@@C4RL1NN It's a joke from The Simpsons. Mr Burns was expecting a bunch of monkeys on typewriters to write out Shakespeare's works and he read that instead of the "worst" of times and hit the monkey.
I feel like Ricky doesn't know how to explain it properly and Steve deliberately holds back from explaining it. Then again that's pretty much how their whole routine works. And it's brilliant.
Yeah. He should have said that the monkeys don't matter at all. In fact this theorem is best explained with random keystrokes where every key has the probability to be pressed above 0 and every key stroke is independent from the one before. The monkey gives unnecessary room for imagination and actually takes you away from the actual thought experiment.
@@Qman125 He explains it well if you already understand the concept, but to make Karl understand he'd really have to use small words and start at the beginning. Karl doesn't understand that monkeys are used to take out reason, because he thinks monkeys are just hairy humans. They touched upon it briefly but used big words that Karl would just ignore: "They chose chimpanzees to take consciousness and reason out of the equation"
Ricky: “Its not to do with consciousness. That’s why they chose chimpanzees, to take consciousness and reason out of the equation...” Karl’s brain: 💨🏜🏚🛤🐾🌵
This is up there in my top 5 chats on the Ricky Gervais show. I love how wound up Ricky gets. I’m convinced Karl is actually quite smart and most of what he said was to purposely wind Ricky up. Monkey news convinced me of that.
My top 5: 1. Forrest Gump in a wheelie bin 2. Shadow pushing people off bikes 3. Guy who looked like Ken Dodd 4. My brother went for a paquet of fags in a tank 5. Infinite monkeys
I wish I could see the world through the eyes of Karl Pilkington. When I first heard about the infinite monkeys, I just said, "oh, that's neat". When he heard about it, his first question was, "have they read Shakespeare?"
+chaosinorderrr Karl had a great point at the end though. Karl is pointing out that a random process would write Hey Jude as well and he's highlight how ridiculous that is to consider.
I feel like Karl would understand it if instead of an infinite amount of monkeys it's an infinite amount of scrabble tiles being randomly lined up next to each other.
Or just robots, or little rocks falling on the keyboard at complete random. It was a mistake to use monkeys because Karl already believes that they have the same thought capacity as humans
News just in from the BBC - Australian mathematicians now support Karl! 1/11/2024. Apparently the time taken to type the complete works of Shakespeare would be longer than the life of the universe.
Ricky went from "Infinity sorts it out - definitely will happen" to 4:39 "Infinity sort of sorts it out - nearly do everything". There's is no certainty, it's just so probable that without the need for scientific accuracy, we assume they will type everything ever.
Yeah, I think Ricky went in the right direction at the end. The chance of the monkey typing Shakespeare is 1, it will happen 100% of the time. However since there is theoretically an infinite number of infinite strings without Shakespeare we can’t say it is impossible for the monkey to not type Shakespeare. It will only happen 0% of the time but it is technically not inconceivable.
It's incredibly likely, though. But yes, not 100%. If you flip a coin an infinite amount of times, will you get a sequence of one million heads in a row? Almost certainly. But not 100%.
@@miguelsilva9118 that’s not entirely correct, Shakespeare will occur 100% of the time. As more characters are typed the chance tends to 100% and at infinity is 100%. You might argue it’s actually 99.999…% but mathematically that is the same as 100%. That said, infinite strings of characters that doesn’t contain Shakespeare are conceivable and so even though they have a probability of 0 of occurring we can’t say that Shakespeare will be typed “by definition” or that it “must” be typed. Like you said, it will almost certainly occur.
@@morbideddie yes, I think most people will reach that conclusion - it's a 99,9999(add a bazillion 9's)99999(another bazillion 9's)9999% chance. Approaching the limit (infinity) the chance of it *not* happening becomes.....well, infinitely small, and then effectively zero :)
@@miguelsilva9118 It actually is 100%, as in a probability of 1. But this whole discussion is a pedantic thing, because the essence of the theorem doesn't really change. The "statistician" who emailed in was just trolling them to stir shit up to keep it interesting. Ricky wasn't really wrong, and Karl really didn't understand any of it.
simple answer (using one monkey with infinite amount of time): 1. provide that the monkey can only type up to that of romeo & juliet's character limit. once this character limit is reached, the monkey goes again. 2. every possible combination of letters and spaces within that character limit will eventually occur at least once. theres no probability involved given an infinite amount of retries the monkey has. 3. now imagine that with no limit condition.
always thought it'd be a good segment (possibly even a contender for the venerated Big Mother) for them to get a concept like this and try to get listeners to explain it to Karl (over email obviously) to a point that it makes sense to him
@@jimmy2k4o Probably as in 99.999 recurring % chance of it happening. That is the definition of certainty. The chances of it NOT happening are infinitely tiny- 0.
@@jackmorgan8684 again with maths and probability it seems to me to be sloppy to step from “it’s highly likely they will” to “they will” And I see no hint of evidence that Ricky knew that before the email or understood it afterwards. Not to say Karl is right, because it’s I just right when he says Karl doesn’t understand it. I just don’t think Ricky does either. And any maths teachers or maths degree holders I’ve asked say the same thing. Highly likely but not certain since each key stroke is a singular random event they could just hit “K” an infinite amount of times.
@@jimmy2k4o you misunderstand. In maths and probability, 99.9 recurring = 100. Its difficult to appreciate the enormity of infinity. Every possible combination of letters will be typed, including a billion simultaneous K's, eventually.
