Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds

Scope of the Paper and Theorem

• Many commenters stress the classic “infinite monkey theorem” is purely about infinity: with infinite time and/or infinite monkeys, any finite text occurs with probability 1.
• The paper instead analyzes a finite case: finite chimps, finite typing rate, finite universe lifetime.
• Some think calling the original theorem “misleading” is itself misleading; the word “infinite” was always explicit.
• Others say the paper’s point matches this: what’s possible with infinity is effectively impossible within the physical universe.

Probability, Scale, and the Finite Universe

• Back-of-the-envelope calculations are shared: probability scales as alphabet_size^text_length; even with all chimps over the universe’s lifetime, Shakespeare-length strings are astronomically unlikely.
• One comment cites the paper’s figure of ~10^-7,228,454 chance within the universe lifetime.
• Very short strings are plausible; longer than ~80 characters already becomes effectively impossible at cosmic scales.
• Parallelization (many monkeys/computers) reduces the expected time but not enough to reach Shakespeare.

Media Framing and Seriousness of the Work

• Several see the paper as semi-humorous, possibly Ig Nobel–style, and note it had no special funding.
• Commenters criticize media coverage for implying the theorem is “disproven,” whereas the paper itself affirms the infinite theorem and only examines finite constraints.

Links to Evolution and Abiogenesis

• Part of the thread debates using monkey-typing analogies against evolution.
• One side argues: evolution is not “pure random typing”; mutations are random but selection is not, and there are many “good enough” DNA sequences, unlike a single exact Shakespeare text.
• Others remain skeptical that random mutation plus selection in a few billion years can yield current genomic complexity or abiogenesis, describing this as intuitively too unlikely.
• Counterarguments emphasize massive parallelism, incremental improvement, non-random physical/chemical patterns, and existing empirical support for evolution.

Infinity, Randomness, and Thought Experiments

• Discussion extends to bogosort, Boltzmann brains, Hilbert’s Hotel, Library of Babel, and spherical cows as similar “idealized” thought experiments.
• Some highlight that results about infinity are mathematically valid but physically unattainable, raising questions about their real-world interpretive value.

Monkeys, Metaphors, and Humor

• Multiple jokes about Simpsons’ “blurst of times,” LLMs as key-mashing monkeys, evolving smarter monkeys, and “we need more monkeys.”
• Several note that in reality monkeys aren’t random number generators, underscoring the thought-experiment nature of the setup.