Given an infinite amount of time, 100 monkeys and 100 typewriters.. would the monkeys eventually type out a masterpiece like Shakespeare?

Given an infinite amount of time, you could do it with one monkey.

And the rebuttal is: “It already happened, 400 years ago”

No. Just a bunch of paper to throw out. Even if the typewriters were monkey-proof and the monkey had life eternal.

Far more likely they would do a Norman Lear type script, A chimpanzee 3’s company would be a hit again

I was under the impression that’s exactly who is writing present-day prime time sit-coms.

Those monkies crafted the new health care plan here in the USA ;)

They’d be lucky to type 100 words.

Shakespeare, no.

But the Bible… yeah, maybe. It looks like it didn’t even take that long. Or typewriters, either.

@J0E In an infinite amount of time? Are you crazy?

The number of possible combinations from a finite set of characters and within a finite section of text is also finite. Given infinite time you would, sooner or later, end up with every possible combination in that finite section of text, one of which, inevitably, would be Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. And yes, you could do it with one monkey and one typewriter.
You do not even need monkeys. You could do it with a random character generator. And if you apply evolutionary principles, e.g. natural selection, which would translate to:

1. Create a section of text randomly
2. Keep those characters at their respective position that match the characters of Romeo and Juliet at that position.
3. Replace the other characters that do not match with a new set of random characters.
4. Repeat from 2

, you would arrive at a complete copy of Romeo and Juliet in comparatively incredibly small amount of time and you would not even need infinite time.

@grumpyfish How?

@ragingloli That is the response I hear most often but I don’t get it. If given parts to a nuke would they also build that? Where do we draw the line on it? Aren’t some things simply impossible?

How fast does each monkey type?

”If given parts to a nuke would they also build that?”
Eventuallly.

No. Thanks to the wonders of the internet we know that this is not true.

I don’t know why the example use monkeys in it, as monkeys would never achieve that. I think what the example tries to say is that anything will happen given infinite time and resources needed, through combination and recombination. What the example doesn’t say is that it will create everything else as well, most often just almost. Since we don’t have infinite time and resources, the example feels a bit flawed.

I think that watching AnswerBag over the next few years (assuming it survives) may give us one of the best possible real-life experiments in this regard. I’m not holding my breath.

Have you seen the internet??? we have an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards… no Shakespeare yet. But plenty of porn.

If you left the monkeys enclosed with the typewritters no they will not write a thing! not even a human would write something if he wouldn’t LIVE and LEARN. Infinate time? The monkeys would evolve into humans at some time, learn how to live together in societies, teachers-phylosophers would appear and humans would learn about them,the world they live in, their position in universe and the value of everything and THEN maybe one of them would write a masterpiece. Think of that: if you put 100 writers with 100 typewriters are you sure one of them would eventually write a masterpiece like Shakespear? Is Shakespear one out a hundred only? I don’t think so…

@NaturalMineralWater You have to realize that infinite amount of time means really that.

So, let’s just do Shakespeare’s First Folio, that’s 1.8 million characters.

Let’s assume 48 keys on a typewriter, plus the shift key for 96 total keys. Let’s say the monkey is trained to randomly press a key.

Each time he presses a key, he has a 1:96 chance of typing the next character in the first folio. So on for 1.8 million characters. So the odds of said monkey typing the first folio is around 10^10^6.5 to one.

Okay? So we have our monkey typing away, say at 1 character per second. So he types away for 10^10^6.5 seconds, which is approximately 10^3162260 x age of the universe. That doesn’t guarantee that he’ll generate the First folio, but it gives him pretty good odds.

@ragingloli So if given the tools they would also eventually perform heart surgery, brain surgery, split an atom, and perform Cats… I don’t buy it. Absurd.

No. They would produce something that looks like rap music.

@grumpyfish I understand the mathematical angle… I just don’t buy that it’s accurate in every situation. Math can be wrong too if it is used incorrectly.

@Rude_Bear That analogy is flawed. The thought experiment with monkeys talks about probability. Since monkeys don’t understand words they would type random characters for all eternity. This means that by probability alone, in an infinite amount of time they will eventually produce every possible combination of characters. This means that King Lear will be one of them. @ragingloli and @Jacket hit the nail on the head.

Users on the internet are not typing out random characters, they are typing out sequences of words that they are coherent, therefore probability does not apply in the same way.

@NaturalMineralWater You’re mucking up the question with examples that don’t fit. We’re not talking about every situation. We’re talking about a certain situation with a finite number of inputs—a certain amount of keys on a keyboard. In this domain, the math in infallible. The amount of movements required to perform a musical approaches infinity.

@NaturalMineralWater But the idea of the thought experiment is to understand the possibilities of randomness and infinity.