@@jackmorgan8684 I can understand that but I don’t insert how 99.9% recurring is the same as 100% I admit they’re very close, almost I distinguishable but I see a obvious difference. To be a 99.999999 certainly is less than 100% certainty/ I’m not trying to win an argument over something so silly I genuinely want to understand that. I mean the odds of 2+2 = 4 is that 99.9999r% or 100% Is it 100% certainly that the sun will rise tomorrow or is it less than that. I’ll concede that 1000 monkeys types at keyboard for infinity makes it 99.99999999999 that they’ll write the Bard of Avon. Or pi to 1000000 decimal points or they could even write a ton zombie movie with Aaron Sorkin dialogue. I’m sorry I still don’t see it as a mathematical certainty…….and I don’t wanna lie and pretend I do, to avoid the mockery of others. Tell me the probability of it happening and I’m cool with that, as long as it’s an irrational number that doesn’t reach 100%. But when people talk as though it’s certainty I.e 100% I don’t get it and really desperately want to.
It’s the old Eric Morcambe theory when he played the piano with André Previn ….. “ I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order “. Same with monkeys typing Shakespeare for eternity . Karl is unique xx
A simpler way he might have got it is if we simplified language out of it with a binary input so they can only press 0 or 1. They'd be generating completely random bits, which can be read as bytes and coded to letters like in a computer. The monkey is just an rng, like we can do in a computer. And even with a computers rng it'd still be very unlikely of course, because there's infinite possibilities of what can be written. But if we're imagining pure infinity and pure random, that encapsulates everything. Another way of thinking about it is without random at all. If you just had a counter, every possible combination will be written into the infinity. Randomness will just be a little slower since it could possibly repeat itself, whereas a pure counter will just get on with doing a completely unique input each time since it has an order to it.
What’s your reply to the email from the maths student? How is he wrong?????? Explain please? Ffs even Ricky changed his tune when he heard that email he started stuttering and mumbling then suddenly he changes his words from “infinity works it out for you” to “infinity SORT OF works it out for you” He got nervous because he’s not as smart as he ore the s to be. Just listen to the way he tries to explain Maths. It’s clear he’s fumbling with a subject he knows nothing about. He’s just repeating a “fact” he heard as gospel even though it cannot be proven.
@@jimmy2k4o in response to the student it depends on how you define “definite”. He says it’s “probable” the monkey types Shakespeare but the odds are 100%, statistically it will happen. That said there are possible infinite strings that do not contain Shakespeare so while it will happen it’s not a logical necessity. The specific term used by mathematicians is “almost surely”.
Karl is right. There is an article on Wikipedia that goes through the probabilities. "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event ...", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
@Anon Yep. I listen to the shows autistically and Ricky often embarrasses himself. For example he tried to come to Karl's defense about dinosaurs and man living together on the XFM shows before Steve said they definitely didn't. Then he attacks Karl on the podcast for the same subject.
I get the theory about random letters being generated will eventually spell out shakespeares works… but in reality the monkeys wouldn’t type completely random stuff so I’m with Karl on this. Like when we mash a keyboard it’s always roughly the same letters each time. When we mash a keyboard it’s not random is what I’m saying. It’s semi random but our brain chooses which part of the keyboard to mash. It’s not a completely random letter generator that you can get from a computer
Well, I think they are asking you to accept that it is a completely random generator of keyboard hits; they are using monkeys to make it easy to understand. They could just as easily said random keyboard punches by a computer. It's still nonsense, but that is their intention.
Something even more hilarious and disturbing - joe rogan couldn't grasp this either live on his podcast with Brian cox. He responded like Karl and Brian nearly passed out from astonishment.
Joe couldn't grasp the idea of infinity as a practical event (as can't I): as in how is it possible for shit not to end? as in how is it possible for the universe to be infinite? or if it's finite, then how does it end? it can't end with a wall. if that's the case, then what's behind that wall? but not the concept on infinity: completely two different things. I think that the theory that it's all circular somehow is a pretty good one. We as a species are way too dumb to grasp these ideas, but the concept of infinity as explained in this theory is pretty basic. Btw, I listen to his podcasts too, and that guy is one of the smartest people I ever listened to, considering that he can hold his own in a 2.5h conversation with pretty much anyone, including Neil Degrasse Tyson.
I just tried to explain this to my dad. He acted like Karl the whole time, he wasn't getting it. I had to give up because my brain was going to explode like Ricky's.
How do you respond to the email 4:19 ? How can you be sure the monkey doesn’t just hit “k” for infinity? After all every keystroke is a separate random event. Each letter is a 1/26 chance he’ll get it right, giving him an infinite amount of time doesn’t guarantee Shakespeare….. because if it’s completely random it’s possible that the same key could be hit again and again for infinity. It’s like 99.9999% probability, but it’s still an huge canyon gap between 99.999% and 100%. Ricky and you were wrong. Even when the email guy says Ricky is incorrect and explains why, Ricky goes “……..yeah” as if that’s what he was saying all along. BS Ricky isn’t a mathematician, he doesn’t know or understand this to be true, he just believes it basically on faith lol How ironic. You can even tell with his fumbling attempts to explain it “Infinity sort of works it out for you” Sounds very academic……
Before the email “Infinity works it out for you anyway” After email “….yeah” “That’s what I was saying” “No, you don’t understand infinity SORT OF works it out for you.” Now it’s ‘sort off’. I hear Ricky’s arse collapsing. As he subtle shifts the goal posts to salvage a partial ‘being right’
@@jimmy2k4o The guy with the “A level in statistics and probability” who emailed in is completely wrong. It is mathematically proven that a keyboard being hit randomly for an infinite amount of time would type an infinite amount of things an infinite amount of times - i.e. the complete works of Shakespeare an infinite amount of times. Also, what the emailer was saying was not at all what Karl was saying which is why Ricky kept arguing it.
@@jimmy2k4o so you agree that the odds of typing Shakespeare are 99.999…%? The reason we can be certain the monkey will type Shakespeare is because 99.999…=100 exactly. X=0.999… 10X=9.999…=9+X 9X=9 X=1 So the probability equals 1, the monkey will write Shakespeare. That said you are right that it’s not a logical necessity for the monkey to type Shakespeare, even though statistically it’s inevitable so the specific term would be “almost surely”.
