What does the ‘infinite monkey theorem’ suggest about the anthropic principle?

[MarkE]

I always believed that evolution was a completely random, undirected process, simply the result of random mutations and chance events. But then I read about the 'Infinite monkey theorem' experiment:

“Given fifty-eight possible keys, it would be 58 x 58 x 58 x 58 ... fifteen times over, which is about 283 trillion trillion attempts. But remember we have a million monkeys working, and let's say they type forty-five words a minute, so the fifteen keystrokes that make up the phrase take just four seconds. And they never rest or sleep. How much time, then, according to probability laws, before one of them finally types, “Call me Ishmael”?
Answer: about 36 trillion years, or roughly 2,600 times the age of the universe. So a million monkeys typing furiously would never even reproduce one book's single, short opening line. Moral: Forget the monkeys-and-typewriters thing. It's bogus.
Can you get the cosmos we see, including the complex biological designs of the brain and the trumpeter swan, through random atom collisions alone? If randomness requires thirty-six trillion years to type a single passage of fifteen letters and spaces, the answer is obvious: not a chance”.
(Source: 'Beyond Biocentrism')

In another book I've read something similar:

“Given fiftey-eight possible keys, the number of attempts would have to be 58 x 58 fifteen times over, which is three trillion trillion, before success could be expected. With a million never-sleeping monkeys working, all faultlessly typing sixty words a minute (so that typing fifteen keystrokes takes just four seconds), one of them would indeed eventually type "Call me Ishmael." But odds are it would take thirty-eight trillion years. Three thousand times the age of the universe. So a million monkeys typing furiously would never even reproduce one book's single short opening sentence.
Bottom line: randomness has far less power to achieve results than is popularly imagined.”
(Source: 'Zoom')

So my question is: do you agree with the author(s)?

If you agree with the author:
This would imply that complexity can’t be the result of randomness. But if it’s not randomness that could have determined the path of our evolution, which would lead to us, human beings, what’s the non-random factor directing this evolution, then? Or consider of the universe at large, and the 'anthropic principle'. If our Solar System, and its place in a fine-tuned universe, can't be the result of complete randomness, what's this supposed 'non-random factor', then, if it exists at all?

If you don't agree with the author:
Let's say you refute the claim that the author is making, and you believe that we are the result of random mutations, and complete chance events, this means that you believe that, at some point, the monkeys would eventually type "Call me Ishmael". Because if you don't believe that, that would indicate an inconsistency in your thinking, because then you would agree with the author.

Edited June 14, 2021 by MarkE

[Prometheus]

11 minutes ago, MarkE said:

what’s the non-random factor directing this evolution, then?

The laws of physics and the biochemical laws that emerge from them.

Randomness is just one part of the evolutionary process. You also need some kind of self-replication and selection process. Evolution has never been understood as a 'completely' random process.

Another factor the above quotes seem to ignore is that evolution is a cumulative process. Those probabilities refer to typing out a book from scratch. The chances would be considerably shorter if you can keep intermediary stages - so once you have the first word 'correct' you keep it (as does evolution - each new species doesn't have to go through the entire evolutionary process starting from abiogenesis, just the preceding species).  The analogy between writing books and evolution breaks down here as one might ask how do we know what the 'correct' first word, or species, is. In the former case 'correct' is defined by some external criterion, but for evolution correct simply means it survives to reproduce.

[exchemist]

25 minutes ago, MarkE said:

I always believed that evolution was a completely random, undirected process, simply the result of random mutations and chance events. But then I read about the 'Infinite monkey theorem' experiment:

“Given fifty-eight possible keys, it would be 58 x 58 x 58 x 58 ... fifteen times over, which is about 283 trillion trillion attempts. But remember we have a million monkeys working, and let's say they type forty-five words a minute, so the fifteen keystrokes that make up the phrase take just four seconds. And they never rest or sleep. How much time, then, according to probability laws, before one of them finally types, “Call me Ishmael”?
Answer: about 36 trillion years, or roughly 2,600 times the age of the universe. So a million monkeys typing furiously would never even reproduce one book's single, short opening line. Moral: Forget the monkeys-and-typewriters thing. It's bogus.
Can you get the cosmos we see, including the complex biological designs of the brain and the trumpeter swan, through random atom collisions alone? If randomness requires thirty-six trillion years to type a single passage of fifteen letters and spaces, the answer is obvious: not a chance”.
(Source: 'Beyond Biocentrism')

In another book I've read something similar:

“Given fiftey-eight possible keys, the number of attempts would have to be 58 x 58 fifteen times over, which is three trillion trillion, before success could be expected. With a million never-sleeping monkeys working, all faultlessly typing sixty words a minute (so that typing fifteen keystrokes takes just four seconds), one of them would indeed eventually type "Call me Ishmael." But odds are it would take thirty-eight trillion years. Three thousand times the age of the universe. So a million monkeys typing furiously would never even reproduce one book's single short opening sentence.
Bottom line: randomness has far less power to achieve results than is popularly imagined.”
(Source: 'Zoom')

So my question is: do you agree with the author(s)?

