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To: Blood of Tyrants

Huxley claimed that given enough time, a money at a typewriter could generate the works of William Shakespere.


62 posted on 05/31/2005 1:35:33 PM PDT by dartuser (Many people think that questioning Darwinian evolution must be equivalent to espousing creationism.)
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To: dartuser

"Huxley claimed that given enough time, a money at a typewriter could generate the works of William Shakespere."

(1) If that is true, I think Huxley underestimates how long it would take. I actually once ran a monkey-typing program to match it up against just typing the alphabet, and the computer could only get up to "C" within a few hours of typing (this was on an Apple II, though).

(2) This assumes that the words could stay on the page. In the biochemistry of the origin of life, a non-final form will cause the page itself to crumble. Not only would the monkeys have to type, they'd have to type fast to get it on the page before it disintegrates.

(3) Simply saying "x random event could happen given enough time" is actually quite against standard scientific methods, which use statistical improbability to prove answers. It is _possible_ that the results of all the science done in the last year is just the result of randomness, but we reject that possibility because it is statistically improbable.


135 posted on 05/31/2005 2:44:16 PM PDT by johnnyb_61820
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To: dartuser

The theory of evolution: 3 monkeys, 30 minutes.


139 posted on 05/31/2005 2:49:47 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (G-d is not a Republican. But Satan is definitely a Democrat.)
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To: dartuser

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. ~ Robert Wilensky


510 posted on 06/02/2005 8:52:40 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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