Ricky is obviously essentially right, and the defence from the guy with the A-levels is...sort of technically correct, although it was not really explained well or to people who would understand it well.
@@samhoey8247 It's been a while since I made my comment, but if I recall correctly, he was talking about the mathematical concept of "almost surely". Basically this means that something has probability 1, but the set of exceptions is not empty. I know that sounds weird, but infinity is weird. To make it a bit easier, consider a simple coin toss, repeating forever. Conceivably, you *could* get an infinite series of only heads, even though the probability of that is 0.
@@samhoey8247 Do you think if you flipped a coin a infinite amount of times you are 100% guaranteed to get a string of heads a Googolplex times in a row? Are you sure you would not just get an infinite random series of heads and tails?
@@j-r-m7775 Yes- because googleplex is a finite number, so given infinite attempts, any possible finite outcome is certain to happen. Every possible combination of heads and tails, including googleplex heads followed immediately by googleplex tails, is certain to happen given infinite time (probability of 0.999... recurring = probability of 1 = certain). Your question on "won't they just get an infinite random heads/tails series" assumes there's some end to this exercise because we live in a finite world in which everything has an end- but with infinity it just keeps going on forever...
It's the second time I've been here, and I just realized something about the Beatles and Newton conversation. He said that anyone could've written Wonderwall and anyone could've sat under the Apple tree, isn't that the premise of infinite probability?
Before the email “Infinity works it out for you anyway” After email “….yeah” “That’s what I was saying” “No, you don’t understand infinity SORT OF works it out for you.” Now it’s ‘sort off’. I hear Ricky’s arse collapsing. As he subtle shifts the goal posts to salvage a partial ‘being right’
Nope, see my reply to your in the other thread. "Sort of" in this case doesn't matter, because it's a mathematical distinction that bears no consequence to the concept itself. Ricky was not being "thoroughly accurate" in his description of the theorem but he isn't wrong either, whereas Karl just plain doesn't get it.
The animated series didn't use any audio from the XFM days anyway, it was the Guardian Podcasts/Guide Tos that they animated over. (Though they do discuss things that they talked about on XFM as it was years prior and likely forgot)
marco - probably the time Karl told him, off-air, that he no longer wanted a relationship with him because he had made enough money to not need to subject himself to a bully as a colleague.
If you defined a way to construct the infinitely long story, then yes it's possible. For instance, your story could be "A man walked up a hill, then he walked up another hill, then he walked up another hill, then he walked up another hill..." repeated over and over. However, it would 'almost never' happen. In other words, it would happen with probability 0. But it would still be possible. If your story is infinitely long but you never know where your story is headed, then it's hard to say whether or not you could type it out. I mean, not even you know what the complete story is, so what are you even looking for? But any string of letters is technically possible. So no matter what point you're at in the story, all the possible ways that story could develop have a chance of being typed. So I guess your story is always contained within the "realm of possibility"...
@@kimyafaye4371 In the context of this thought experiment, it will be impossible because of how keyboards work. But if you consider monkeys choosing a letter in the alphabet at random, there is still a very tiny probability that the letter A is picked over and over again.
That email in I still don't believe because by the rule of infinity u can definitively say that they would type shakespeare because it's infinity so they'd type everything infinite times so that email in need go back and work on the statistics and probabilities because I don't think they grasp infinity
@Gibbles Ghotten wouldnt you agree that within one of those infinite timelines, that all the monkeys will just be typing the letter 'a' infinitely? i need answers to this mind boggling possibility
The monkeys will almost certainly type out Shakespeare. The probability of it happening is 1 or 100% however there are technically an infinite number of infinite strings that do not contain Shakespeare. The probability of typing one of these strings is 0 however since their existence is not contradictory they are technically possible.
I think this thought experiment would be easier to explain by not using monkeys, as people are so quick to humanize them and provide the with reasoning and motivation. It’s better to use an example that represents randomness in a direct way, like for example a hail storm that repeatedly strikes the keys of a typewriter and eventually writes anything by accident.
No, he is correct. There's a possibility that, for example, the monkey types only the letter A and nothing else, for eternity, although this possibility is extremely unlikely. Infinity DOES mean that the likelihood of any particular sequence occurring approaches certainty, but you can never say that any sequence is guaranteed. Karl is still missing the point, of course.
@@BenjaminBattington Isn't the idea that you could think of any random string of characters and Infinity guarantees that it would be somewhere in there? You've actually made me unsure now, the possibility does exist that they would just type one letter over and over forever
@@PaddyRoon7 it is technically possible that the monkey would only type the letter a, but as time goes on the probability of that specific combination decreases and the possibility of having typed Shakespeare increases. Looking at the limits the probability for having typed Shakespeare or any other finite string is 100%, not nearly 100% or 99.99...% but 100% flat. Conversely the possibility of having typed and infinite string without Shakespeare decreases to 0%. In other words it’s technically possible to not type Shakespeare but it only happens 0% of the time. Shakespeare is “almost certainly” appear.
@@morbideddie I'm not much of a theoretical maths guy, how does that contradiction work? It's possible for them not to type Shakespeare, but the chance of it is 0%? Do you mean the chance is so small that it may as well be 0% or is it literally 0%?
Karl is spot on here and no one can see! I love how intelligent this man is and isn't fazed by being ridiculed cause he knows they a wrong deep down 😂😂
@@salvie5 yeah, if they aren’t I’d like to see their workings or thought process. My money is on “but a monkey isn’t precisely random and might only ever hit the letter a” or something like that.
