Care to provide a proof? Seems obvious to me that the universe would experience heat death long before monkeys could recreate the works of Shakespeare. Just think of the possible permutations. We're talking 26 to the power of every alphabetic character in the collection of Shakespeare. And that's disregarding spacing and punctuation. That's an insanely large number. The heat death of the universe would come within a blink of an eye relative to the time it would take for monkey's to randomly chance upon the
It's also a wrong idealization. It's treated as a fact that proves that almost anything is possible at the scale of our universe. But in fact such a thing is not possible in our universe. Even given infinite time it's not possible--there's a finite amount of energy in the universe, and it's much less than would be required to randomly permute our way to the works of Shakespeare.
It's a pithy saying that has no more substance than saying "all things are possible with God". God is also an idealization, BTW.
Infinite (Score:3, Insightful)
Monkey keystrokes and infinite time does produce the works of Shakespeare.
So let's show monkeys a little more respect than comparing them members of Congress.
Re: (Score:0)
Care to provide a proof? Seems obvious to me that the universe would experience heat death long before monkeys could recreate the works of Shakespeare. Just think of the possible permutations. We're talking 26 to the power of every alphabetic character in the collection of Shakespeare. And that's disregarding spacing and punctuation. That's an insanely large number. The heat death of the universe would come within a blink of an eye relative to the time it would take for monkey's to randomly chance upon the
Re:Infinite (Score:2)
It would take longer than the lifespan of a monkey too.
It's an idealization.
Re: (Score:0)
It's also a wrong idealization. It's treated as a fact that proves that almost anything is possible at the scale of our universe. But in fact such a thing is not possible in our universe. Even given infinite time it's not possible--there's a finite amount of energy in the universe, and it's much less than would be required to randomly permute our way to the works of Shakespeare.
It's a pithy saying that has no more substance than saying "all things are possible with God". God is also an idealization, BTW.
Re: (Score:2)