Re: [Leica] Monkey Business??

[drb@MIT.EDU]

Phong-

The mean time would be several orders of magnitude more than the age of the
universe in seconds.  Look at it this way - suppose by some miracle the
monkey succeeds in typing almost all of the complete works of Shakespeare
and is about to hit the last character on the last page.  Given that there
are ~100 possible choices on the keyboard, there is a 99% chance that he
will pick the wrong one, thus nullifying the result.  That, of course, isn't
to say that monkeys could never produce prose - just look at Congress
(screeching and feces throwing included).

To bring it back to a more related topic, my research at the MIT Media Lab
is about photography and imagemaking in the future.  I am working with many
of the people who have revolutionized these fields in the past (Steve
Benton, Glorianna Davenport, etc.) and a few companies that are agressively
researching the future (Kodak, Sony, Motorola, etc.).  If anyone is
interested I would be happy to talk about where photography (both pro and
consumer) may end up 20-30 years out.

- --Dan




- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Phong" <phong@doan-ltd.com>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 8:09 PM
Subject: RE: [Leica] Monkey Business??


> Every novel, play, digital image (hence digitized of paintings, etc.)
> can be represented as a (very big) number (extremely long string of 1's
> and 0's).   Said monkey is a random number generator; assuming a uniform
> distribution of the numbers, eventually _any_ number will come up, given
> enough time.    A very bad novel has just a good a chance to come up
> as a very good one, each being vastly (and I mean hugely) outnumbered
> by junk (unrecognized as a novel).
>
> On a practical level, though I haven't done the calculations*, I wouldn't
> be surprised if, assuming the monkey types a character a second, the mean
> time (50% that it has already happened) to generate the works of Mr.
> Shakespeare is more than all seconds from the beginning of time
> (whenever that was), to the present one.
>
> Put in another way: if such monkey had existed and had succeeded in
> typing Shakespeare's works, we would have one hell of a time to find it
> among all the trash that's generated in the process.
>
> Waste management is the name of the game.
>
> - Phong
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> > [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Edward
> > Caliguri
> > Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 5:46 PM
> > To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> > Subject: [Leica] Monkey Business??
> >
> >
> >  Steve, BD, folks -
> >     Just to chime in -- the Zen thing and al can get one thinking -- Is
good
> > writing de-valued because of the "Monkey - Shakespeare" theory? You
know, a
> > monkey in a room with a typewriter (remember those :-) ?) will
eventually
> > crank out the complete works of said Author if given enough time? Is it
> > easier to create a truly "Great" (whatever that is!) photograph, than a
> > truly "Great" drawing/painting, which would be infinitely easier than
> > writing a truly "Great" novel or play? Someone needs to do a Philosophy
> > dissertation!
> >     EC
>
> --
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>

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