@@morbideddie if every keystroke is an individual random event they could conceivably just hit “a” over and over for infinity. He has to get 1/26 (not counting punctuation) right millions of times in a row to complete Shakespeare. Now if you give him infinity to try it…. The probability raises to 99.999999% but it’s not 100% It’s not a certainty. Ricky is wrong, and if your backing him up you were wrong. Ffs in this clip Ricky gets corrected, told he’s wrong and his response is “umm hmm yeah” then Karl says something stupid and Ricky is saved his embarrassment and now he qualifies it with “infinity SORT OF works it out for you” Ricky is talking bollocks! Actually he’s taking something said to him by somebody or something he trusts, that cannot be proven, as fact. Even though he doesn’t have the mathematical knowledge to explain this, never mind verify it. So basically the huge atheist, has taken something on faith and spreading it around as fact. Even though he was corrected by the email. He elected to ignore that.
@@jimmy2k4o if the chance is 99.999…% then it is 100%. 0.999… equals 1 exactly so the monkey will always type Shakespeare. That said the fact that infinite strings exist without Shakespeare does mean it’s not truly certain, it’s “almost certain”. It will happen 100% of the time but it’s not a logical necessity. I never 100% defended Ricky, infact I’ve said he was incorrect in other comments when he said it was certain. I merely said that calling Karl’s response “spot on” isn’t exactly correct either. They are both wrong.
The guy from the email is a bullshitter. The nature of infinity makes it impossible to suggest that something that could be typed would have gone untyped, its actually very simple and intuitive, or it's supposed to be. infinity exists as a concept, but whether or not there are any infinities out in nature nobody yet knows, so the monkey problem is just a hypothetical.
It’s not. Infinity guarantees all these outcomes will happen. Now, if you gave the monkeys 100 trillion years, then the outcome would only be likely. However, with infinity it is guaranteed to happen, not just likely.
@@scotts_tot not technically guaranteed as there are an infinite number of infinite strings of characters that don’t contain Shakespeare, but for all intents and purposes we can be almost sure.
But not... not Shakespeare
AAARGGGHHH!!! SHUT UP, YOU IDIOT!!!!!
Have they read Shakespeare ?
@@VLAD_P_ I just was sick
OHHHHHHHHHHHHH, SHUUUUUUUUUUU UPPPPPPPP, YOU IDIOTTTT
The complete works of Douglas Adams is a high probability though
"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"
Monty Burns :-D
Smithers!
Can someone enlighten my apparent dumbass as to what blurst and blursed means? Plzzzz
@@C4RL1NN doent mean anything, the joke is they got it slightly wrong, it should be "worst of times" but they wrote "blurst"
@@C4RL1NN It's a joke from The Simpsons. Mr Burns was expecting a bunch of monkeys on typewriters to write out Shakespeare's works and he read that instead of the "worst" of times and hit the monkey.
Hot off the press. Pilkington you have been avenged!
He has not! Longer than the age universe ending is not infinity!
@Humanbeing215 good sir I think you need a change of thinking and that should start by purchasing some pilko pump pants
What about employment laws!
KARL HAS WON
“It’s a philosophical mathematical problem, it’s true. It can’t be argued against.”
Karl: “It won’t happen.”
😂😂😂😂
He's right. Art isn't a mathematical realm.
@@MrBrindleStyle no, but maths is, and statistically the monkey will type Shakespeare.
@@morbideddie wouldnt 'appen
"This one comes close, it's Romeo and Juliop."
That one's about the 'star-crossed lepers,' yes?
I feel like Ricky doesn't know how to explain it properly and Steve deliberately holds back from explaining it. Then again that's pretty much how their whole routine works. And it's brilliant.
He is explaining it well, you dimwit
“Infinity sorts it out for you”.
He explains it so terribly
Yeah. He should have said that the monkeys don't matter at all. In fact this theorem is best explained with random keystrokes where every key has the probability to be pressed above 0 and every key stroke is independent from the one before. The monkey gives unnecessary room for imagination and actually takes you away from the actual thought experiment.
@@Qman125 He explains it well if you already understand the concept, but to make Karl understand he'd really have to use small words and start at the beginning. Karl doesn't understand that monkeys are used to take out reason, because he thinks monkeys are just hairy humans. They touched upon it briefly but used big words that Karl would just ignore: "They chose chimpanzees to take consciousness and reason out of the equation"
Karl Pilkington, you were right again
Ricky: “Its not to do with consciousness. That’s why they chose chimpanzees, to take consciousness and reason out of the equation...”
Karl’s brain: 💨🏜🏚🛤🐾🌵
*PLAY A RECORD KARL COS I'M GONNA KNOCK YOU OUT!!!*
Asa Holmes the way he interrupts Karl is hilarious
Someday the XFM show won’t be funny anymore because Karl will have been proven right about everything. Even the baby avin a baby
karl was right all along
This is up there in my top 5 chats on the Ricky Gervais show. I love how wound up Ricky gets.
I’m convinced Karl is actually quite smart and most of what he said was to purposely wind Ricky up. Monkey news convinced me of that.
Great isn’t it. I love it when he gets to a point when he wants to punch his head in.
My top 5:
1. Forrest Gump in a wheelie bin
2. Shadow pushing people off bikes
3. Guy who looked like Ken Dodd
4. My brother went for a paquet of fags in a tank
5. Infinite monkeys
I wish I could see the world through the eyes of Karl Pilkington. When I first heard about the infinite monkeys, I just said, "oh, that's neat". When he heard about it, his first question was, "have they read Shakespeare?"
@Ben Dover Nicely summarised!
RIcky's "I'll see you later." comment slays me every time
+chaosinorderrr Karl had a great point at the end though. Karl is pointing out that a random process would write Hey Jude as well and he's highlight how ridiculous that is to consider.
+aintgonnahappen yeah but Karl said to give them a few weeks and they'd play hey Jude XD
chaosinorderrr Same here.
5:43 the noise Ricky makes always gets me
Play a record, Karl, cause I'm gonna knock you out!!! 😂😂😂
Have they read Shakespeare
Creakush Coliko SHUT UP ... YOU IDIOT!!!!!
2:48 did I hear a cat
😂 lmfao
Wish these guys would do another podcast, these were genius!
Karl Pilkington was right!
