The Infinite Monkey Theorem

I know, I know. The name sounds incredibly made up. It is made up, isn't it? Everything humans use to communicate with each other is made up.

Well then, it is a made up theory. Just, I didn't make it.

Simply put, the Infinite Monkey Theorem states that if you let an immortal monkey hit keys on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite period of time, the monkey will be able to type out the entire works of Shakespeare, along with all pieces of literature of the past, present and future, an infinite number of times.

Creation!

French mathematician Émile Borel is credited with popularizing a similar concept in 1913, although some people attribute the original idea to Aristotle.

Émile Borel

Under the same conditions as before, Borel wanted to calculate the probability of the monkey typing a specific sentence. He said that the chances of the monkey typing the sentence in a finite amount of time is extremely small, but it becomes possible if the monkey continues typing indefinitely.

Connection to Entropy?!

It sounds scary, but simply put, entropy is the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. The more random something is, the higher the entropy. For example, the OnlyRedHerrings posting schedule must have staggering entropy (I promise I'm working on it).

The monkey's random typing has high entropy, because the monkey is probably illiterate, and not acquainted with Hamlet. The initial text is ideally nonsensical, so the probability of any real information being conveyed is minimal.

However, as time goes on, entropy decreases as the chance of producing meaningful text increases. Eventually, the monkey may type a word, and then a sentence, and finally the Hamlet.

So in this analogy, entropy decreases with increase in time. Information conveyed increases with decrease in entropy.

The Infinite Monkey Theorem helps to bridge the gap between randomness, entropy, time and the creation of meaningful patterns.

It's rather poetic in a way.

Actual Monkeys

In 2002, students from the University of Plymouth left a real computer keyboard in an enclosure of six Celebes crested macaques for almost two months.

Future Shakespeare

To quote the Atlanta Journal:

Give six monkeys a computer for a month and they will make a mess.

The monkeys produced a grand total of five pages, with most of them comprising of the letter 'S', with 'A', 'J', 'L' and 'M' giving guest appearances toward the end. The lead male brought a stone, and started bashing the keyboard, while the others were more invested in defecating and urinating on it.

Apparently English is not their forte.

-BracketRocket

Comments

sushiOctober 25, 2023 at 11:17 AM
the monkeys are me during any English lesson
ReplyDelete
Replies
sushiDecember 2, 2023 at 4:14 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpiv39ELDjk
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Shakespeare and Subjectivity (or the lack thereof)

“The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.” The Comedy of Errors (Act 5, Scene 4) Shakespeare is no saint. All of his plays have a little something against our "modern values", and honestly, it's irrational to be surprised. The "Bard of Avon", inventor of most of modern vocabulary, lived from 1564 to 1616. Society four hundred years ago upheld different beliefs and ideals, some which we have retained today, but even more that we 'pooh-pooh' or find straight-up offensive. Elizabethan theatre was...quite a big deal Fiction is a reflection of fact, and fact is a reflection of fiction. When we bring up various issues in Shakespeare's works, are we critiquing the playwright, or the society he was lived in? Case in point: Merchant of Venice. Rampant antisemitism against Shylock the Jewish moneylender. When his daughter elopes and converts to Christianity, it is shown as a positive outcome and an ideal "happy ending". Portia, the oh-so-smar...

The Legendary Solar Eclipse

8th April, 2024. Not an ordinary day. It is the date of the full solar eclipse, that will pass over regions of North America. The sky will darken (I sound like a Nostradamus rip-off with an Internet connection, but bear with me), akin to dusk or dawn, and if one is lucky enough to have clear skies, the corona (outer atmosphere of the sun) should be visible in an awe-inspiring ring around the shadow of the moon. Truly a sight to behold Of course, not all visible things are meant to be seen. Not with naked eyes anyway. If you happen to be within the range of this celestial event, by all means, enjoy it - but with the necessary safety precautions in place. Looking at the sun in such a state (or otherwise, actually) directly, or through a telescope/camera/binocular lens is bound to cause severe, and oftentimes untreatable, eye injury. You have an excellent brain. Use it. Implement indirect means of viewing. Look at it through a pinhole camera, or safe solar viewing glasses...

Running out of Turing Tests

In his laconically named 1637 treatise, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences , René Descartes argued that while a mechanical body could imitate human behaviour if it so wished, true thought (therefore true being) was exclusive to the res cogitans – the thinking substance – which machines could never possess. One wonders if this was taken as a challenge, and (separately) if it was meant to be one. In the centuries to follow, mechanistic fantasies could only further proliferate the living world. Jacques de Vaucanson's grain-kernel-digesting-and-excreting duck from 1764, for instance – deft as it was in its intended simulation – marked the beginning of the hunt for the line between imitation and genuine cognition. An American artist's (incorrect) explanation for how the duck managed to eat and excrete grain. On inspection some half century down the line, a French illusionist concluded the it did not, as...

