this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

An infinite amount of monkeys each given an infinite amount of time would produce all infinite strings possible on a typewriter (this includes ones that just happen to be terminated with a neverending substring of blank spaces, i.e. one where the monkey stops or presses whitespace keys and nothing else an arbitrary number of times).

If a cure for cancer exists and is expressable through language, they would not only produce one, but it would be there in every single language transliteratable to a Latin script; it would be there in ASCII art; it would be there in literally every text-based form imaginable. Of course the trouble would be sorting the infinite wheat from the infinite chaff.

Edit: https://libraryofbabel.info/ for the finite strings of 3200 characters.

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

I mean, even if the typewriter had an extra button setting off a bomb, killing the monkey and all the monkeys around them, they'd still pull it off. That's infinity baby.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The Library of Babel Jorge Luis Borges (1941)

A good read.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 days ago

That is wrong assumption. We know that even when something is infinite it may never reach required value. Shakespeare or anything else may be a unique event in the infinite space-time universe.