Steve : Karl has won!!!! 🟠☑
The funniest part is this ends with Karl thinking he's proven them wrong
This clip makes me so happy
“Have they read Shakespeare?”
I feel like Karl would understand it if instead of an infinite amount of monkeys it's an infinite amount of scrabble tiles being randomly lined up next to each other.
... but not Shakespeare
Squirm
Or just robots, or little rocks falling on the keyboard at complete random. It was a mistake to use monkeys because Karl already believes that they have the same thought capacity as humans
Unless his dad was playing and definitely cheating.
“That’s what I was saying”……
Best bit 😂😂
Well, we've heard your side of the story Rick
News just in from the BBC - Australian mathematicians now support Karl! 1/11/2024. Apparently the time taken to type the complete works of Shakespeare would be longer than the life of the universe.
And newton gets all of the creditttt, for his laws of the universe
"...a monkey that can't even spell..."
😐👋 "I'll see ya later." 😂😂
Imagine saying to Karl that they’ll also essentially type out your entire life story 😂
When Karl leads them in with the guitar story it's beautiful. You can feel ricky burst. It's pure genius.
Might be THE best segment from the XFM shows
Ricky reckons on a US talk show that Carl one day asked Warwick " have you got knees?"
it's in an idiot abroad, S3E3 at the end
Ricky went from "Infinity sorts it out - definitely will happen" to 4:39 "Infinity sort of sorts it out - nearly do everything".
There's is no certainty, it's just so probable that without the need for scientific accuracy, we assume they will type everything ever.
Yeah, I think Ricky went in the right direction at the end. The chance of the monkey typing Shakespeare is 1, it will happen 100% of the time. However since there is theoretically an infinite number of infinite strings without Shakespeare we can’t say it is impossible for the monkey to not type Shakespeare. It will only happen 0% of the time but it is technically not inconceivable.
It's incredibly likely, though. But yes, not 100%.
If you flip a coin an infinite amount of times, will you get a sequence of one million heads in a row? Almost certainly. But not 100%.
@@miguelsilva9118 that’s not entirely correct, Shakespeare will occur 100% of the time. As more characters are typed the chance tends to 100% and at infinity is 100%. You might argue it’s actually 99.999…% but mathematically that is the same as 100%.
That said, infinite strings of characters that doesn’t contain Shakespeare are conceivable and so even though they have a probability of 0 of occurring we can’t say that Shakespeare will be typed “by definition” or that it “must” be typed. Like you said, it will almost certainly occur.
@@morbideddie yes, I think most people will reach that conclusion - it's a 99,9999(add a bazillion 9's)99999(another bazillion 9's)9999% chance. Approaching the limit (infinity) the chance of it *not* happening becomes.....well, infinitely small, and then effectively zero :)
@@miguelsilva9118 It actually is 100%, as in a probability of 1. But this whole discussion is a pedantic thing, because the essence of the theorem doesn't really change. The "statistician" who emailed in was just trolling them to stir shit up to keep it interesting. Ricky wasn't really wrong, and Karl really didn't understand any of it.
simple answer (using one monkey with infinite amount of time):
1. provide that the monkey can only type up to that of romeo & juliet's character limit. once this character limit is reached, the monkey goes again.
2. every possible combination of letters and spaces within that character limit will eventually occur at least once. theres no probability involved given an infinite amount of retries the monkey has.
3. now imagine that with no limit condition.
always thought it'd be a good segment (possibly even a contender for the venerated Big Mother) for them to get a concept like this and try to get listeners to explain it to Karl (over email obviously) to a point that it makes sense to him
4:33 That backpedaling from "it'll definitely happen" to "it'll probably happen"!
And most people in this comment section seem to be deaf to that bit….
@@jimmy2k4o Probably as in 99.999 recurring % chance of it happening. That is the definition of certainty. The chances of it NOT happening are infinitely tiny- 0.
@@jackmorgan8684 again with maths and probability it seems to me to be sloppy to step from “it’s highly likely they will” to “they will”
And I see no hint of evidence that Ricky knew that before the email or understood it afterwards.
Not to say Karl is right, because it’s I just right when he says Karl doesn’t understand it. I just don’t think Ricky does either.
And any maths teachers or maths degree holders I’ve asked say the same thing. Highly likely but not certain since each key stroke is a singular random event they could just hit “K” an infinite amount of times.
@@jimmy2k4o you misunderstand. In maths and probability, 99.9 recurring = 100. Its difficult to appreciate the enormity of infinity. Every possible combination of letters will be typed, including a billion simultaneous K's, eventually.
@@jackmorgan8684 I can understand that but I don’t insert how 99.9% recurring is the same as 100%
I admit they’re very close, almost I distinguishable but I see a obvious difference.
To be a 99.999999 certainly is less than 100% certainty/
I’m not trying to win an argument over something so silly I genuinely want to understand that.
I mean the odds of 2+2 = 4 is that 99.9999r% or 100%
Is it 100% certainly that the sun will rise tomorrow or is it less than that.
I’ll concede that 1000 monkeys types at keyboard for infinity makes it 99.99999999999 that they’ll write the Bard of Avon. Or pi to 1000000 decimal points or they could even write a ton zombie movie with Aaron Sorkin dialogue.
I’m sorry I still don’t see it as a mathematical certainty…….and I don’t wanna lie and pretend I do, to avoid the mockery of others.
Tell me the probability of it happening and I’m cool with that, as long as it’s an irrational number that doesn’t reach 100%. But when people talk as though it’s certainty I.e 100% I don’t get it and really desperately want to.
"It wouldnt happen."
Correct! 🤣
It’s an absolute travesty they never animated this for the HBO show
His ability to not be able to wrap his head around any thought is astonishing.
Anyone here after Ricky was talking to the Oxford students about it?
up to date, maybe the best discussion ever aired on radio
It’s the old Eric Morcambe theory when he played the piano with André Previn …..
