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Quote of the day — Finally some closure on monkeys typing Shakespeare!

William Dembski
January 4, 2007
Just For Fun
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“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”
–Robert Wilensky

HOMEPAGE: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wilensky
SOURCE: http://www.jimpoz.com/quotes/speaker.php?speakerid=855

Comments
Mike1962, "I have heard that a single monkey typed the entire manuscript to The God Delusion. Has anyone verified that?" Beautiful. I needed that.Douglas
January 6, 2007
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Mike1962: I have heard that a single monkey typed the entire manuscript to The God Delusion. Has anyone verified that? If so, he was well shaven and had his tail docked ;-)Robo
January 5, 2007
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Uh-huh. IMHO, I think I addressed the issue adequately in my novel Wonderboy and the Black Hole of Nixvy Veck, thank yew. The monkeys/Shakespeare conundrum is pure mythology. But, then again, so is Darwinism, which is why the Darwinists have made reference to it, from Huxley to the present.terrylmirll
January 5, 2007
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“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to pandasthumb.org and talkorigins.org, we know that is not true.” –Stu HarrisStuartHarris
January 5, 2007
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Your physics book is obviously pseudoscience because we do not know who designed the typewriter designer and in order to be considered science we always need to know who designed the designer in an infinite regression. In fact all books in and of themselves are pseudoscience unless it is known who designed the book designer.
Not necessarily. Sometimes we need to know and sometimes not. And sometimes, we just want to know.Daniel King
January 5, 2007
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It was a girly monk.DaveScot
January 5, 2007
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I have heard that a single monkey typed the entire manuscript to The God Delusion. Has anyone verified that?mike1962
January 5, 2007
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Robo, Your physics book is obviously pseudoscience because we do not know who designed the typewriter designer and in order to be considered science we always need to know who designed the designer in an infinite regression. In fact all books in and of themselves are pseudoscience unless it is known who designed the book designer. ROFLMAO A bit of evolutionary biology logic for your enjoyment.DaveScot
January 4, 2007
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In my university thermal physics textbook (Thermal Physics, Kittel and Kroemer, 2nd Ed.), it is clearly shown the monkeys and typewriters idea is ridiculous. I faintly remember the odds of them putting a short work together by chance ... 1 in 10^165,000 ... e.g. not likely ;-)Robo
January 4, 2007
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What's really sad is that some people actually do use the infinite monkey argument, even in peer-reviewed papers. They don't make it sound so silly, but there is a striking similarity between Proposition 2 (on pgs. 8-9) and the infinite monkey theorem.johnnyb
January 4, 2007
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I'm not sure you want to quote this guy. I think he is suggesting that both me and thee are monkeys. He is one of the monkeys too, yes? Fortunately Shakespear himself is a former monkey, so there's no problem. Ops, turns out that the monkeys have produced the complete works of shakespeare -- http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/ Bummer.bFast
January 4, 2007
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