A new study reveals it would take far longer than the lifespan of our universe for a typing monkey to randomly produce Shakespeare. So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading.
The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?
Infinite time is undefined though. We are not sure there was time before the Big Bang. Before anyone says “but there must have been,” consider that it’s just as paradoxical and mind blowing to imagine that time never had a beginning and just stretches infinitely into the past. How can that be so? It means it would have taken an infinite amount of time for us to reach this moment in time, and that means we never would have.
Why must the concept of time before the big bang (or after our heat death) exist in our physical reality for us to speculate about theoretical infinities past those? The thought experiment is about infinite time, not all the time in our limited universe. A lot of things happen at infinity that break down as soon as you add a limit, but we’re not talking limits when we’re talking infinity.
I think the implications behind there being infinite time in the past are fun if you assume that the universe works like a stochastic state machine. It means that either every finite event that has happened and will happen has already happened an infinite number of times or the universe is infinitely large.
We know such an infinitesimally small amount about what is actually happening in the universe that any claims to be capable of predicting it’s end are patently absurd.
The theorem holds true. The theorem states that the monkey has infinite time, not just the lifetime of our universe.
That’s just lazy science to change the conditions to make sensational headlines. Bad scientists!
Infinite time is undefined though. We are not sure there was time before the Big Bang. Before anyone says “but there must have been,” consider that it’s just as paradoxical and mind blowing to imagine that time never had a beginning and just stretches infinitely into the past. How can that be so? It means it would have taken an infinite amount of time for us to reach this moment in time, and that means we never would have.
Why must the concept of time before the big bang (or after our heat death) exist in our physical reality for us to speculate about theoretical infinities past those? The thought experiment is about infinite time, not all the time in our limited universe. A lot of things happen at infinity that break down as soon as you add a limit, but we’re not talking limits when we’re talking infinity.
I think the implications behind there being infinite time in the past are fun if you assume that the universe works like a stochastic state machine. It means that either every finite event that has happened and will happen has already happened an infinite number of times or the universe is infinitely large.
Infinite time is perfectly defined, it just doesn’t exist in our universe
Use an infinite number of monkeys instead?
It also makes a pretty bold claim about us actually knowing the lifespan of the universe.
That’s not bold, we’ve known how long the universe will last for decades now.
Just because someone tells you something, doesn’t mean they actually know what they’re talking about. fyi
When multiple fields of science all agree, yeah they know what they’re talking about.
I just don’t get these anti-science types…
How are they defining the end of the universe?
The universe is believed to end just a few nanoseconds before a monkey finishes writing Hamlet.
We know such an infinitesimally small amount about what is actually happening in the universe that any claims to be capable of predicting it’s end are patently absurd.
Probably very shortly after dinner has been served at that restaurant.
I think that was just a galaxy, not the whole universe.
You mean the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
Hmm… i sit corrected.
But what does the Lord think about this?
Heat death would be my assumption, so between about 10^100 and 10^106 years
This just in: scientists disprove validity of thought experiment; philosophers remain concerned that they’ve missed the point.
The universe is the cage and we are the monkeys. We have already written Hamlet.