“ I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order “. Same with monkeys typing Shakespeare for eternity . Karl is unique xx
A simpler way he might have got it is if we simplified language out of it with a binary input so they can only press 0 or 1. They'd be generating completely random bits, which can be read as bytes and coded to letters like in a computer. The monkey is just an rng, like we can do in a computer. And even with a computers rng it'd still be very unlikely of course, because there's infinite possibilities of what can be written. But if we're imagining pure infinity and pure random, that encapsulates everything.
Another way of thinking about it is without random at all. If you just had a counter, every possible combination will be written into the infinity. Randomness will just be a little slower since it could possibly repeat itself, whereas a pure counter will just get on with doing a completely unique input each time since it has an order to it.
“I’d be surprised if they did ONE page right”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I'm astonished at some of the people in the comment section who's understanding seems to be as bad if not worse than Karl. It's a simple concept.
Yeah, it's mind-blowing. Arguing against it just shows a lack of understanding.
It doesn’t work. Think about it.
I'd be surprised if they got one page right
What’s your reply to the email from the maths student?
How is he wrong??????
Explain please?
Ffs even Ricky changed his tune when he heard that email he started stuttering and mumbling then suddenly he changes his words from “infinity works it out for you” to “infinity SORT OF works it out for you”
He got nervous because he’s not as smart as he ore the s to be. Just listen to the way he tries to explain Maths. It’s clear he’s fumbling with a subject he knows nothing about. He’s just repeating a “fact” he heard as gospel even though it cannot be proven.
@@jimmy2k4o in response to the student it depends on how you define “definite”. He says it’s “probable” the monkey types Shakespeare but the odds are 100%, statistically it will happen. That said there are possible infinite strings that do not contain Shakespeare so while it will happen it’s not a logical necessity. The specific term used by mathematicians is “almost surely”.
This has recently been disproven, Karl was right lol
Karl: Yeah, that's what I was saying.
He said that and you know that he didn't understand the statistics argument.
Paper juat published disproving this. Karl was right all along! Unbelievable!
Came here to say the same thing 😂
@ashleykenyon1744 Haha, you saw it on BBC news too I guess?
@@peteT269 yep!
Karl is right. There is an article on Wikipedia that goes through the probabilities.
"The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event ...", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
Yes, so the experiment is not practical. But that's the great thing about thought experiments, they dont have to be practical.
“Infinity sorts it all out for ya”
@Anon Yep. I listen to the shows autistically and Ricky often embarrasses himself. For example he tried to come to Karl's defense about dinosaurs and man living together on the XFM shows before Steve said they definitely didn't. Then he attacks Karl on the podcast for the same subject.
@@henkdetenk3480 That literally didnt happen.
@@VadersFist95 Except that it did.
@@henkdetenk3480 I listened to that one, Ricky doesnt seem to hear that he said Dinosaurs.
@@VadersFist95 Doesn't Ricky say something like "there must have been some crossover" or similar?
Search out the song on this topic:
Dankmus Blurst of Times
Karl is definitely trying to piss Ricky off! Love you Karl!
couldn't happen- the typewriters would break!
You're either making a funny joke or you don't understand.
wouldn't 'appen.
He's so sure that they won't type Shakespeare.
No, they'd write out Karl's diary.
Ricky better never watch the video about how the infinite hotel runs out of rooms.
They need to explain to him what those monkeys represent. Karl is thinking of them as intelligent beings.
Have they read shakespeare? I died😆
I get the theory about random letters being generated will eventually spell out shakespeares works… but in reality the monkeys wouldn’t type completely random stuff so I’m with Karl on this. Like when we mash a keyboard it’s always roughly the same letters each time. When we mash a keyboard it’s not random is what I’m saying. It’s semi random but our brain chooses which part of the keyboard to mash. It’s not a completely random letter generator that you can get from a computer
Well, I think they are asking you to accept that it is a completely random generator of keyboard hits; they are using monkeys to make it easy to understand. They could just as easily said random keyboard punches by a computer. It's still nonsense, but that is their intention.
9:56
Something even more hilarious and disturbing - joe rogan couldn't grasp this either live on his podcast with Brian cox. He responded like Karl and Brian nearly passed out from astonishment.
Joe couldn't grasp the idea of infinity as a practical event (as can't I): as in how is it possible for shit not to end? as in how is it possible for the universe to be infinite? or if it's finite, then how does it end? it can't end with a wall. if that's the case, then what's behind that wall? but not the concept on infinity: completely two different things. I think that the theory that it's all circular somehow is a pretty good one. We as a species are way too dumb to grasp these ideas, but the concept of infinity as explained in this theory is pretty basic.
Btw, I listen to his podcasts too, and that guy is one of the smartest people I ever listened to, considering that he can hold his own in a 2.5h conversation with pretty much anyone, including Neil Degrasse Tyson.
I mean, they will give it a good shot, an’ that
Not Shakespeare, just the Twilight books, since that is easier for the monkeys to remember!
I love Ricks breathing sound at 09:00 :-D
I just tried to explain this to my dad. He acted like Karl the whole time, he wasn't getting it. I had to give up because my brain was going to explode like Ricky's.
How do you respond to the email 4:19 ?
How can you be sure the monkey doesn’t just hit “k” for infinity?
After all every keystroke is a separate random event.
Each letter is a 1/26 chance he’ll get it right, giving him an infinite amount of time doesn’t guarantee Shakespeare….. because if it’s completely random it’s possible that the same key could be hit again and again for infinity.
It’s like 99.9999% probability, but it’s still an huge canyon gap between 99.999% and 100%.
Ricky and you were wrong. Even when the email guy says Ricky is incorrect and explains why, Ricky goes “……..yeah” as if that’s what he was saying all along.