If you agree with the author:
This would imply that complexity can’t be the result of randomness. But if it’s not randomness that could have determined the path of our evolution, which would lead to us, human beings, what’s the non-random factor directing this evolution, then? Or consider of the universe at large, and the 'anthropic principle'. If our Solar System, and its place in a fine-tuned universe, can't be the result of complete randomness, what's this supposed 'non-random factor', then, if it exists at all?

If you don't agree with the author:
Let's say you refute the claim that the author is making, and you believe that we are the result of random mutations, and complete chance events, this means that you believe that, at some point, the monkeys would eventually type "Call me Ishmael". Because if you don't believe that, that would indicate an inconsistency in your thinking, because then you would agree with the author.

Nobody has ever argued that the complexity of life is due to randomness alone. That's a particularly silly  - and annoying -creationist representation of evolution (tornado in a junkyard etc). The complexity of life is due to natural selection operating on variations in a population. There's nothing random about selection.  So we can dismiss the monkey argument as far as life is concerned.  

When it comes to non-living "complexity", it is unclear to me what you mean. The anthropic principle is not about complexity, so I don't really follow where your hypothetical monkeys  come into it.     

Edited June 14, 2021 by exchemist

[StringJunky]

The incidence of collision  of matter may be stochastic, but their behaviour when they react is not.

[studiot]

35 minutes ago, MarkE said:

So my question is: do you agree with the author(s)?

Yes the authors are quite correct in what they say about the scenario they describe.

But it would be statistically quite wrong to apply this statement to evolution.

 

The monkeys are performing the same (statistical) experiment over and over again.
That is they are repeating one single experiment.

Evolution is about the confluence of many many simultaneous experiments.
The statistics of such a process is entirely different.

Applied to the monkeys this is equivalent to applying a whole bunch of 'filters' or constraints, themselves perhaps random in some way but maybe also biased.

So that for example certain keys are occasionally electrified so the monkey will shy away from them.
And another filter is applied so that the resultant electrification shepherds the monkeys into typing the keys for the letters in their order of frequency in the English language.
Now apply a very large number of such filters all compounded together.

I wish you well in finding out the resultant text the monkeys migh come up with as the possibilities are truly staggering.
So much so that you could be studying for the age of the Universe and never see a repeated text.

[Ghideon]

29 minutes ago, Prometheus said:

The analogy between writing books and evolution breaks down here as one might ask how do we know what the 'correct' first word, or species, is. In the former case 'correct' is defined by some external criterion, but for evolution correct simply means it survives to reproduce.

I agree. I wonder how the analogy would look like if the survival of monkeys in the experiment would be affected by what they randomly typed. Isn't evolution, in comparison to the specific analogy, more alone the lines that any monkey that randomly managed to write an existing word or part of a sentence should get a reward? (And the monkeys gets no reward) So that surviving monkeys, over millions of years, are those that evolve their language skills or manage to modify the type writers or to cooperate or whatever random change that increase the monkeys chance to survive.

 

edit: x-post with @studiot; seems like a similar argument

Edited June 14, 2021 by Ghideon
x-post

[joigus]

As @exchemist says, evolution is not random. That's a misrepresentation commonly used by creationists to caricature the mechanism of evolution. If you think deeply about it, everything is random. The key for some kind of adaptation is that:

1) The replicating mechanism is fast

2) The background conditions, though being ultimately random, reshuffle so slowly as compared to the replication process as to provide a sufficiently slow background (and thereby effectively non-random) for the replication mechanism to adapt to them.

Almost x-posted with @StringJunky and @studiot and I have to read more carefully the whole thread.

X-posted with @Ghideon.

Edited June 14, 2021 by joigus

[swansont]

55 minutes ago, MarkE said:

How much time, then, according to probability laws, before one of them finally types, “Call me Ishmael”?

But you have an infinite number of them, so it actually takes almost no time at all. 

