this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
485 points (92.2% liked)

Technology

58997 readers
4216 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
485
Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds (phys.org)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
186 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Alright then. 2 monkeys... 3? 4? The answer has to be a number lol.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 19 hours ago

42 monkeys?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago

Well it isn't 6.

From Wikipedia:

In 2002, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes crested macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon, England from May 1 to June 22, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website. Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five total pages largely consisting of the letter "S",the lead male began striking the keyboard with a stone, and other monkeys followed by urinating and defecating on the machine

Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT), said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned "an awful lot" from it. He concluded that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that