Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions

r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 07:32:59 -0700 (PDT), hersheyh
<hersheyhv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 2, 3:01 am, Richard Smol <richard.s...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 1, 11:11 pm, Jason Spaceman <notrea...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

From the article:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
By R. GEOFFREY WEIHE Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune
Published: June 1, 2008

If you placed an infinite number of chimpanzees at an infinite number of
typewriters, would they eventually write all the great books?

Yes... and all the crappy ones, too.

RS

Anybody who thinks that an infinite number of chimpanzees at work on
an infinite number of typewriters would NOT write all the great books
doesn't understand the concept of infinity.

In fact, all the aforementioned infinite number of chimpanzees would
need is an equal number of typewriters as there are chimps and
sufficient time to write the length of the longest book in the great
books.

Now, if one were to posit a million chimps/generation and typewriters
and 6000 years....

One chimp with one typewriter entering a single letter every hundred
billion years would still do the job. You just have to wait a little
longer for the result.

One point: the chimps would either need to be random in their typing
(which they might not - an infinite number of monkeys typing the letter
"g" would result in no works at all) or biased in favour of sense (say,
their sensible fragments was collated, at random, by an infinite number
of librarians), in order to generate Borges' Library.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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  • Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Cant Answer These Questions
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    (talk.origins)