The issue here is someone is trying to baffle/intimidate their audience with large numbers, while also ignoring the incredibly large numbers involved in chemistry. Avogadro's number, for example, is 6.02 x 10^23. That's just one gram of hydrogen atoms. 100 grams of something of atomic number 100. The mass of the earth, meanwhile, is 6 x 10^24 kg

283 trillion trillion is 2.83 x 10^20. In the scheme of things it's a small number.

30 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Nobody has ever argued that the complexity of life is due to randomness alone.

*Nobody with decent understanding. 

[studiot]

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

But you have an infinite number of them, so it actually takes almost no time at all. 

Are you sure ?

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

With a million never-sleeping monkeys working, all faultlessly typing sixty words a minute

 

[MarkE]

1 hour ago, Prometheus said:

The laws of physics and the biochemical laws that emerge from them.

Randomness is just one part of the evolutionary process. You also need some kind of self-replication and selection process. Evolution has never been understood as a 'completely' random process.

But isn't the opposite of 'random' something like 'directed', or even 'intentionally/knowingly'? Doesn't 'total randomness' mean machine-like, robot-like, factory-like, a clockwork-universe? 

Erwin Schrödinger once said that living organisms possess some kind of 'negative entropy', thereby not violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics or anything, but pointing out that there is a higher probability for disorder than for order, but we humans obviously do work, and make an effort, which makes sure that the low probability outcome becomes reality, because if we wouldn't, the high probability outcome, that which has most chance to develop, would become reality (because it's very easy to have a climate crisis, to not graduate, to become fat, etcetera). That sounds a lot like the opposite of 'randomness'. So we have to take matters into our own hands to make sure that the natural way of things isn't going to happen. That's the difference between innate things, and living things. They're both made of the same atoms, but innate things don't know things, and so they don't have intentions. Living organisms do.

When I asked the question  what this non-random factor is, you replied with: "the laws of physics and the biochemical laws". So you're not making a distinction between the two, then. But the way I see is that there must be a distinction, because entropy predicts chaos and disorder. On the other hand, life forms, and especially humans, do the exact opposite, by creating order. 

If the exact same laws of physics can cause both order, or (naturally) disorder, then what's the difference between the two? Aren't there 2 different paths one can take within 1 set of laws of physics? What's the difference between the atoms in innate and living matter? Because living organism are made of the exact same atoms compared to innate matter, but there's obviously a difference between the two. What's the difference, if it's not a different law of physics? 

Edited June 14, 2021 by MarkE

[Prometheus]

 

26 minutes ago, MarkE said:

But isn't the opposite of 'random' something like 'directed', or even 'intentionally/knowingly'? Doesn't 'total randomness' mean machine-like, robot-like, factory-like, a clockwork-universe? 

Why would you think the opposite of random be intention? 

I don't know what you mean that total randomness is a clock-work universe. What even is total-randomness? 

 

21 minutes ago, MarkE said:

When I asked the question  what this non-random factor is, you replied with: "the laws of physics and the biochemical laws". So you're not making a distinction between the two, then. But the way I see is that there must be a distinction, because entropy predicts chaos and disorder. On the other hand, life forms, and especially humans, do the exact opposite, by creating order. 

The distinction i made between them was that one emerges from the other.

I'm no physicist but entropy doesn't predict disorder, but measures it. And chaos is an entirely different phenomenon again (i.e. non-linear dynamics). I think by throwing around these terms you are only confusing yourself.

 

37 minutes ago, MarkE said:

If the exact same laws of physics can cause both order, or (naturally) disorder, then what's the difference between the two? Aren't there 2 different paths one can take within 1 set of laws of physics? What's the difference between the atoms in innate and living matter? Because living organism are made of the exact same atoms compared to innate matter, but there's obviously a difference between the two. What's the difference, if it's not a different law of physics? 

We have regions of high entropy and regions of low entropy. Why would you think you need two laws of physics for this to be? By analogy you might say because there are diabetics and non-diabetics there must be two completely different laws of biology. No, diabetes and its absence occurs as a continuum in a single system.

[dimreepr]

49 minutes ago, MarkE said:

But isn't the opposite of 'random' something like 'directed', or even 'intentionally/knowingly'? Doesn't 'total randomness' mean machine-like, robot-like, factory-like, a clockwork-universe?

Why would we consider what the opposite of random means?

When random + time, makes so much sense?

Edited June 14, 2021 by dimreepr

[MarkE]

29 minutes ago, Prometheus said:

I'm no physicist but entropy doesn't predict disorder, but measures it

Yes it predicts disorder, because the probability of disorder is higher than that of order. That does not mean that with absolute certainty that it's disorder is what you're going to get. As an analogy, it's like winning the lottery: if you buy a lottery ticket, you're probably not going to win, but there is a small probability that you will. So one would predict that you don't win.