Given a true random number generator, it’s entirely possible that it will spit out “1” for 3 million times. It’s completely random, and not predictable, but it’s possible that it will. It’s equally possible that a monkey sitting down at a typewriter and typing random letters will eventually reproduce something profound. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t random.

No.

But would probably produce some sort of interesting art.

“to ook, or not to ook? That is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer the slinging poo, or to take up arms and sling poo back”

”So if given the tools they would also eventually perform heart surgery, brain surgery, split an atom, and perform Cats… I don’t buy it. Absurd.”
It would be inevitable. All these things are combinations of smaller steps.The more steps, the higher the number of possible combinations of steps. A monkey would have infinite time to randomly recombine these steps. Certainly an astronomical amount of these recombinations would end in failure or death of the one the surgery is performed on.
There will be trillions of fatal combinations of steps and one successful combination, but you have to understand, the monkeys with infinite time would eventually and quite inevitably go through all of these trillions + 1 of combinations. With infinite time, it is inevitable that they will have used every combination at least once, the successful one included. Even more, given infinite time, the monkeys will perform an infinite amount of unsuccessful operations as well as an infinite amount of successfull operations.

@gggristo I’m not mucking it up.. I just think that this is one of those impossible situations.

@grumpyfish I get the idea of the infinite possibilities… I just don’t think there really are infinite possibilities in this case. Given an infinite amount of time a pear will not turn into an apple.

Can’t believe my question got pushed to editing for missing an E at the end of Shakespeare… XD… one thing is for sure.. no monkey would be typing Shakespeare with such close scrutiny.. every draft would be a rough draft.. XD

@gggritso : the analogy has not failed. Your sense of humor has… It’s a classic answer to an old joke.

@NaturalMineralWater By the same argument, given an infinite amount of time and 100 monkeys on 100 typewriters, you’ll end up with 100 small piles of organic material and 100 small piles of inorganic material.

However, the idea of the thought experiment is not to have 100 ACTUAL monkeys typing on 100 ACTUAL typewriters, but to have a notional random character generator (in the form of a monkey typing on a typewriter)—in real life, the monkey is going to get bored and start tossing poo.

Didn’t they write the script for Gigli?

@grumpyfish I’m not sure the probability of typing any amount of Shakespeare, even a page, is that high. Sure, in theory there must be some probability, so in infinite time it would happen. However I expect that the probability is so small that in any number less than infinite time it would not happen. It may even be that the probability is zero. Shakespeare’s works are not a random sequence, it is a very precisely arranged sequence. And try any random number generator – random would have a very hard time generating that kind of precisely arranged, but entirely lacking in repeating pattern, sequence.

@Snarp You are missing the magnitude of the number 10^10^6.5—it’s pretty damn near zero.

But the point is that patterns can emerge in randomness.

So, the First Folio. The first letter is a T, there is a 1:96 chance that the RNG-monkey will hit a T. The second letter is an o, there is a 1:96 chance the RNG-monkey will hit an o. There is a 1:9216 chance that the monkey will type “To” then we have a space, and a “the” and a space and a “Reader.”

The odds are 1:96 of each of those letters being typed, by the end of the first line, we’re at 5.6×10^27 : 1 odds (96^14) that that line has been typed by our RNG-monkey.

Those are REALLY long odds, but they are calculatable odds. By the time we’re at the end of the book, we have 10 to the roughly three million power to one odds. It’s pretty near zero, but it’s ever so slightly higher than 0.

Now, here’s the tricky part:

0 * infinity = 0 (usually)

1/(10^3160000) * infinity = infinity.

Therefore, in infinity time, it’ll happen.

We already have something like that but for an entire different purpose!!
It’s called the “US Congress”

@grumpyfish I like your version of “no”.

Also, monkeys aren’t random number generators. There is some likelihood that they will fixate on a particular key and keep pushing it, or that they will just mash the keyboard with their fist, which is probably far more likely than the probability of typing one page of Shakespeare. Therefore there will be more fist smashes and pointless repetitions than pages of Shakespeare.

And I’m just not sure that it makes sense to talk about strict rules of probability from a random number generator and extend those as far as the complete works of Shakespeare. So why not try it? We ought to be able to write a program that could at least produce a page of Shakespeare in less than infinite time.

@Snarp Yep—real monkeys won’t do it.

However:

One computer program run by Dan Oliver of Scottsdale, Arizona, according to an article in The New Yorker, came up with a result on August 4, 2004: After the group had worked for 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey-years, one of the “monkeys” typed, “VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t” The first 19 letters of this sequence can be found in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. Other teams have reproduced 18 characters from “Timon of Athens”, 17 from “Troilus and Cressida”, and 16 from “Richard II” (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem )

Thought experiment – Wikipedia

Given the structure of the proposed experiment, it may or may not be possible to actually perform the experiment and, in the case that it is possible for the experiment to be performed, there may be no intention of any kind to actually perform the experiment in question. The common goal of a thought experiment is to explore the potential consequences of the principle in question.

