this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
293 points (92.0% liked)

Technology

58981 readers
4181 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 minutes ago

This is a false flag study to undermine public support for mathematics research!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

How is this a study? It's just basic probability on a bogo sort style algorithm.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 minutes ago

It’s not a “study”, it’s just 2 mathematicians having some fun. The paper is a good read, and as a math teacher I see a lot of pedagogical values in such publications.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 hours ago

How is the infinite monkey theorum "misleading". It's got "infinite" in the name. If you're applying constraints based on the size or age of the universe, you are fundamentally misunderstanding the thought experiment.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

This sort of study shows you more how mathematicians think than how science or philosophy works.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

How about 4 monkeys in parallel?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

Yes, and add an Agile framework. Extreme Monkey typing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 35 minutes ago

What about monkey AI to get ahead using lower paid monkeys?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

Switch to AMD. More monkeys.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 45 minutes ago

They are, however, exceptionally adept at political speechwriting.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

So, while the Infinite Monkey Theorem is true, it is also somewhat misleading.

Is it though? The Monkey Theorem should make it understandable how long infinity really is. That the lifetime of the universe is not long enough is nothing unexpected IMHO, infinity is much (infinitely) longer. And that's what the theorem is about, isn't it?!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Except the lifetime of the universe is quite small when compared to infinity, so it doesn't really convey how large infinity is because it's so much more.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

They don't convey the same information.

Infinity isn't really an amount of something.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
> typeof Infinity
'number'

Riddle me that, smart guy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 49 minutes ago

Damn, you just SLAMMED me.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The statement isn't about "A" monkey. It's about an infinite amount of monkeys.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

And an infinite amount of time.

This "rebuttal" is forced contrarianism. It's embarrassing.

A thought experiment has rules, you can't just change them and say the experiment doesn't make sense...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 40 minutes ago

How would monkeys type through infinite. Don't they stop, are they not mortals like normal monkeys?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour 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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours 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,"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

This must be a very important question to whoever keeps funding these studies.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago

Really, it just takes an infinite amount of monkeys one time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

Their assumptions must be wrong. They do not account for the most basic principle of the universe, "the show must go on."

[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times??

You stupid monkey!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

I can't remember the author or title, but that was the idea for a story I once read.

God sends an angel and the monkeys to do the job. They get close, but when the angel is doing the final read through he sees "...to be, or not to beee, Damn the 'E' key is sticking. " And they have to start over

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 hours ago

Strong entry for an Ig Nobel Prize if nothing else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Alright then. 2 monkeys... 3? 4? The answer has to be a number lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

Well it isn't 6.

From Wikipedia:

In 2002, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes crested macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon, England from May 1 to June 22, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website. Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five total pages largely consisting of the letter "S",the lead male began striking the keyboard with a stone, and other monkeys followed by urinating and defecating on the machine

Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT), said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned "an awful lot" from it. He concluded that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago

42 monkeys?

load more comments
view more: next ›