Re: Infinitely many monkeys?
Its possible we agree. I think hypotheticals that are designed to make a serious point about the real world should be held to a higher standard than ones that are not.
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Once upon a time there was a town with just husbands and wives. But, there was something magical about it. It just so happened that when a wife cheated on her husband, he would grow an ugly pair of horns out of his h
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For a scenario designed to put a story around a mathematical problem anything is fine.
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infinitely many monkeys, typing away at infinitely many typewriters, must eventually produce the works of Shakespeare
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Here the author is using a hypothetical scenario to make a serious point about the universe; maybe a step in an argument concerning the chance of unlikely events occurring.
Nickpicks like the difficulty in feeding an infinite number of monkeys (so what is infinity here?), or controlling their breeding so they continue being monkeys (how do things drift over time) and such like are fair game. Its quite possible some such points are pertinent to the point being attempted. Certainly the author should expect to have to handle such attacks, and maybe gain understanding as a result.
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