Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Infinite Monkeys

There's a saying, or a hypothesis... maybe even a law of probability, that says something fascinating about a very patient monkey (I shall henceforth call him "Irwin") at a typewriter.  It states that it's possible that Irwin could randomly mash keys and sort of 'accidentally' write Shakespeare.

That is it works if you try the experiment enough times, or try it once but you use infinite monkeys.  The theory seems reasonable I guess, since if you do anything infinity times you're bound to get some interesting results. 

Infinity being all big and whatnot. 

Here's a picture that I have shamelessly borrowed from the inter-tron (with no permission whatsoever) of what Irwin might look like:



I'm no scientist.  I don't have nearly enough time or monkeys to conduct such an experiment even if I were.  Actually that reminds me of a conversation that nobody has with me:

Nobody: "Do you have a minute?"
Me:  "I've got nothing but time and monkeys."

What I know for sure is that if you sit one monkey in front of a keyboard right now, ask him to close his eyes and hammer like a sleepwalking blacksmith at the space in front of him, he'll type (at least once) this: 

mv uiemd;pcvhc,z.;cvj. 

Inspiring stuff. 

In the end though, I submit that the very presence of infinite monkeys would be far more interesting than anything even Mr. Shakespeare could write.  After all, who can walk casually past infinite monkeys and not bother to look up from their book?   

It keeps me awake at night, wondering. 




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

But they aren't monkeys the are apes ya goose head...LOL
Just sayin'

frodricthecomely said...

Or maybe Shakespeare was a monkey!
Henceforth, infinite Shakespeare's could accidently write the quintessential treatise for flinging poop.

ShadowsNose said...

Frodricthecomely is an awesome name! Also, good point!