An immortal monkey is left alone in a room with nothing but a typewriter. In most instances, you might observe it inspect the contraption, then toss it carelessly against the wall (many humans might do the same under similar circumstances). Maybe in 10 recreations of this event, the typewriter is destroyed every single time. But with every recreation of this scenario and the unpredictable nature of monkeys, whether it's the 10th time or the 110th recreation, the monkey will eventually hit the keys of the typewriter as the device is intended to be used.
Any remotely tangible outcome of this practice may not be immediate, you may not even witness it in your lifetime, but the belief that it will never occur is mathematically impossible. The means to achieve the outcome are possible, its only a matter of time, a matter of rolling the dice, over and over and over and over again, repeating infinitely.
This monkey does not sleep and does not eat. Eternally striking the keys of a typewriter for an infinite amount of time. Minute by minute, hour by hour, as the days turn into years and the years into centuries. Thousands of years fly by only to be followed by millions more, then even billions of years pass. But the monkey keeps typing, as it always had and may always do so.
So what is the monkey capable of randomly coming up with, when given this infinite amount of time?
According to Émile Borel's Infinite Monkey theorem, as the variable outcomes stack up exponentially with the possibilities that infinity provides, eventually a monkey would be destined to write an entire page of comprehensible English. By that very same logic, eventually, a monkey would also type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, possibly the greatest human writer to ever exist. Without a single spelling mistake.
- JoinedDecember 30, 2015
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