BS
Ricky isn’t a mathematician, he doesn’t know or understand this to be true, he just believes it basically on faith lol
How ironic. You can even tell with his fumbling attempts to explain it
“Infinity sort of works it out for you”
Sounds very academic……
Before the email
“Infinity works it out for you anyway”
After email
“….yeah”
“That’s what I was saying”
“No, you don’t understand infinity SORT OF works it out for you.”
Now it’s ‘sort off’. I hear Ricky’s arse collapsing. As he subtle shifts the goal posts to salvage a partial ‘being right’
@@jimmy2k4o The guy with the “A level in statistics and probability” who emailed in is completely wrong. It is mathematically proven that a keyboard being hit randomly for an infinite amount of time would type an infinite amount of things an infinite amount of times - i.e. the complete works of Shakespeare an infinite amount of times.
Also, what the emailer was saying was not at all what Karl was saying which is why Ricky kept arguing it.
@@jimmy2k4o Do 2 minutes of research before you post nonsense lmao infinity DOES “sort of work it out for you”…
@@jimmy2k4o so you agree that the odds of typing Shakespeare are 99.999…%? The reason we can be certain the monkey will type Shakespeare is because 99.999…=100 exactly.
X=0.999…
10X=9.999…=9+X
9X=9
X=1
So the probability equals 1, the monkey will write Shakespeare. That said you are right that it’s not a logical necessity for the monkey to type Shakespeare, even though statistically it’s inevitable so the specific term would be “almost surely”.
2:58 the loudest Shut up
If it hasn't read it... 😂😂😂😂😂
Karl is brilliant!!!!
Ricky is obviously essentially right, and the defence from the guy with the A-levels is...sort of technically correct, although it was not really explained well or to people who would understand it well.
How is the fella with the a level right, infinity should sort it all out, they would type everything ever
@@samhoey8247 It's been a while since I made my comment, but if I recall correctly, he was talking about the mathematical concept of "almost surely". Basically this means that something has probability 1, but the set of exceptions is not empty. I know that sounds weird, but infinity is weird. To make it a bit easier, consider a simple coin toss, repeating forever. Conceivably, you *could* get an infinite series of only heads, even though the probability of that is 0.
@@samhoey8247 Do you think if you flipped a coin a infinite amount of times you are 100% guaranteed to get a string of heads a Googolplex times in a row? Are you sure you would not just get an infinite random series of heads and tails?
A-level guy was wrong. It's infinity, so anything that doesn't have a zero percent chance to happen will definitely happen.
@@j-r-m7775 Yes- because googleplex is a finite number, so given infinite attempts, any possible finite outcome is certain to happen. Every possible combination of heads and tails, including googleplex heads followed immediately by googleplex tails, is certain to happen given infinite time (probability of 0.999... recurring = probability of 1 = certain). Your question on "won't they just get an infinite random heads/tails series" assumes there's some end to this exercise because we live in a finite world in which everything has an end- but with infinity it just keeps going on forever...
It's the second time I've been here, and I just realized something about the Beatles and Newton conversation. He said that anyone could've written Wonderwall and anyone could've sat under the Apple tree, isn't that the premise of infinite probability?
very good point
Was steven kneeling on a box to fit in picture, or is Ricky and Carl standing on boxes.
Karl for president. This guy is the best ever.
Before the email
“Infinity works it out for you anyway”
After email
“….yeah”
“That’s what I was saying”
“No, you don’t understand infinity SORT OF works it out for you.”
Now it’s ‘sort off’. I hear Ricky’s arse collapsing. As he subtle shifts the goal posts to salvage a partial ‘being right’
Nope, see my reply to your in the other thread. "Sort of" in this case doesn't matter, because it's a mathematical distinction that bears no consequence to the concept itself. Ricky was not being "thoroughly accurate" in his description of the theorem but he isn't wrong either, whereas Karl just plain doesn't get it.
2:59 So this is where the audio from "Portal 2 Aftermath Part 2" came from...
PLAY A RECORD, KARL COS I'M GONNA KNOCK YOU OUT.
The library of babel would blow karls mind.
legendary stuff
I can see why they didn't put this on the show because. Ricky is too angry
The animated series didn't use any audio from the XFM days anyway, it was the Guardian Podcasts/Guide Tos that they animated over.
(Though they do discuss things that they talked about on XFM as it was years prior and likely forgot)
The real question here - does the infinity really exist?
Technically Karl is correct, in the sense that the probability is also infinity 0.999--- repeating %, that they wouldn't.
The probability they wouldnt type the works of shakespeare is 0, the probability they would is 1.
I want someone to find a moment when Ricky gets more mad at Karl than this.
+marco I heard one where Ricky, if he yelled at me that way, would have been knocked on his butt. Just search Ricky gets angry at Karl.
The one where Karl saying Asian women don't age well, comes pretty close
marco - probably the time Karl told him, off-air, that he no longer wanted a relationship with him because he had made enough money to not need to subject himself to a bully as a colleague.
Look up the one where told the story about lady with the tumor that turned out to be a lambchop.
The story of the couple that bought a chimp thinking it was a human baby.
what about an infinitely long play/story etc. Would they be able to type that seeing as it itself is not complete?
If you defined a way to construct the infinitely long story, then yes it's possible. For instance, your story could be "A man walked up a hill, then he walked up another hill, then he walked up another hill, then he walked up another hill..." repeated over and over. However, it would 'almost never' happen. In other words, it would happen with probability 0. But it would still be possible.
If your story is infinitely long but you never know where your story is headed, then it's hard to say whether or not you could type it out. I mean, not even you know what the complete story is, so what are you even looking for? But any string of letters is technically possible. So no matter what point you're at in the story, all the possible ways that story could develop have a chance of being typed. So I guess your story is always contained within the "realm of possibility"...
So Karl believed that monkeys can intercept robberies, work construction, operate spacecraft, and perform eye surgery, but they can't type Shakespeare
To be fair, this exercise isn't about Shakespear. It's about infinity giving us evolution and all life as we know it.
There is also a chance that they would only write the letter A forever.
yes !
