Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- From: Kermit <unrestrained_hand@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2008 07:32:10 -0700 (PDT)
On Jun 2, 5:40 pm, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 07:32:59 -0700 (PDT), hersheyh
<hershe...@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.
So the chimps' work would be analogous to the pool of random
inheritable variation, and the editor to natural selection. I always
tell Creationists who bring this claim up contemptuously that they are
forgetting the librarians*, but none of them have ever acknowledged
it :(
--
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."
* I would suggest an editor who snatches the pages (files) from the
typewriters (computers) when he sees a sentence that makes sense.
Another gang of apes are working the word processors, and another
editor checks out *those modifications. After all, NS works on what
came before; it doesn't start from scratch each time. And the goal
isn't the works of Shakespeare, but any story that has a sensible
sequence of words. But thinking thru all of this is dangerously close
to understanding ToE, so Creationists would shy away from it. I
suppose that some Creationists would claim this scenario "proves" that
a mind is required, or at least an editor. Or perhaps typewriters.
Kermit
.
- References:
- Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- From: Jason Spaceman
- Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- From: Richard Smol
- Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- From: hersheyh
- Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- From: r norman
- Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- From: John Wilkins
- Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- Prev by Date: Re: News: Non-religious summer camps develop niche; emphasize science, evolution.
- Next by Date: Re: Creationists want to build a themepark in Germany
- Previous by thread: Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- Next by thread: Re: Commentary: Darwinism Simply Can't Answer These Questions
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
