# I pit the "infinite" monkeys study **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 2, 2024, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573 "2024-11-02T03:59:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2024, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/42 "2024-11-03T04:04:11Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Over the course of infinity even those numbers are nothing. Yes and it was part of wiki’s discussion of very large numbers, which are different than infinity. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2024, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/43 "2024-11-03T05:12:48Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > there was only one vowel in the whole document – ‘a’. Compelling evidence that an infinite number of monkeys pounding randomly on typewriters for an infinite amount of time could produce a copy of _Gadsby_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/44 "2024-11-04T14:32:31Z")
My favorite “take” on the “monkeys with typewriters” is W.R. Bennett’s 1977 article “How Artificial is Intelligence?”, in which he describes his experiemts using a random number gebnerator and software that produces letters at a rate equal to that of thew letter’s probability, in lieu of an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27848169](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27848169) Unfortunately, I can’t find the whoile thing for free online, but that gives you the first page, at least. He used “space” as a letter, too. The basic program gave you gibberish, but then he started programming in the probabilities of two-letter pairs (“aa”, “ab”, “ac”, etc.) and using those in the proper probabilitiues, and things started looked less random. So he graduated from “second degree monkeys” to “third degree monkeys”, using the probabilities of sets of three letters, and then on to fourth order and fifth order monkeys and beyond. he found that fourth order monkeys came up with a lot of obscenities, interestingly enough. By the time you’re doing sixth order monkeys in a foreign language you don’t know, it becomes hard to tell the monkey’s output from real text. Some of the things his higher-order monkeys came up with are hilarious. # How Artificial Is Intelligence? The great works of literature and art are not merely rare statistical fluctuations, but are they simply the products of correlation matrices? W. R. Bennett Jr. American Scientist [Vol. 65, No. 6 (November-December 1977)](https://www.jstor.org/stable/i27848163), pp. 694-702 (9 pages) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/45 "2024-11-04T15:02:44Z")
Sounds like he invented the precursor to a Large Language Model. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Over the course of infinity even those numbers are nothing. Heck, the mean time for the universe to spontaneously reform by random thermal motion after decaying completely into heat death can be expressed in a reasonable number of nested exponential powers of ten. And _ **that’s** _ nothing compared to truly large numbers; which infinity is still infinitely larger than. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/46 "2024-11-04T15:13:37Z")
Flipping the theory on its head, I wonder if Shakespeare, given a typewriter and infinite time, could come up with the complete works of The Monkees. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/47 "2024-11-04T15:29:58Z")
Darn hard to write music on a typewriter. Lyrics, yes; music not so much. Better give him some staff paper too. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/48 "2024-11-04T15:36:32Z")
With _standard_ typewriters anyway; there were of course custom typing machines for composing music. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/49 "2024-11-04T15:37:29Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Sounds like he invented the precursor to a Large Language Model. Markov model, I would think? That is indeed a way to characterize a language and its writing system with certain statistics, and distinguish among different languages. > [@Lumpy](#): > > Heck, the mean time for the universe to spontaneously reform by random thermal motion after decaying completely into heat death can be expressed in a reasonable number of nested exponential powers of ten. And _ **that’s** _ nothing compared to truly large numbers; which infinity is still infinitely larger than. You do not need any esoteric theory of really big numbers to solve this problem. If the expected time is many orders of magnitude longer than the expected lifetime of the universe (which is not _that_ long, it is not going to happen. It makes for a nice exercise: e.g. show that it will take the monkeys longer to type out **AAAAAAAA** than **GFNEOCVH**. Random monkeys, that is, which also highlights the difference to “real” monkeys. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/50 "2024-11-04T16:46:11Z")
A scientific study has also arrived at the conclusion that since the man passed away in 1961, Schrodinger’s cat is also likely dead as well. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/51 "2024-11-04T19:10:06Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Schrodinger’s cat is also likely dead as well. He’s not dead. Not as long as we remember him. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/52 "2024-11-04T19:18:03Z")
If he’s not dead, I hope someone’s been changing his cat litter. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2024, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/53 "2024-11-04T20:29:55Z")
See, I think Schroedinger should have theorized about the Cat Box. Until you look in it, there’s only a 50% probability that it’s been used. So never open it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/54 "2024-11-05T01:10:03Z")
Of course there’s the spooky action at a distance of the aroma of used vs unused cat boxes to contend with. Which aroma tends to collapse the wavefunction. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2024, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/55 "2024-11-07T14:32:08Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Hey, anyone heard from @kayaker lately? No reason, just thought of him. Hey. Took some time off from screens to help out my friend. We got the job done and now I’m back! ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2024, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/56 "2024-11-13T03:32:05Z")
I think Bob Newhart really has the definitive word on this. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ngmf8G5xKas/maxresdefault.jpg "An Infinite Number of Monkeys") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngmf8G5xKas) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2024, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/57 "2024-11-13T12:56:32Z")
Bennett quotes that Bob Newhart routine in the first couple of pages of his paper. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2024, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/58 "2024-12-02T13:16:31Z")
Is lack of thumbs really the limiting factor for non-human animals? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/59 "2024-12-17T21:13:08Z")
Defiantly makes catching a ride home when your car breaks down more difficult. ---
**Author:** ![Folacin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folacin/32/3195_2.png) [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573/60 "2024-12-20T14:37:18Z")
Thumbs aren’t necessarily your best choice: > **[23 reactions · 11 shares | Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert hitchhiking in...](https://www.facebook.com/vivavintagepage/videos/4258467750893809/)** > > Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert hitchhiking in It Happened One Night, 1934. When director Frank Capra asked Claudette to expose her leg for the scene,... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-infinite-monkeys-study/1009573.md?page=2)