Monkey Math!
Serious DiscussionDiscuss Monkey Math! in the Discussions forums; The Mathematics of Monkeys and Shakespeare
"This argument is actually quite sound -- given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce "Hamlet" by accident. The fact ...
"This argument is actually quite sound -- given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce "Hamlet" by accident. The fact that it is intuitively sound is the argument's greatest problem, because it means that people generally don't bother checking the exact figures. This is a shame, because it is one of those rare areas of speculation where the exact figures can be calculated. "
i'm not to fond of posting something without an opinion to back it up, however this was just interesting to me...*shrugs* i admire people willing to go through creative concepts to prove points. It shows me they thought it out themselves rather than having taken the words of others for fact...
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The problem with comparing the chances of a monkey randomly punching out a line of Shakespeare and the chances of a protein assembling natural is this: the probability caculated is of the chances that a line of Shakespeares being generated randomly exactly as is in a single step. This would be analogous to a long complex protein strain springing from unliving material in a single random event; this is spontaneous generation, not evolution! Evolution occurs via multiple generations with adaptation directed by mutation and natural selection. Richard Dawkins refutes your website's statistics with a program that more accurately mimics evolution. Here's the site with the relevant information under the heading "1.2.3 Statistical impossibility of proteins?".
Then, following Dawkins's revised program, the computer made multiple copies (progeny) of this sequence, while introducing random "errors" (mutations) into the copies. The computer examined all the mutated progeny and selected the one that had most similarity (however slight) to the line from Hamlet. This selected sequence was used as the basis for another generation of progeny with further mutations, from which the best copy was again selected -- and so on. By ten generations, the sequence had "evolved" to
MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRQREZ MECS P
By thirty generations, it was:
METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL
Instead of taking millions of years, the computer generated METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL in about half an hour, at the forty-third generation. Thus a cumulative multi-step model is not at all implausible as a model for evolution, given both a mechanism for replicating imperfect copies and a strong selective pressure.
i came across it when i was getting links to support my opinion. I was more impressed with the concept than the actuality of it's point...it was not representative of the opinion i was trying to convey.
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Agreed...saying that evolution can't occur because rocks don't suddenly turn into bears is hardly a valid arguement...if it were monkeys building a house perhaps it would make more sence as the effects would be a gradual build up rather an instantanious creation..as people who believe the creation myth would have it anyway.
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