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To: tortoise
Rubbish. The final probability, which you don't even know because you probably didn't even read that far, mathematically shows that 17 Billion monkeys in each of 17 Billion planets typing for 17 Billion years would have less of a chance of typing THE FIRST SENTENCE of Hamlet than a single lottery ticket has the chance of winning a single lottery.

So no, you can't get Hamlet out of randomness, much less the entire collected works of Shakespeare, and certainly not a sophisticated computer program.

It's in the math.

Read the link in Post #310. The MATH debunks your claims, and that's why you can never produce the examples that you naively called "trivial".

That's why you will flee this debate with lame excuses rather than attempt to post the math that you said was likewise "trivial".

You have confused folklore with science, and now you've been busted.

319 posted on 03/04/2002 10:27:20 PM PST by Southack
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To: Southack
Rubbish. The final probability, which you don't even know because you probably didn't even read that far, mathematically shows that 17 Billion monkeys in each of 17 Billion planets typing for 17 Billion years would have less of a chance of typing THE FIRST SENTENCE of Hamlet than a single lottery ticket has the chance of winning a single lottery.

I read it. Who cares how improbable it is? 17 billion years and 17 billion monkeys isn't very much. I actually think you kind of missed the point of that paper (it was a geek joke), but whatever.

So no, you can't get Hamlet out of randomness, much less the entire collected works of Shakespeare, and certainly not a sophisticated computer program.

How do you logically fly from utterly improbable to impossible? It may seem to be true for you to equate the two in day to day life, but it isn't even remotely true in a mathematical sense. Mathematics doesn't use rounding errors and fudge factors (though engineers do).

321 posted on 03/04/2002 10:38:09 PM PST by tortoise
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To: Southack
I might also point out that at the beginning of the page you link to, the author wrote this:

"This argument is actually quite sound -- given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce "Hamlet" by accident."

Thanks for playing though. Like your Prigogine evidence, you are either ignorant of the math or intentionally misappropriating it as "evidence" of your position. That's okay, you can still use the mathematics text that I referenced. Not that it will help you.

323 posted on 03/04/2002 10:43:06 PM PST by tortoise
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