The Infinite Monkey Cage Theorem (1 Viewer)

MandM

Free Member
Mar 27, 2016
39
39
Inland Waterways
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42,155
MH
Hi Top
Exp
Since 2015
I don't know who first said 'Believe only half of what your eyes see and believe nothing of what your eyes read.' There are a few similar sounding quotes, peppered around the internet, that have rightly or wrongly been attributed to different people. In the world of the internet, something previously written, is often then attributed to someone else. Sometime it turns out to have been written sometime long before. Often the earlier quotes are only found due to the huge amounts of books that are and have been digitised then placed on-line. (Gutenberg Project) But usually the quote is used in a different context that makes the original quote less than memorable.

The world of the 'real' author has been invaded by many other 'amateur' authors. Which through varying degrees of skill, have reinvented the (unique quotation) wheel many times over. Its something resembling a real world take, on the fabled 'infinite monkey cage.'

If you are not familiar with the term infinite monkey cage. The infinite monkey cage theorem says that if you take an infinite number of 'monkeys' and an infinite number of 'typewriters'. Which you then place in an infinite sized monkey cage. In an infinite amount of 'time' all of the worlds greatest classics would be rewritten by the monkeys, purely by the monkeys accidentally hitting the typewriter keys.

In reality the infinite monkey cage theorem is an illustration of the mathematics of probability. Oft used by us to asses the chance of a friend putting his hand in his pocket to buy you a beer. However, the public's mind often oversimplifies or confuses important aspects of the different scales as well as the concepts involved such as infinity, probability and not forgetting time. All of these are in measures beyond average human experience and practical comprehension or comparison. In life we compare things all the time 'the hailstone was the size of a golf ball' being one example. Now try visualising that our galaxy is 100,000 light years from side to side.

However, what the infinite monkey cage theorem fails to acknowledge is, that during this same infinite time period, additional 'world classics' would also be written. As well as classics that were new to the world. Possibly in languages that are also new and unknown to us. All would be world classics that were previously unpublished in any known or unknown language. There would also be an infinite pile of publishers rejection slips. I've had a few of them in my time.

Its the uncertainty created in our minds by mathematics, that point to the truth of these actual certainties. Take a pack of playing cards. With four suits and thirteen values. Which if shuffled into a purely random order. That order is almost certain to be in a completely random - but at the same time a unique - order. It is almost certain that the pack of cards has never been in that random but unique order before and it is almost certain for that pack of cards to never be in that random, but unique order, ever again. Its actually the same outcome – even if you include all the other packs of playing cards in the world. No two packs in the world will ever be randomly shuffled into the same order. However, if you take an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of packs of playing cards..... well you already know the rest!

So what's all this 'Believe only half of what your eyes see and believe nothing of what your eyes read 'all about. Its actually quite an astute observation of the way of the world today. Everything that is written is from a particular standpoint and so naturally contains some personal bias of the author. However, the quotation is most often quoted, when its applied to modern media – such as newspapers and television.

Most people of the opinion that newspapers have recently sold their soul to the devil. Well I would agree to that allegation for any number of British and foreign publications. British newspapers are no longer editorially free to publish whatever they want. They have been bought by very wealthy people who set the editorial standard. Now only to provided carefully screened propaganda to the paying masses. So why does the quotation say, only believe half of what you see. Television in its various forms is now also owned by the wealthy or alternatively it is state controlled by government. One such institution is the BBC which is state controlled by government who hold the budgets. Consciously or unconsciously bias enters the reporting. Because the news is contained in a fifteen second soundbite. Maybe Andy Warhol got his timings all wrong and its should be everyone gets fifteen seconds of fame.

There is now the start of a trend away from print towards digital on-line content. As print copies and circulation numbers continue to fall. So advertiser revenue continues to fall and many newspapers are losing huge amounts of money. There is a move to the new on-line, pre-paid subscription news service. But the take up has been patchy at best. Some print newspapers who were also into the digital publishing have already dropped their digital subscriptions. They now provide faux stories as click-bait remember the WWII Spitfire and the London bus discovered on the moon. Once they were a bit of fun - now similar stories get you to click on a link, where you have to click again and again to get the next picture or piece of text. Because at one time advertising revenue was based upon circulation. Now its based on clicks-per-view. The worst bit about it - is all the unwanted advertising - that is provided that is eating into your internet data allowance.