29 minutes ago, Prometheus said:

Why would you think you need two laws of physics for this to be?

I didn't say that there must be 2 laws of physics to explain the difference between order and disorder, which distinguishes living organisms from innate matter, I said this:

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

If the exact same laws of physics can cause both order, or (naturally) disorder, then what's the difference between the two? Aren't there 2 different paths one can take within 1 set of laws of physics?

So what's the difference between the two? That's the 'non-random factor' I was referring to.

Edited June 14, 2021 by MarkE

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

But isn't the opposite of 'random' something like 'directed', or even 'intentionally/knowingly'? Doesn't 'total randomness' mean machine-like, robot-like, factory-like, a clockwork-universe? 

Erwin Schrödinger once said that living organisms possess some kind of 'negative entropy', thereby not violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics or anything, but pointing out that there is a higher probability for disorder than for order, but we humans obviously do work, and make an effort, which makes sure that the low probability outcome becomes reality, because if we wouldn't, the high probability outcome, that which has most chance to develop, would become reality (because it's very easy to have a climate crisis, to not graduate, to become fat, etcetera). That sounds a lot like the opposite of 'randomness'. So we have to take matters into our own hands to make sure that the natural way of things isn't going to happen. That's the difference between innate things, and living things. They're both made of the same atoms, but innate things don't know things, and so they don't have intentions. Living organisms do.

When I asked the question  what this non-random factor is, you replied with: "the laws of physics and the biochemical laws". So you're not making a distinction between the two, then. But the way I see is that there must be a distinction, because entropy predicts chaos and disorder. On the other hand, life forms, and especially humans, do the exact opposite, by creating order. 

If the exact same laws of physics can cause both order, or (naturally) disorder, then what's the difference between the two? Aren't there 2 different paths one can take within 1 set of laws of physics? What's the difference between the atoms in innate and living matter? Because living organism are made of the exact same atoms compared to innate matter, but there's obviously a difference between the two. What's the difference, if it's not a different law of physics? 

No, the opposite of random is something like "ordered" or "predictable", for example the motion of the planets.

As for entropy, I think what you mean is what the Second Law of Thermodynamics predicts, which is that entropy (a measure of randomness at the atomic scale) always increases in spontaneous processes. That is just as true of life as it is of inanimate matter. If you need an explanation of how that happens, we can easily provide it.  

  

Edited June 14, 2021 by exchemist

[MarkE]

10 minutes ago, exchemist said:

That is just as true of life as it is of inanimate matter.  

Indeed, but I think that Erwin Schrödinger was onto something. He was right by pointing out that there's a difference between living organism and innate matter, with respect to entropy, even though they're both subject to the same laws of physics. But I still don't see what this difference is.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Are you sure ?

 

Infinite monkey theorem. (I should have said if you have an infinite number...)

It's another related gambit to what I said earlier. Infinity is big, but we'll use a million, and a million is pretty big, right? Well, no.  A million is small in this context. It's a bait-and-switch, going from the infinite monkey theorem (the wikipedia link addresses n going to infinity) to the million monkey theorem as if they were basically interchangeable. 

[exchemist]

10 minutes ago, MarkE said:

Indeed, but I think that Erwin Schrödinger was onto something. He was right by pointing out that there's a difference between living organism and innate matter, with respect to entropy, even though they're both subject to the same laws of physics. But I still don't see what this difference is.

There is no difference, fundamentally, so you are right not to see it, I think. Schrödinger had some funny ideas in later life, as quite often happens to famous scientists.

Many processes in nature involve decreases in local entropy, that is, in part of the thermodynamic system. But they are always accompanied by a greater increase in entropy in some other part of the system. For example, when water freezes, the entropy of the ice crystals is lower than liquid water, but Latent Heat is exported to the environment, increasing its entropy. Similarly, the metabolic processes of life generate waste heat. So entropy increases all the time a living organism grows.  There is nothing special going on, thermodynamically speaking.   

Edited June 14, 2021 by exchemist

[studiot]

56 minutes ago, Prometheus said:

I'm no physicist but entropy doesn't predict disorder, but measures it. And chaos is an entirely different phenomenon again (i.e. non-linear dynamics). I think by throwing around these terms you are only confusing yourself.

And the rest of the post +1.

 

Random by itself is pretty meaningless, it is an adjective and needs a noun to describe as random.
A random process is a process which has more than one possible mutually exclusive outcome (ie at least 2).
A stochastic process in one in which it is possible to assign probabilities to the outcomes.

