September 13, 2004

Monkeys Produce Hamlet: Feasibility Study
posted by rodgerd 20 years ago
  • 347. ARGUMENT FROM TYPING MONKEYS        (1) The probability of recreating Hamlet by uniformly selecting from texts of the same length is essentially zero.        (2) Therefore, God exists.
  • sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss *crap*
  • humans created hamlet. therefore it is not a valid test of chance operations. this guy obviously does not understand the first thing about the tendency of carbon bonds to produce complex molecules.... nor the idea that complexity is not the same thing as intelligence... but we are used to the fundies and their wee obsessions, and we must allow for their little tantrums so that they don't go and murder us all.
  • blab blah and who created God in the first place blah blah and who created the one who created God blah blah Poor hypothetical monkeys... they'll never be able to reproduce Shakespere's works. I hope they can get past this disappointment and find other purposes in their hypothetical existence.
  • Some guys have also have a java applet calculating it out...
  • i love when believers try to use logic. it's so...rube goldberg.
  • (I should add I am enchanted by his monkey calculations, not by his crappy creationism).
  • Larry the Chimp calls Adam on the phone. It's been ringing for a while. Larry: Oh, come on, Adam, what is ... Hello? Eve: Hello, you've reached the office of Adam. May I ask where to direct your call? Larry: What?! Uh ... Eve, there's only two of you ... Eve: Who may I direct your call to? Larry: Oh fer cryin' ... Adam, please. Eve: One moment, let me see if he's in. Larry waits. He waits some more. Adam: Bubbeleh! Larry: Buba-what-a? Adam: Bubbeleh! Larry: What the heck does that mean? Adam: No idea. Everyone's saying it! Bubbeleh! Larry: Adam. Adam. Calm down, man. Wait a minute .. who's everyone? Adam: Well, you know. Bubbeleh! Larry: Oh, sheesh. Adam, I need you to come back down to Earth for a minute. Adam: What's up, old chum, old pal, old friend'o mine? Larry: Adam. I wrote this play. Adam: Great, send me a copy. I'll run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it! You know, focus group it and what have you. Larry: Flagpole? What?! Focus group?!? You don't focus group ... Adam: What's it about? Larry: What? Adam: What's it about? Larry: There's this guy, see, and he comes home and finds out his mom has been sleeping with his uncle after his father died. He sees a ghost who tells him to avenge his death. Adam: Avenging? I like it! Hmm, incest is a tough sell, though. Kinda gives people the creeps. Maybe ... maybe if his uncle was his aunt ... Larry: What? That's wrong on so many levels ... Adam: You got something against lesbians? Larry: Well, not as such, but you know, this is a serious play. Adam: Nothing wrong with serious lesbianism. Larry: Yeah, but the plays not about ... Adam: Whatcha calling it? Larry: Uh ... Hamlet. Adam: Boring! Boring! Let's call it "Ilsa, She-wolf of Denmark"! Larry: What? You ... you ... you philistine! Adam: Now, Larry, no need to get huff ... Larry slams down the phone, rips his manuscript to shreds, and spends the rest of the day at his psychotherapist. Many centuries will pass before the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark is written by a broke Englishman hanging out it a pub.
  • *Applause* I like the title, "Ilsa, She-Wolf of Denmark". Does that make me a bad person?
  • leaving aside the religon stuff, I used to hear the saying as "an infinite amount of monkeys on an infinite amount of typewriters" - the point being anything would happen eventually given an infinite group working at it, (although how this group would fit in the universe, which almost everyone believes to be finite these days, is a seperate question) But somewhere along the line it morphed into a "million monkeys at a million typewriters." Which if you think about it even briefly, the odds are incredibly long that a million monkeys would never come close to producing anything coherent...
  • Mr. burns: it was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?! [takes sheet from monkey's typewriter, throws it away]
  • {bananas} drivingmenuts!
  • You own Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Shieks or Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS? Oh good heavens. If I owned the latter title, I think my mom would disown me. *shudder*
  • Bravo, drivingmenuts, bravo.
  • practice tolerance, every day.
  • My monkeys still haven't produced Hamlet. Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, and a few Jacobean tragedies, that's it. I keep telling them "Look, schmucks, nobody's going to shell out for a TV docudrama about a bunch of monkeys typing Cymbeline, capeesh? Come on, you can do it: 'Who's there?' Easy as pie!" But no, the obstinate little fuckers just keep producing minor stuff nobody cares about. Meanwhile, they're eating me out of house and home. Maybe I should give up and let them just write romance novels, since that's what they spend all their spare time reading. (And don't let them tell you they don't have any spare time -- they're real whiners, but I follow the letter of the law when it comes to treatment of Monkeys, Literature, For the Production of. No unripe bananas for them, oh no! Nothing but the best!) Oh, and God doesn't exist -- he told me so himself.
  • How weird. God just told me you didn't exist. Also, the internet is just some bunch of monkeys typing everything on their free time (when they are not writting B-movie scripts) for my amusement.
  • Hey, you know what? I saw a numberplate on my way to work this morning. I mean, what are the odds of seeing that particular numberplate? Wow, just blows my mind, it must be a sign or something.
  • I just wanted to tell you million good luck, and we're not counting on you.