It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:19:07 GMT

petealexharris@mastodon.scot — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:19:07 GMT

@itohsnap @mcc
Possibly works of Shakespeare follow a Poisson distribution with a very low probability of getting them per monkey-year. All we know at this point is we got one with the amount of monkey-years that have existed so far, but won't be able to estimate how probable it was until it happens again.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:46:52 GMT

oblomov@snowfan.it — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:46:52 GMT

@doephin @mcc not even minimum bound though. Following @itohsnap D20 comparison, if I rolled a 20 on the 5th roll, that wouldn't tell me that the minimum bounds on the number of rolls to get a 20 is 5.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:33:59 GMT

davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:33:59 GMT

@mcc @Yuki

The ancestor of the centaur?

Wait, you'd need at least two horse-monkeys, and some monkey business, before evolving centaurs.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:29:39 GMT

davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:29:39 GMT

@Yuki @mcc

Would a horse-monkey evolve into a centaur?

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:36:40 GMT

itohsnap@mastodon.social — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:36:40 GMT

@mcc Methinks this is actually calculating the number of monkeys(/simians) it took for *this particular* (uh) simulation to produce the works of Shakespeare, not an overall upper bound.

(Apologies if I’m being pedantic and/or a killjoy; hope you feel better soon.)

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:34:14 GMT

itohsnap@mastodon.social — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:34:14 GMT

@mcc I’d argue this an equivalent thesis/proof proposal:
“It’s well known that an infinite number of rolls of a D20 will eventually result in a 20 being rolled. […] I just rolled a D20 and got a 20 on my first attempt*. Therefore the number of rolls to produce a 20 is no more than one.”

*my old D&D group knows this is a lie but roll** with me here
**lol

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 08:07:22 GMT

estelle@mstdn.social — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 08:07:22 GMT

@Yuki @mcc if gold ship can cost japanese gamblers 12 billion yen in a single race, then if there is only one horse, you better make sure you bet on the right horse

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 07:19:33 GMT

benjamin@piaille.fr — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 07:19:33 GMT

@mcc interesting theory.
Knowing how fast sapiens monkeys grew in number the last 200years I'd say not more than 20 billions.
Which is far from an infinite number of monkeys, very reassuring

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:21:15 GMT

muddle@infosec.exchange — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:21:15 GMT

@mcc LEAN in, sister.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:14:34 GMT

gparker@discuss.systems — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:14:34 GMT

@mcc @thattommyhall yeah, in my experience biologists don't use a cladistic or monophyletic definition of "monkey". So a typical biologist would say that humans are primates and simians and apes, but are not monkeys.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:26:39 GMT

russellsbarbershopquartet@monads.online — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:26:39 GMT

@mcc using overly generous estimates, let's assume a median number of a thousand extant simian species at any given year, a median simian population of 1 million individuals per species per generation, and a median generation time of 10 years. Atliatlassius is a fine enough spot to start the clock, which i'll round to 60 million years in the interest of conservatism and keeping only one sig fig.

so that gives 6 * 10⁶ * 10⁶ * 10³ / 10¹ = 6 * 10^14, or a lower bound of 600,000,000,000,000, or a mere 600 quadrillion monkeys, as a conservative lower bound.

edit: fix typo and clarify simians, not all primates, which would probably add another zero.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:19:55 GMT

doephin@kind.social — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:19:55 GMT

@mcc Minimum bound though; we could have gotten an outlier result

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:10:29 GMT

stereo@sunbeam.city — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:10:29 GMT

@mcc n monkeys (1 per year) seems unlikely so maybe n² monkeys (1 in the first year, 2 in the second, etc.) for about a quadrillion monkeys

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:02:12 GMT

cinebox@masto.hackers.town — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:02:12 GMT

@mcc William Shakespeare was an ape… unless he had a tail we don’t know about

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:58:41 GMT

mcc@mastodon.social — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:58:41 GMT

@Yuki the existence of one (1) horse-monkey would significantly upset evolutionary theory, i'd say

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:58:34 GMT

ellenor2000@mastodon.top — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:58:34 GMT

@Yuki @mcc Horrifying #lang_en

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:54:41 GMT

yuki@im-in.space — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:54:41 GMT

@mcc One

Let me point you to the multiple horse theory, but I have the conjecture it also applies to monkeys

Maybe there's even only one horse-monkey

This is to be determined

https://multiplehorsetheory.com/

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:43:36 GMT

jsit@social.coop — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:43:36 GMT

@mcc @thattommyhall I remember learning this when I learned that Curious George doesn’t have a tail and is therefore most likely a “curious little ape,” not “monkey.”

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:38:47 GMT

bonehousewasps@beige.party — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:38:47 GMT

@mcc More than a few. But less than 'infinite'. In fact, compared to 'infinite' , it might as well be 'one'.

One monkey.

"So why couldn't that one monkey have been you?" - my mother.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:36:59 GMT

leon@peoplemaking.games — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:36:59 GMT

@mcc it just occurred to me that the phrase “producing the works of Shakespeare”, since the works of Shakespeare are all plays, actually demands the role of stage producer rather than typist in its most natural reading

I am very certain that the chance of successfully stage-producing a single Shakespeare play falls dramatically as the number of producers backstage increases, and that’s the best case scenario of them being literate humans.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:33:36 GMT

mcc@mastodon.social — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:33:36 GMT

@PsySal This is a good question and according to wikipedia the answer is technically "no". But informally I feel like people use monkeys as a shorthand for what is more properly called simians?

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:32:51 GMT

psysal@mastodon.social — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:32:51 GMT

@mcc ohy god a breakthrough. But are apes monkeys?

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:32:34 GMT

mcc@mastodon.social — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:32:34 GMT

@thattommyhall i actually until digging through wikipedia a moment ago assumed apes were a subcategory of monkeys. Apparently the actual monkey/ape supercategory is Simians. I'm not so sure about this. This feels like "bugs" to me.

Reply to It's well known that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. on Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:30:03 GMT

thattommyhall@functional.cafe — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:30:03 GMT

@mcc I thought we were apes