Scientists question the “wise monkey paradox”

The calculations of two mathematicians questioned the “wise monkey paradox”which claims that an ape, typing randomly on a typewriter, will end up reproducing, for example, the complete works of Shakespeare if given the necessary time.

This hypothesis, formulated more than a century ago, suggests that, given enough time, something improbable but technically possible can become probable.

But Australian mathematicians calculated that Even all the chimpanzees in the world would “almost certainly” never be able to reproduce the works of the English playwright and poet, not even having the duration of the Universe to do so.

In a study published this week in the journal Franklin Open, they explain that they calculated what a monkey that types once a second on a 30-character keyboard for 30 years could produce.

They also used a theoretical duration of the Universe of a googol, a numerical expression equivalent to a 1 followed by 100 zeros.

The experiment ruled out factors such as the apes’ diet, their means of survival, or the extinction of the Sun within a few billion years.

According to these calculations, a single monkey, typing throughout its life, would have only a 5% chance of the word “banana” appearing in its letter combinations.

A word that, by the way, is absent from the 884,647 that make up the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Mathematicians wanted to give monkeys a chance by “recruiting” chimpanzees, the primate closest to humans.

The current population of chimpanzees in the world is estimated at around 200,000 and the study was based on the hypothesis that this population would remain stable until the end of time.

The bottom line is that even such a large workforce would be totally insufficient.

Their chances of success would not be “even one in a million,” one of the study’s authors, Stephen Woodcock, from the University of Technology, Sydney, told New Scientist.

“If every atom in the universe were, in turn, a universe” to repeat the experience as many times as necessary, “it wouldn’t happen either,” he insisted.

Increasing the number of chimpanzees or their keyboard typing speed would not change anything, the study states.

The research concludes, ironically, that Shakespeare himself (1564-1616) may have answered the question of whether “the work of a monkey could really replace human effort as a source of knowledge and creativity” by citing a replica of his work. Hamlet” (Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87) “No.”