What’s a typewriter? I vaguely recall something called that. And why would a monkey be fool enough to monkey around with one if it could get ahold of one?

There’s only four Monkees: Mike, Micky, Davy and Peter…

Maybe Mike.

Anything is possible 100% of the time. They would certainly have to develop a language first.

Isn’t this how Glen Beck’s book was ghost-written?

@Rude_Bear

“to ook, or not to ook? That is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer the slinging poo, or to take up arms and sling poo back”

That is beautiful baby, the Bard would approve

Well I always understood the question to be actual monkeys…. if not… why even bring up the monkey’s at all? Because you’re right.. they would just fling poo and do their best to break the impervious-to-damage typewriters. They would never write Shakespeare .. not even with infinity + 1 years to do it.

@NaturalMineralWater Have you heard of Schroedinger’s cat? It’s also a thought experiment that involves putting a cat into a box and possibly killing it. I don’t think Schroedinger hated cats, he just set up the thought experiment in a way that grabbed people’s attention.

@gggritso In the example of the monkeys then….. we’re switching it to a random letter and number generator? If that’s the case then yes…. an astronomically small possibility of Shakespeare being produced exists… and it would happen… of course… eventually…

Throwing in the monkeys in this case just destroys the whole thing.. imho

As far as Schroedinger’s cat…. um… what?! I don’t get it.. what’s the point?

And in the end it’s uncovered that the whole collection of Shakespeare’s works was written by a walrus.

Natural selection is not random. Only mutations are.

@NaturalMineralWater The point that I’m trying to make is that the monkeys aren’t meant to be taken literally. The biggest point of disagreement in this thread is the fact that you can’t organize monkeys to do exactly what they’re told. I’m saying that this is irrelevant, because the thought experiment is done only to illustrate the laws of probability, not the ability of monkeys to write a book.

Schroedinger’s Cat is a pretty complicated example, it deals with the laws of Quantum Mechanics. I only used it as an example because of its strange context.

@gggritso OMG! Is it not enough that you promote simian enslavement to further your publishing empire?~ Now you want to kill poor, defenseless and innocent kitties by putting them in boxes and irradiating them, too?~ Have you no decency?~ No sense of shame?~

Please note liberal use of the ‘satire flag’ ( ~ ), which I learned about a couple of days ago.

@CyanoticWasp Decency is for the weak. You go out there, the world gives you shit, and you take it. Then you get a little higher, and you take less shit. A little higher—less shit still. While climbing this immense mountain of life’s cruelty, sometimes you do things you’re not proud of. Sometimes you do things that aren’t decent. Sometimes you get your hands dirty to eat a loaf of bread with your dirty hands. Sometimes you put a cat in a box and irradiate it. Life has no sympathy for me, and the feeling is mutual. You see a monkey typing away at a novel, I see an ATM slowly dispensing colourful bills that will put a roof over my head and a roofie in some girl’s drink later tonight.

It’s a dark world out there.

~

At the risk of sounding racist, which I am not, but I’m willing to take the risk anyway… I wonder how long it would take a monkey to win a Nobel prize in literature? I’m thinking maybe I could even afford to front this experiment; it’s not like the Nobel committee would be impressed by Shakespeare in any case (assuming they’re even cognizant). (I would have had this question even if George Bush had somehow inexplicably won a Nobel prize—for anything.) Hell, if Yasser Arafat was peace-prize-worthy, not to mention Obama, then surely I can get credit for not having started a war with Canada for all of my 56 years of existence. Doesn’t that record count for something?

Well, I’m sure that’s too far off-topic, but what the hell… I’m just a monkey. What can you expect?

@ggritso I don’t think the question says anything about organizing monkeys to do anything.. just the probability that they will get bored enough.. hit a key on the typewriter… hit another.. and another over the years and eventually .. churn out shakespeare .. but enough about that…. let’s talk about your peculiar response concerning your life outlook.. xD j/k ..

To help settle this debate once and for all (as if), I would like to go on record as saying that it’s one thing to “write” Shakespeare, and another thing entirely to “edit” him. I think it would take a very special monkey indeed to improve on Shakespeare’s editor. (I’ve seen manuscripts before; sometimes it wouldn’t take a single sick monkey with a drug problem very long to come up with some of the things that go into a first draft. The final draft and the edited & published work is something else entirely.)

I just want to say Shakspear Shakspear Shakspear Shakspear .. one last time. Yes.. the E is missing. Ok, I got that out of my system.

You are a good man, Charlie Brown