Tackling Absurdism

You are a complex and nuanced individual. You have layers to your personality. You meet multiple people daily, you have so many experiences. You have a story to tell, your interests, aspirations, hopes and dreams. You may sometimes feel like you're the most complicated being on earth. After all, you have so much going on, don't you? But so does everyone else. Everybody else has their own stories, problems, dreams. Everyone else thinks they're a complex person. And that's because they are. We live in a complex world, after all. All this, for what? What even are we, a swarming bunch of self-righteous, self-absorbed microbes on a rock in the middle of nowhere? What is the meaning of life? What's the point anyway? Every single action that happened since the beginning of the universe, right from the big bang, every slightest choice has led up to this - upto your reading this blogpost. The smallest difference would have changed this outcome vastly. Our present is a mosai...

Thomas Edison and the Cyclicity of Pulp

The only thing more fascinating than pulp fiction is the contemporary commentary – condemnation? – of whatever genre it exemplifies at a given period of time, and the subsequent pedestal-perching of said genre by posterity. For this, of course, I use a more expansive definition of ‘pulp fiction’ than is generally recommended. Pulp fiction (as generally recommended) refers to stories published in pulp magazines, which were cheap, long-running fiction series printed on rough wood-pulp paper. ‘ Generally recommended ’ The pulp fiction I refer to is more all-encompassing: anything popular, cheap, aimed at a younger audience and ‘sensationalist’. (The last descriptor I dislike as an adjective for fiction; I believe it ought to restrict itself to journalism, where its services are necessary and its application plentiful, but I digress.) A better term might be contemporary fiction, but that flowery ornateness doesn’t quite capture the plosive gun-shotty decadence of good-for-nothing kids-the...

The Question of Free Will

“The ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” was never really defined as a question, which is why Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy delights in answering it with “42.” A fittingly nonsensical answer for a fittingly nonsensical question. This is an error that some may deem deliberately obtuse – therefore an error that I will try my best to avoid. To answer a question, it would seem, one's first step must be to ask it. And here is what I ask: Can physics tell us if we have free will? A straightforward question that cannot be answered with nonsense justifiably. But the devil is in the details, and it is the moral onus of the curious to get to them first. Our most capital specimen of a question raises two others of its kind. Who is ‘we’? What is ‘free will’? The former is a subjective to the speaker's context, i.e., something under our control. I take this opportunity to restrict it to the human race. Animals, plants, amoebas and the cup of...

This is a Warning, not an Invitation

"Hey! Look at this virtual reality headset! If we spend enough time with these things, our world is going to be just like the world of Ready Player One!" "Are you excited?" "Of course!" "...why?" Ready Player One, regardless of whether you're referring to the book or the film, is a piece of dystopian science fiction. That means the world of Ready Player One sucks . It's not something we should aspire to emulate. Ready Player One, and every other piece of dystopian fiction, is a warning, not an invitation. Is it that hard to digest? Look at where you come from, look at you now In the ever-expanding landscape of technological progress and societal shifts, dystopian fiction has emerged as a powerful mirror reflecting our collective fears, anxieties, and cautionary tales about the future. Works like George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" have long served as harbingers of potential dystopia...

2001: A Movie Review

This is from 1968? And I'm expected to believe that? July 20th, 1969. A truly astronomical feat of humankind. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people on the moon, as millions of folks watched, absolutely enraptured, from their TVs sets here on good ol' Earth. And, like most historic monuments in our scattered timeline of existence, popped up the omnipresent scatterbrains - the conspiracy theorists. Because, well, why shouldn't they? There's always an xkcd for that As I was doom scrolling through the Wikipedia article concerning itself with this delightful topic, one thing stuck out to me - a name . There was one singular name on the entire blasted index box. The name was Stanley Kubrick. It was fuzzily familiar, and a few quick clicks revealed why. The poor fellow had had the misfortune of directing a "cinematic masterpiece", a true trailblazer who walked so every other space movie could run - Stanley Kubrick was the director of 2001: ...

Did Roald Dahl predict ChatGPT in 1953?

"Person? What person?" Roald Dahl is a classic childhood author for many. He is known for his contribution to children's literature in the form of books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG and my personal favourite, Matilda , to name a few. But yesterday at the Library, walking up and down the science fiction section, my eyes were led astray by an unfocused mind. In a quirk of human nature, the mind is automatically drawn towards the familiar, especially when not paying attention on the present circumstances. That's why we turn back to look at a familiar face in a crowd. Perhaps it is an evolutionary characteristic. I cannot say for sure. My eyes had come to rest on a small volume, lying in a state of almost meditative serenity in the "Short Stories" section. The little black spine bore golden letters in Times New Roman, and it said in a form of modest pomposity which only that font is capable of "Someone Like Yo...

Only Red Herrings

Search This Blog