At the same time, some print newspapers are making to move to digital only. It might be related to the reduced need for chip paper. The next few years are going to be challenging for news providers. Its a whole new world, because information now comes from many places and sources and its almost instantaneous. News is a 24/7 fact of life and print copies are almost historical documents by the time they hit the street. The other thing that the newspapers can't do anything about is fact checking news content by the reader. Readers now tend to check the truth or bias of newspaper content, by fact checking on other sites.

Now, a large amount of the news is based on Z list celebrities and 'paped' pictures. Ask around your friends and see if they are interested in knowing where some celeb spent the night, getting pissed out of their tree. Under a picture of a flash of gusset as someone is poured into a taxi. I have a friend who is a retired Taxi driver. They could earn a few bob from providing snippets of news from overheard drunken conversations. To a point I can understand why news providers do this. Its because they want to change our tastes as to what is news.

Anyone can be a blogger and any blogger can be a news provider. The grip of the big news corporations is being eroded because every smartphone is connected to the internet. Every smartphone is capable of recording the news and providing coverage as it happens. Every smartphone owner is a reporter on the front line. The internet is becoming in its own way, a micro version of the infinite monkey cage.

Now because of the instantaneous reportage, that social media allows for the first time. Many people challenge biased and deliberate misreporting of newspaper content. Challenging in a way that would have been unbelievable only a few years ago. The digital media tries to get around this obvious shortcoming by allowing reader comments on articles. Yet we all know, comments attached to a story can be selectively sorted, excluded and surreptitiously attached. The biggest problem for the newspapers moving to digital, is that they are late to the party and in the digital world their content is already lost in the noise.

So specialist forums like Motorhome Fun now provide targeted user content, to a specific user base. It draws people together with a common interest. There is a mini infinite monkey cage of motorhome users. Everyone is a reader, editor, reporter and provider.

Long may it be so.


Regards
 
2

2657

Deleted User
I don't know who first said 'Believe only half of what your eyes see and believe nothing of what your eyes read.' There are a few similar sounding quotes, peppered around the internet, that have rightly or wrongly been attributed to different people. In the world of the internet, something previously written, is often then attributed to someone else. Sometime it turns out to have been written sometime long before. Often the earlier quotes are only found due to the huge amounts of books that are and have been digitised then placed on-line. (Gutenberg Project) But usually the quote is used in a different context that makes the original quote less than memorable.

The world of the 'real' author has been invaded by many other 'amateur' authors. Which through varying degrees of skill, have reinvented the (unique quotation) wheel many times over. Its something resembling a real world take, on the fabled 'infinite monkey cage.'

If you are not familiar with the term infinite monkey cage. The infinite monkey cage theorem says that if you take an infinite number of 'monkeys' and an infinite number of 'typewriters'. Which you then place in an infinite sized monkey cage. In an infinite amount of 'time' all of the worlds greatest classics would be rewritten by the monkeys, purely by the monkeys accidentally hitting the typewriter keys.

In reality the infinite monkey cage theorem is an illustration of the mathematics of probability. Oft used by us to asses the chance of a friend putting his hand in his pocket to buy you a beer. However, the public's mind often oversimplifies or confuses important aspects of the different scales as well as the concepts involved such as infinity, probability and not forgetting time. All of these are in measures beyond average human experience and practical comprehension or comparison. In life we compare things all the time 'the hailstone was the size of a golf ball' being one example. Now try visualising that our galaxy is 100,000 light years from side to side.

However, what the infinite monkey cage theorem fails to acknowledge is, that during this same infinite time period, additional 'world classics' would also be written. As well as classics that were new to the world. Possibly in languages that are also new and unknown to us. All would be world classics that were previously unpublished in any known or unknown language. There would also be an infinite pile of publishers rejection slips. I've had a few of them in my time.

Its the uncertainty created in our minds by mathematics, that point to the truth of these actual certainties. Take a pack of playing cards. With four suits and thirteen values. Which if shuffled into a purely random order. That order is almost certain to be in a completely random - but at the same time a unique - order. It is almost certain that the pack of cards has never been in that random but unique order before and it is almost certain for that pack of cards to never be in that random, but unique order, ever again. Its actually the same outcome – even if you include all the other packs of playing cards in the world. No two packs in the world will ever be randomly shuffled into the same order. However, if you take an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of packs of playing cards..... well you already know the rest!

So what's all this 'Believe only half of what your eyes see and believe nothing of what your eyes read 'all about. Its actually quite an astute observation of the way of the world today. Everything that is written is from a particular standpoint and so naturally contains some personal bias of the author. However, the quotation is most often quoted, when its applied to modern media – such as newspapers and television.

