this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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It's not literal.
It's a way to explain that any result is possible.
Like, throw some matter/energy in any closed system, and eventually, everything and anything possible will happen on an infinite timeline.
So sure, 99.9999999999999999% are going to poop on it, but on an infinite scale, you'd get Shakespeare
Okay, but apes have already written the collected works of Shakespeare.
Well no. You can try to count every real number forever and you will miss infinitely many still. Some infinites are larger than others, hence I do not see any reason why "infinite time" would cover "every possibility happening". On the other hand, if you do have a mathematical proof you could refer to, I would be most grateful.
EDIT: To write out my example, let us consider a machine that picks a random number between 3 and 4 every second. Then there is every second a nonzero chance that this machine (assuming true and not pseudo randomness) will pick, say pi. The range of numbers picked constitute the image of a function from the whole numbers to the real numbers (up to isomporphism), which cannot be surjective. Hence there are numbers not picked even though there was a > 0 chance of picking them every second for an infinite time.
No. The probability of picking any particular number from a uniform distribution is 0.
On the contrary, since the works of Shakespeare are a finite string over a finite alphabet (I can formalize this argument if you want), the probability of typing them out after some fixed large number of keystrokes is some nonzero number 𝑝. With 𝑛 monkeys, the probability that at least one will type out the works is 1 − (1 − 𝑝)ⁿ, which goes to 1 as 𝑛 → ∞.
Now, you are right that this does not mean that the works are guaranteed to be typed out. However, it has probability 1, so it’s mathematically “almost certain”.
I don't think I understand your example but I feel like people downvoting you without arguing the math is something that should be left to twitter and reddit.
Thanks. It was a bit poorly worded, but I do think the original statement is wrong and just wanted to sketch an idea of why.
I hear what you are saying and agree. I never took the monkey Shakespeare theory seriously. It sounded a bit too poppy and quite honestly the guy that told me was a douche and pronounced giblets wrong. But as a theory you could get anything in a long enough time span and infinite amount of resources. Why or how that matters? Well I just don't see it.
Of course I am not denying that anything possible could happen. That is contradictory to the assumption it was possible in the first place. What I am saying is just that not all that is possible will happen, even if given an infinite time to do so.
EDIT: Unfortunately, given a setup like this the math says monkey Shakespeare will almost surely happen due to there only being finite variations.
Oh I get you. I see it the same way. I saw it as an interesting thought experiment.
Is it pronounced like gif?
Even funnier in your example is that the chance of any real number ever being picked is infinitesimally small, instead of guaranteed.
Yep! Relatively speaking almost none of them will be picked. The same is also true even if one had a countable infinite amount of machines trying to pick these numbers.
Infinite, sure. But the universe doesn't have infinite. There are SO many english words that just putting them together randomly it's still effectively impossible to generate a work of Shakespear.
And even with as much tech as we can imagine, the universe is finite to our reach and especially to our time. The odds of randomly generating Shakespear is so low even using a processor the size of the sun, the heat death of the universe might happen first. It's theoretically possible, but so is a planet that spontaneously generates made of nothing but cheddar cheese.
I don't think you quite grasp how a hypothetical works.
Some of the smartest people alive don't think so...
Big Bangs can be sequential, an endless cycle. Even in a "heat death" there's still black holes that over trillions and trillions of years will keep slowly getting closer to each other until eventually they combine.
The real heat death of the universe is one super massive black hole, and on a long enough timeline something will eventually happen which makes it spit all that matter and energy back out. Or even weirder, the inside is the new universe likely with random ass physics.
Like I said, the monkeys arent literal. It's a way to explain that infinite means everything
That's incorrect. The universe is infinite. But without FTL travel we can't access anything but the observable which is finite.
In heat death even black holes will evaporate. There is no anything ultimately in heat death. Just particles flying every way getting farther apart.
Also there's not even a theoretical way to survive a big crunch, big bang cycle.
One day someone is going to open their dryer and all their laundry is going to land perfectly folded based on that same theory. Maybe it is possible, but incredibly unlikely and even if it did happen you'd probably miss that particular revolution of the dryer.