To Ook, Or Not To Ook?
January 14th, 2009 · Posted in Throwing a monkey-wrench in the works... · 5 CommentsI don’t know who it was that first talked about the possibility of monkeys typing randomly on typewriters producing Hamlet entirely by chance, but it is an argument that I have often heard. “Sure it’s unlikely,” I’m told, “but given enough time and enough monkeys, it would happen.”
This argument is actually quite sound — given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce “Hamlet” by accident. The fact that it is intuitively sound is the argument’s greatest problem, because it means that people generally don’t bother checking the exact figures. This is a shame, because it is one of those rare areas of speculation where the exact figures can be calculated.
- The Mathematics of Monkeys and Shakespeare,
by The Famous Brett Watson
A fascinating explanation of why you might get the word “Ook” from an thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, but getting “To be or not to be, that is the question”, much less the entirety of Hamlet, just ain’t going to happen.
Go read it, it makes the mathematics of unimaginably large numbers fun.
RodeoClown: is aware of the study with orangutans and computers.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:50 am
This is not a bad attempt at the maths at this one, but the comparison with evolution is misleading. The trouble with the typewriter task is that there is no ratchet – there’s no way for the monkeys to make progress. But this isn’t the case in terms of evolution, which is naturally ratcheted – as soon as you have a replicating molecule, you can refine that towards more complicated lifeforms. That’s the essence of the natural selection paradigm.
From a theological perspective, what’s amazing about evolution isn’t that you can achieve information from nothing (although make no mistake, that is amazing!) but that we live in a universe with conditions that allow this to happen, and that we live in a solar system with conditions to encourage that to happen, and on a planet where that *has* happened.
The materialist response to this mystery is to say “well if it wasn’t like that, we wouldn’t be here!” which is a surprisingly bland attempt to void the divine mystery of it all. When that is one’s attitude to the patently miraculous, it’s no surprise that God would be difficult to imagine!
Incidentally, I’m doing a six parter on myths of evolution over the next month and a half. It’s all science-grounded stuff, I never tip over into theology, but you might be interested in some of the ways that paradigms like “the selfish gene” are really stories spun out of the observable facts, since these sort of ideologies are used to impugn religious beliefs but are suprisingly mythological in their construction.
Thanks for the site tip – he has some good stuff on Feyerabend that I enjoyed reading.
Hope all is well with you and yours!
January 15th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Hi Chris,
we are all doing OK.
I thought you might find this one interesting. In one of his other essays he mentions ratcheting, so it’s not something un-thought of.
Also, I stumbled over this via wikipedia when I was looking up the infinite monkey theorem (for work purposes, nonetheless
), it wasn’t in looking up creationist theories/justifications etc. It was a bit
serendipitous, as he seems to have some similar beliefs to my own, and lives within driving distance of myself… His article Evolution Explains Everything is pretty interesting too (the latest entry there is in 2006, so it’s not to hard to read everything).
“as soon as you have a replicating molecule”
See that ^, that’s where I have a problem with ratcheting – a replicating molecule has to occur at some point. Possibly by magic.
I can see ratcheting occurs, but take a step back, and you see that the ratchet needs to be created too – what defines “progress”, for instance.
I’m still reading the stuff you post (although I am reading less of it these days, as you have moved most of your stuff to ihobo), I don’t always comment, as I often feel there is nothing substantive I can add (although come the Firefly-religion article, I have a few things to say, like Joss Whedon seems to have never read the Bible
).
Thanks for your thoughts.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
“See that ^, that’s where I have a problem with ratcheting – a replicating molecule has to occur at some point. Possibly by magic.”
Absolutely! This is the whole nub of the issue here: you *must* turn to a macguffin at some point. Non-theists usually turn to the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics – but this too is pure metaphysics. It is just as valid a move to turn to God instead.
William Lane Craig does a brilliant job of exploring this idea in this piece:
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/barrow.html
It might be a bit “crunchy” for you, but I think you’ll enjoy the thrust of his argument all the same!
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to this, but you know how it is.
As for Firefly, I agree with you that Whedon’s presentation of Christianity is rather odd (and this for a number of reasons) but I still love that he put religion right into the centre of his science fiction show. You have to appreciate how damnably rare it is for this to happen, and while I think his view of future Christianity is bizarre, I’d still much rather see science fiction writers postulate a future in which religion maintains its relevance rather than the “atheistic fantasy” that religion falls away to irrelevance in the near future.
Well, we’ll get to this around the start of the Summer I suppose.
In love and fellowship,
Chris.
February 21st, 2009 at 7:21 pm
PS:
“although I am reading less of it these days, as you have moved most of your stuff to ihobo”
Just the Wednesday post on Games. Not interested in games any more?
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:49 am
Hi Chris, no worries about the late reply – that’s why I have the email-subscription button, we can pick up a conversation whenever
I’ve read some other articles by Craig (yes, they are very ‘crunchy’), and I am familiar the Anthropic principle. In an article by the author of my original link (can’t remember which one), he affirms the idea that, at some point, you have to rely on faith in something, whether that be my personal God, an impersonal ‘force’, blind luck or magical space-pixies (I realise that you are well aware of this fact btw).
—
I do appreciate the view that religion will still exist in the far future, it is kind of boring to see these future worlds with no religion – I imagine they would be mostly anarchic and brutal, not all clean and friendly.
Oh, and Summer is nearly over… (you and your Northern-centric view of the seasons)!
—
I occasionally read the ihobo blog, but I haven’t put it in my feed reader. It’s not that I’m not interested in games any more, I just don’t play too many (Team Fortress 2, Guitar Hero, and whatever flash games I find on Kongregate).
I’ve also started playing through a bunch of puzzle games on an old Mac emulator (so Fool’s Errand and games like that).
I guess I’m not super interested in the theory behind games at the moment, I still have a few dev-blogs in my reader, but nowhere near as many as I used to.
Enjoy the remaining days of (your) Winter!