Most people of the opinion that newspapers have recently sold their soul to the devil. Well I would agree to that allegation for any number of British and foreign publications. British newspapers are no longer editorially free to publish whatever they want. They have been bought by very wealthy people who set the editorial standard. Now only to provided carefully screened propaganda to the paying masses. So why does the quotation say, only believe half of what you see. Television in its various forms is now also owned by the wealthy or alternatively it is state controlled by government. One such institution is the BBC which is state controlled by government who hold the budgets. Consciously or unconsciously bias enters the reporting. Because the news is contained in a fifteen second soundbite. Maybe Andy Warhol got his timings all wrong and its should be everyone gets fifteen seconds of fame.

There is now the start of a trend away from print towards digital on-line content. As print copies and circulation numbers continue to fall. So advertiser revenue continues to fall and many newspapers are losing huge amounts of money. There is a move to the new on-line, pre-paid subscription news service. But the take up has been patchy at best. Some print newspapers who were also into the digital publishing have already dropped their digital subscriptions. They now provide faux stories as click-bait remember the WWII Spitfire and the London bus discovered on the moon. Once they were a bit of fun - now similar stories get you to click on a link, where you have to click again and again to get the next picture or piece of text. Because at one time advertising revenue was based upon circulation. Now its based on clicks-per-view. The worst bit about it - is all the unwanted advertising - that is provided that is eating into your internet data allowance.

At the same time, some print newspapers are making to move to digital only. It might be related to the reduced need for chip paper. The next few years are going to be challenging for news providers. Its a whole new world, because information now comes from many places and sources and its almost instantaneous. News is a 24/7 fact of life and print copies are almost historical documents by the time they hit the street. The other thing that the newspapers can't do anything about is fact checking news content by the reader. Readers now tend to check the truth or bias of newspaper content, by fact checking on other sites.

Now, a large amount of the news is based on Z list celebrities and 'paped' pictures. Ask around your friends and see if they are interested in knowing where some celeb spent the night, getting pissed out of their tree. Under a picture of a flash of gusset as someone is poured into a taxi. I have a friend who is a retired Taxi driver. They could earn a few bob from providing snippets of news from overheard drunken conversations. To a point I can understand why news providers do this. Its because they want to change our tastes as to what is news.

Anyone can be a blogger and any blogger can be a news provider. The grip of the big news corporations is being eroded because every smartphone is connected to the internet. Every smartphone is capable of recording the news and providing coverage as it happens. Every smartphone owner is a reporter on the front line. The internet is becoming in its own way, a micro version of the infinite monkey cage.

Now because of the instantaneous reportage, that social media allows for the first time. Many people challenge biased and deliberate misreporting of newspaper content. Challenging in a way that would have been unbelievable only a few years ago. The digital media tries to get around this obvious shortcoming by allowing reader comments on articles. Yet we all know, comments attached to a story can be selectively sorted, excluded and surreptitiously attached. The biggest problem for the newspapers moving to digital, is that they are late to the party and in the digital world their content is already lost in the noise.

So specialist forums like Motorhome Fun now provide targeted user content, to a specific user base. It draws people together with a common interest. There is a mini infinite monkey cage of motorhome users. Everyone is a reader, editor, reporter and provider.

Long may it be so.


Regards

Bit heavy for a Sunday morning.....are you a philosopher:).........or just bored?:D
 

Tootles

Funster
Deceased RIP
Sep 14, 2013
9,511
34,799
Lancaster
Funster No
28,093
MH
Coachbuilt
Exp
Was a newbie, now a Middie.
More of a Twitter aficionado?
Did you compose and write that article yourself, or copy and paste?
WARNING
If I find out in subsequent times that it was indeed the latter, after you have said the former, I will extracto the pi** to some great tune.........;)
 

Geo

Trader - Funster
Jul 29, 2007
11,757
14,563
Mansfield,Notts
Funster No
35
MH
Autotrail Tracker FB
Exp
45 +years with breaks
Without even reading it all
It looks like plagiarism at its best

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Jan 2, 2017
657
1,918
Buckinghamshire
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46,710
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Globecar
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Since 2010
I take umbrage at the suggestion that motorhomers are mere monkeys (or random sequence generators). We have goals and projectable futures, dammit!

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Nov 3, 2013
3,165
9,290
Portugal
Funster No
28,868
MH
Fiat Ducato Auto Wildax
Exp
C/van since '73 .M/h.2009
Hi.
Don't stop posting,i speed read the first and last lines,but read all the replies in full.They were very funny,in the true spirit of Funsters.
Tea Bag
 

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