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Showing posts from October, 2023
 Monkey Business Through Absurd Extrapolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_program In chapter 3 of his book The Blind Watchmaker, biologist Richard Dawkins gave the following introduction to the program, referencing the well-known infinite monkey theorem.* I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence? [NOTE:   How lazy of Richard Dawkins to fail to look up the author of his monkey business.   It was Sir Arthur Eddi...