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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • If there are an infinite number of trials (either infinite monkeys or infinite time), the outcome is truly random, and the desired text is finite, it must necessarily happen at some point. In fact, it’d happen an infinite number of times.

    The original thought experiment clearly states infinite. As soon as you bound that in any way (such as not infinite monkeys, but 1 monkey for every atom in the universe) you’re talking about another experiment entirely. Infinite means infinite, not really really big. Gotta use some critical thinking 👍












  • I think the point is less about any kind of route to Hamlet, and more about the absurdity of infinite tries in a finite space(time). There are a finite (but extremely large) number of configurations of English characters in a work the length of Hamlet. If you have truly an infinite number of attempts (monkeys, time, or both are actually infinite) and the trials are all truly random (every character is guaranteed to have the same chance as every other) then you will necessarily arrive at that configuration eventually.

    As far as your process, of procedurally generating each letter one by one until you have the completed works, we actually have a monkey who more or less did that already. His name is William.