The infinite monkey theorem
#02—Will a monkey write your next novel?
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“Ford!” he said, “there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
There’s a theorem that states that a monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, would eventually type all the finite texts that exist. In this theorem, which pre-dates computer keyboards, that clever little monkey would one day type the complete works of William Shakespeare, knock out a copy of James Joyce’s Odyssey, and I hazard a guess it would type your next book too – on a typewriter!
Of course, the monkey in this theorem is a metaphor for an abstract device producing an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. Basically, the hypothesis is that if there’s a miniscule chance of something happening, it will surely occur, maybe tomorrow, or maybe in 330 trillion years. Perhaps in less time now that AI exists.
But are monkeys a suitable specimen for this metaphor?
To test the theorem, in 2002, students and lecturers from the University of Plymouth placed a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Sulawesi crested macaques at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England.
Over 53 days, the monkeys – named Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan – wrote five pages of text composed primarily of the letter ‘S’.
Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology told Associated Press they learned “an awful lot” from the experiment and that they were now certain monkeys “are not random generators.”
“They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there," he said.
So the results suggest, no, monkeys are unlikely to generate anything worth reading, at least not randomly.
But, the experiment’s questionable methodology calls the results into doubt. To be fair to the monkeys, they weren’t given an infinite amount of time, or a typewriter.
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Fascinating :)