That's almost impossible though. If they're typing forever they're almost definitely going to press other keys
@@kimyafaye4371 why's that impossible?
@@kimyafaye4371 In the context of this thought experiment, it will be impossible because of how keyboards work. But if you consider monkeys choosing a letter in the alphabet at random, there is still a very tiny probability that the letter A is picked over and over again.
Thank you, you understand it.
3:40
I think karl may not actually know what infinity is.
It is also conceivable that the monkeys would not be able to do it infinitely surely. It could be wrong every time for infinity.
I get it because Warwick probably walks very straight legged.
That email in I still don't believe because by the rule of infinity u can definitively say that they would type shakespeare because it's infinity so they'd type everything infinite times so that email in need go back and work on the statistics and probabilities because I don't think they grasp infinity
@Gibbles Ghotten wouldnt you agree that within one of those infinite timelines, that all the monkeys will just be typing the letter 'a' infinitely? i need answers to this mind boggling possibility
The monkeys will almost certainly type out Shakespeare. The probability of it happening is 1 or 100% however there are technically an infinite number of infinite strings that do not contain Shakespeare. The probability of typing one of these strings is 0 however since their existence is not contradictory they are technically possible.
@@RedzeeTV yes, by definition the monkey would type 'A' infinitely and 'B' and everything possible to be typed
I think this thought experiment would be easier to explain by not using monkeys, as people are so quick to humanize them and provide the with reasoning and motivation. It’s better to use an example that represents randomness in a direct way, like for example a hail storm that repeatedly strikes the keys of a typewriter and eventually writes anything by accident.
Wtf was the email about infinity making it likely and why did Ricky agree with it? It's infinity. It's guaranteed.
I agree lol. That guy might be studying statistics but he clearly isn’t understanding it well
No, he is correct. There's a possibility that, for example, the monkey types only the letter A and nothing else, for eternity, although this possibility is extremely unlikely. Infinity DOES mean that the likelihood of any particular sequence occurring approaches certainty, but you can never say that any sequence is guaranteed.
Karl is still missing the point, of course.
@@BenjaminBattington Isn't the idea that you could think of any random string of characters and Infinity guarantees that it would be somewhere in there? You've actually made me unsure now, the possibility does exist that they would just type one letter over and over forever
@@PaddyRoon7 it is technically possible that the monkey would only type the letter a, but as time goes on the probability of that specific combination decreases and the possibility of having typed Shakespeare increases. Looking at the limits the probability for having typed Shakespeare or any other finite string is 100%, not nearly 100% or 99.99...% but 100% flat. Conversely the possibility of having typed and infinite string without Shakespeare decreases to 0%.
In other words it’s technically possible to not type Shakespeare but it only happens 0% of the time. Shakespeare is “almost certainly” appear.
@@morbideddie I'm not much of a theoretical maths guy, how does that contradiction work? It's possible for them not to type Shakespeare, but the chance of it is 0%?
Do you mean the chance is so small that it may as well be 0% or is it literally 0%?
"To be, or to be"
Is that, the question?
Karl is spot on here and no one can see! I love how intelligent this man is and isn't fazed by being ridiculed cause he knows they a wrong deep down 😂😂
You're joking right? 😂😂
@@salvie5 yeah, if they aren’t I’d like to see their workings or thought process. My money is on “but a monkey isn’t precisely random and might only ever hit the letter a” or something like that.
Yeah.....no.
@@morbideddie if every keystroke is an individual random event they could conceivably just hit “a” over and over for infinity.
He has to get 1/26 (not counting punctuation) right millions of times in a row to complete Shakespeare. Now if you give him infinity to try it….
The probability raises to 99.999999% but it’s not 100%
It’s not a certainty.
Ricky is wrong, and if your backing him up you were wrong.
Ffs in this clip Ricky gets corrected, told he’s wrong and his response is “umm hmm yeah” then Karl says something stupid and Ricky is saved his embarrassment and now he qualifies it with “infinity SORT OF works it out for you”
Ricky is talking bollocks!
Actually he’s taking something said to him by somebody or something he trusts, that cannot be proven, as fact.
Even though he doesn’t have the mathematical knowledge to explain this, never mind verify it.
So basically the huge atheist, has taken something on faith and spreading it around as fact.
Even though he was corrected by the email. He elected to ignore that.
@@jimmy2k4o if the chance is 99.999…% then it is 100%. 0.999… equals 1 exactly so the monkey will always type Shakespeare.
That said the fact that infinite strings exist without Shakespeare does mean it’s not truly certain, it’s “almost certain”. It will happen 100% of the time but it’s not a logical necessity.
I never 100% defended Ricky, infact I’ve said he was incorrect in other comments when he said it was certain. I merely said that calling Karl’s response “spot on” isn’t exactly correct either. They are both wrong.
Who can tell me, exactly what episode of Ricky Gervais Show this is taken from? It's from the podcast right?
The second season at XFM, sometime in March.
The guy from the email is a bullshitter. The nature of infinity makes it impossible to suggest that something that could be typed would have gone untyped, its actually very simple and intuitive, or it's supposed to be. infinity exists as a concept, but whether or not there are any infinities out in nature nobody yet knows, so the monkey problem is just a hypothetical.
It would never happen
Can someone explain if that statistics email is correct?
It’s not. Infinity guarantees all these outcomes will happen. Now, if you gave the monkeys 100 trillion years, then the outcome would only be likely. However, with infinity it is guaranteed to happen, not just likely.
@@scotts_tot not technically guaranteed as there are an infinite number of infinite strings of characters that don’t contain Shakespeare, but for all intents and purposes we can be almost sure.
@@scotts_tot and what stops the monkey just hitting “a” over and over again since every keystroke is a isolated 1/26 chance??????
2:57 Shakespeare OHHH!!!
It’s 2023 and has it happened? No it hasn’t.. so Karl is right.. Ricky it wouldn’t happen..🥱