakespeare, but it translates to any random process generating numbers or symbols. Be it a single generator or infinite ones.
And of course, we don’t have infinite monkeys nor infinite time.
That’s why it’s called a thought experiment.
That there aren’t infinite monkeys doesn’t prove the saying wrong, it just proves it is inapplicable to a universe with a finite number of monkeys.
Could AI write a new play in the style of shakeaspeare?
I think it is a 50 / 50 chance: either they’ll manage it, or they won’t