[ctdonath2]

That's an amazing amount of effort expended in missing a key point.

As others have noted, there are naturally additional mechanisms for enhancing the survivability of certain combinations. Some combinations naturally fall apart real quick, while others tend to replicate. The "monkeys and typewriters" analogy chanages dramatically if, while pounding out a stream of random text, words in the dictionary are kept while non-words are discarded.

Some guy built a machine to generate the self-referential sentence "this sentence contains ______ As, _______ Bs, ______ Cs, ... and ______ Zs." (blanks are numbers written as words). Took 5 years to generate a legitimate solution by inserting numbers sequentially and testing for correctness. By instead counting letters, inserting values, and re-evaluating, the 5 year time can be cut down to a few seconds. The point is that by changing from pure randomness or sequential testing to even simple affinity testing & generation, seemingly impossible probabilities suddenly become easy certainties.

The realm of "chaos theory" revolves around the concept of "attractors": in nature, few events (if any) happen purely randomly; instead, there are simple rules that guide behaviors into viable patterns. Regarding "monkeys+typewriters vs. evolution", the flaw in the article is that DNA etc. needs little to start minimal reproduction, and once that affinity & reproduction process begins, it tends to perpetuate itself, useless mutations terminate swiftly, and useful mutations tend to reproduce. When applied to the "primordial soup", the "strange attractors" of chaos theory apply, and chemical affinities tend to promote progress.

There are plenty of problems with evolution. The "million monkeys" argument is not one of them, and simply shows ignorance.

[js1138]

I'd love to see this debated in high school, at least in advanced biology. As someone who tuned out of school (spent my time reading George Gamow instead of textbooks) I would have been amazed and delighted by a classroom debate on this or any other controversial subject.

Why is debate considered a waste of class time? It is a great motivator.

[Southack]

"The "monkeys and typewriters" analogy chanages dramatically if, while pounding out a stream of random text, words in the dictionary are kept while non-words are discarded."

Yes, but it would no longer be either random or natural or unaided. The dictionary contains knowledge. Injecting such wisdom/intelligence into the analogy would merely demonstrate that Life is more likely to form if there was some intelligence involved.