Basically it's a poorly thought out experiment, with no particular
relevance to anything, like a lot of current "science". The thought
experiment he's trying to prove doesn't say that the monkeys will
produce snippets of Shakespeare, that some higher being will have to
assemble, rather it asserts embedded in the stream of meaningless
gibberish a complete work of Shakespeare nay all of them would emerge,
So he's not even testing that hypothesis. I expect he got a grant.
On the other hand it could simply be bad science reporting, which
wouldn't surprise me at all either,
On 9/29/2011 8:43 AM, Darren Addy wrote:
Interesting article. However I think that even the most objective
proponent of evolution would have to say that this thought experiment
does nothing to advance the argument. (Perhaps if the code that
created the algorithms that created the virtual monkeys had been
produced by monkeys?)
Quote: "Each sequence is nine characters long and each is checked to
see if that string of characters appears anywhere in the works of
Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress
has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard. "
Had these been real monkeys, someone would have needed to be there to
tear the sheet out of the typewriter each time 9 characters were
reached (and to do the comparison with the blueprint: the original
work of Shakespeare)
In the above experiment, someone decided to make the sequence 9
characters (instead of 8, or 10, or 64) each of which changes the
probability of "success" of the individual operation.
Also the result is compared to a known endpoint (goal) of known
complexity. Apples and oranges, to say the least, in comparing with
what occurs in nature.
Darren Addy
Kearney, Nebraska
--
Don't lose heart! They might want to cut it out, and they'll want to avoid a
lengthily search.
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