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the problem with this analogy is that it only makes one attempt -- ie, there is no re-evaluation -- to use the parlance of genetic algoriths, no fitness function. that is a key part of the iteration: make random guesses, check for fitness, modify highest fitting etc... I'd like to see what the chances are if these monkeys had some appropriate fitness function. something based on an english dictionary.

but the key is this, its not all randomness, but ITERATED randomness.

You've hit on the right answer, but nobody's paying attention. There's no fitness check. If we posit an environment with selective pressures, where a sentence that is more like the final sentence is favored over a sentence that is less like the final product, then we will very, very quickly arrive at the final sentence - within 40 or 50 generations.

The error in the original post is the assumption that every attempt is a fresh attempt, where we throw everything out from the last run and make a random stab in the dark. If that were the case, the article would be correct. But it isn't - evolution is an additive process, where the last generation represents the starting point for the next generation.

the problem with this analogy is that it only makes one attempt -- ie, there is no re-evaluation -- to use the parlance of genetic algoriths, no fitness function. that is a key part of the iteration: make random guesses, check for fitness, modify highest fitting etc... I'd like to see what the chances are if these monkeys had some appropriate fitness function. something based on an english dictionary.

So you're saying this accident called evolution somehow learned from its mistakes?

"but the key is this, its not all randomness, but ITERATED randomness."

Well, that could be true only if you are speaking of self-replicating life. But in order to get to first life, iterated randomness is irrelevant.

Iterated randomness only happens if you have, up front, a functioning "iteration" machine.

To me, the beautiful sting in this monkey tale is that the monkeys did create the works of Shakespeare, and it took fewer than a million of them less than a million years.

They didn't do it with typewriters; they did it in the most absurdly improbable way of all: by evolving into humans, developing language and culture, and then, on St George's Day, 1564, giving birth to one William Shakespeare, who wrote the plays we all know and love.

As to how they managed this, I refer you to one of the best written books on the subject of probability and evolution, Climbing Mount Improbable.

the problem with this analogy is that it only makes one attempt -- ie, there is no re-evaluation -- to use the parlance of genetic algoriths, no fitness function. that is a key part of the iteration: make random guesses, check for fitness, modify highest fitting etc... I'd like to see what the chances are if these monkeys had some appropriate fitness function. something based on an english dictionary.

You clearly do not understand the problem evolutionists have with the above. A gene is either functional or not functional. In the example above until the entire sentence is written, the gene is not functional. Therefore, until the correct gene sequence is found for the new function, the individual(s) possessing the incipient new gene, do not derive any benefit from it and perhaps may suffer harm from it (ie it may be dysfunctional before it is correctly coded). Therefore there is no reevaluation, no feedback possible.

"the problem with this analogy is that it only makes one attempt -- ie, there is no re-evaluation -- to use the parlance of genetic algoriths, no fitness function. that is a key part of the iteration: make random guesses, check for fitness, modify highest fitting etc... I'd like to see what the chances are if these monkeys had some appropriate fitness function. something based on an english dictionary."

Making random guesses is fine. I can accept that a lifeless, pre-bio world can make random "guesses" by default. But how does a lifeless world "check for fitness" and then decide what to modify for subsequent guesses? Would we expect to see the monkeys read the english dictionary that you propose any more than we would expect the pre-DNA world to design a fitness check and decide what to modify for subsequent guesses?

The math in the proof for this thread is targeting the ability of data to sequence itself naturally, without intelligent intervention. Injecting a dictionary into such an analogy would seem a bit contrary to that goal...

YOu are, of course correct, but this is too complicated for the automaton that wrote this article.

17 Billion galaxies, each with 17 Billion planets, each with 17 Billion monkeys typing a line a second for 17 Billion years and still the odds are basically impossible that such a result would occur. And that is a very simple result when compared to even the most basic organism. Not to mention the fact that he threw in the monkeys, typewriter, planets and paper... It is pretty conclusive that the complexity required for our system to exist rules out the possibility of it occurring randomly.