Right back at ya… obviously.

It can be, but it isn’t.

The theorem is only true if monkeys are random. But monkeys are not random, and therefore this cannot be proved true using monkeys.

Yeah I get that, what I’m arguing is that monkey input != random input. Therefore the probably is not 1.

And the Monty Hall problem is really cool, and yes, I’ve seen it before, but it doesn’t have anything to do with this one.

No, I’m saying it’s not just improbable (if it were improbable, then yes, it would happen), I’m saying it’s impossible because of behavior.

As a small example, let’s say you wanted to type the ABC’s. However, every time you typed, your finger slid to press the key next to it as well. Then, no matter how many times you tried, you would never be able to type the ABC’s. That’s an exaggerated example of what I believe the monkeys would do. They simply would not be able to type letters at random. The way they work, they would be forced to mush buttons that do not allow for whole words.

If there was another scenario where there were about 30 boxes (one for each letter and any punctuation needed), and the monkey had to get a banana from one of the boxes, and that is what ‘typed’ the script, then yes, an infinite number of monkeys would be able to type Shakespeare. But because it’s a typewriter, I don’t think even an infinite amount would be able to.

I see what you’re saying, but I do think they would have behavioral ‘rules’ that would stop them even on an infinite time scale. It would work if monkeys were capable of pressing one letter at a time, walking away, and pressing another letter and so forth… and while that’s of course physically possible for the monkeys to do, I don’t think it’s actually possible because they are susceptible to their own behavior. Not saying they would never type one specific letter, but a better example would be the behavior of rolling their finger/hand while pressing a letter, such that a conglomeration of letters are pressed in a way that would never match a Shakespeare play.

It’s also possible that it’s not possible even on an infinite time scale. A quick example: if you asked an algorithm to choose a number, and you choose 6536639876555721, but the algorithm only chooses from the infinite number of even numbers, it will never choose your number. So for the monkeys, if they are just not ‘programmed’ to ever be able to write a whole Shakespeare play, they will not be able to even with infinite time and infinite moneys.

I always wish it was easy to “hyperlink” parts of my sentence. So that they could hover over it and see my explanation for that part. But alas, that would be too much work.