The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    8 months ago

    If a tree folds in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it does it make a sound?

    For this experiment scientists recruited Gilbert, no one really pays much attention to him, and it’s assumed the universe won’t either.

    • humorlessrepost@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Of our sample size, 100% of “smart” (capable of symbolic language) monkey species have already written Hamlet.

      • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        For what it’s worth, it seems like it’s this “journalist” trying to make a sensational headline

        The researchers themselves very clearly just tried to see if it could happen in our reality

        “We decided to look at the probability of a given string of letters being typed by a finite number of monkeys within a finite time period consistent with estimates for the lifespan of our universe,”

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Hypothesis: every science journalist should be placed in front of a bitch-slapping machine for the rest of their career. Every time they think about writing an article, they get bitch slapped. This will greatly improve the quality of science journalism.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        The other part of it is there’s not only one monkey who does Hamlet correct on the first attempt, there’s two, three four, guess what - an infinite amount of them.

        And another infinity that get it right after 5 minutes

        Another infinity that take exactly 10 years 3 months 2 days 3 hours 4 minutes and 17 seconds

        And another infinity that takes one second less than the life of the universe

        And another infinity that takes a googleplex of the lifetime of the universe to complete

        that’s the point of the thought experiment

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I always heard that it was an infinite number of moneys, not just one. So one of them might get the job done in time.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      One of them is mathematically guaranteed to get the job done in time.

      In fact - and here’s the trippy part - an infinite number of them is mathematically guaranteed to get the job done in time.

    • kofe@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Are they arguing it wasn’t random though? I mean Shakespeare had to think through the plot and everything, not just scribble nonsense on a page

      • pinkystew@reddthat.com
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        8 months ago

        The thought experiment suggests that over a long enough period of time, every possible combination of letters would be typed out on a keyboard, including Hamlet.

        They are not arguing about randomness, as it is inherent to the thought experiment. Randomness is necessary for the experiment to occur.

        They are arguing that the universe would be dead before the time criteria is met. It is a bitter and sarcastic conclusion to the thought experiment, and is supposed to be funny.

        In conversation, it would be delivered like this:

        “You know, over a long enough period of time, monkeys smashing typewriters randomly would eventually produce Hamlet”

        “The universe isn’t going to last that long.”

        • pinkystew@reddthat.com
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          8 months ago

          Nobody asked but I had to share this

          It’s important to me that everyone understands the joke, even if that understanding robs them of the joy of it. “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. It kills it”.

          But it’s important because I suffered a lot of being left out as a kid. Others found how good it felt to be exclusive, and shoulder me out of things, or refuse to explain things, or whatever it was that made me the outcast. I could tell from their faces that they love the way it felt when they did that to me. But it hurt me a lot.

          I don’t want there to be any exclusivity anymore. Nobody deserves that pain. I want everyone to understand the joke, even if that prevents them from ever laughing at it.

      • superkret@feddit.org
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        8 months ago

        Actually, both monkeys and us are what our common ancestors evolved into. Which was neither a human nor a monkey.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Wait …is this why AI exists? So we can type Hamlet in the face of monkey failures?

    Dude. Just use a printer.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    As such, we have to conclude that Shakespeare himself inadvertently provided the answer as to whether monkey labour could meaningfully be a replacement for human endeavour as a source of scholarship or creativity. To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: “No”.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I prefer Romeo and Juliet, act 1 scene 1 line 41. Just because the exchange is so silly.

  • Maxnmy's@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I feel like there has to be more to this problem than pure probability. We ought to consider practical nuances like the tendency to randomly mash keys that are closer together rather than assume a uniform distribution.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Doesn’t matter in the real infinite monkeys thought experiment. The chance of an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters producing Shakespeare is 100%. That’s how infinity works.

      • Maxnmy's@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Sure, but this time I thought these things might matter because the article gives a deadline - the end of the universe.

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    8 months ago

    But we aren’t talking about one monkey. We are talking about infinite monkeys.

    Infinity is already a loaded concept in our universe.

  • communism@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Fuuuuck there goes my plan to get this monkey to write Hamlet within the lifetime of the universe…