A process which has only one possible outcome is, by definition, deterministic (or predictable).

This is the nearest to the opposite to random I can come.

Edited June 14, 2021 by studiot

[swansont]

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

Erwin Schrödinger once said that living organisms possess some kind of 'negative entropy', thereby not violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics or anything,

Not quite

Quote

In his 1944 book What is Life?, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger expressed this by saying that living organisms feed on “negative entropy.”

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/life-death-spring-disorder/

You can locally decrease entropy if you increase it somewhere else. Overall it increases, and work has to be done to decrease it. This is not a controversial issue.

 

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

So we have to take matters into our own hands to make sure that the natural way of things isn't going to happen. That's the difference between innate things, and living things. They're both made of the same atoms, but innate things don't know things, and so they don't have intentions. Living organisms do.

Evolution is natural. 

A salt crystal forming from a solution decreases the entropy of the salt. Last I checked, salt is not alive. Similarly, forming ice decreases entropy of the water.

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

When I asked the question  what this non-random factor is, you replied with: "the laws of physics and the biochemical laws". So you're not making a distinction between the two, then. But the way I see is that there must be a distinction, because entropy predicts chaos and disorder. On the other hand, life forms, and especially humans, do the exact opposite, by creating order. 

If you take H2 and O2 and add a spark, you will get mostly H20. You will not get a random assortment of H and O atoms strung together.

The outcomes of chemistry are not random. You are using a watered-down description of entropy and trying to apply it well outside of its scope.

[MarkE]

11 minutes ago, swansont said:

Not quite

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/life-death-spring-disorder/

You can locally decrease entropy if you increase it somewhere else. Overall it increases, and work has to be done to decrease it. This is not a controversial issue.

 

Evolution is natural. 

A salt crystal forming from a solution decreases the entropy of the salt. Last I checked, salt is not alive. Similarly, forming ice decreases entropy of the water.

So when you're improving yourself, when you're getting ahead in life, do you consider that the same natural process compared to when you're putting any effort in it? There's a difference, right? I'm trying to find out what the difference is between a human being and innate matter. By pointing out the similarities between the two, as you're doing, instead of the differences, even thought you're 100% right with every word you say, isn't very helpful in finding out how to distinguish us from non-living matter.

Edited June 14, 2021 by MarkE

[exchemist]

22 minutes ago, MarkE said:

So when you're improving yourself, when you're getting ahead in life, do you consider that the same natural process compared to when you're putting any effort in it? There's a difference, right? I'm trying to find out what the difference is between a human being and innate matter. By pointing out the similarities between the two, as you're doing, instead of the differences, even thought you're 100% right with every word you say, isn't very helpful in finding out how to distinguish us from non-living matter.

Thermodynamically, there is no difference. That is what we are saying.

You can find innumerable ways to distinguish Man from other creatures, or to distinguish living organisms from inanimate matter. But don't look to physical science for that, which is what it looks as if you are trying to do. Physics and chemistry work the same for everything. 

You started this thread with a claim about random events not being able to produce order. That claim has been shown to be false, given that the universe is governed by laws that impose order. (Kinetic Theory and Statistical Thermodynamics embody the science of how randomness at the atomic scale gives rise to the ordered bulk properties of matter that we see, due to the operation of these laws. It's very interesting and mind-expanding, in my opinion, to see how that arises.) 

Now, you seem to be doing something a lot narrower: to find the differences between human beings and inanimate matter. That's kind of obvious, though, at one level, isn't it? I suspect you may need to rethink what it is you are really trying to do.   

 

Edited June 14, 2021 by exchemist

[studiot]

3 hours ago, MarkE said:

I always believed that evolution was a completely random, undirected process, simply the result of random mutations and chance events.

But evolution is a random process, in accordance with the definition I gave if and only if it has generated an outcome.

Has this occurred ?

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, MarkE said:

So when you're improving yourself, when you're getting ahead in life, do you consider that the same natural process compared to when you're putting any effort in it? There's a difference, right? I'm trying to find out what the difference is between a human being and innate matter. By pointing out the similarities between the two, as you're doing, instead of the differences, even thought you're 100% right with every word you say, isn't very helpful in finding out how to distinguish us from non-living matter.

"Getting ahead in life" seems to be an artificial distinction.

Did you mean inert, rather than innate?

The 2nd law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy will increase, so it's not going to help in this distinction. There might be some traction in the rate at which entropy increases for something of equal mass, in general (i.e. there will be exceptions)

e.g. living matter tends to consume food and excrete waste, and in doing so there are chemical reactions. To any extent that inanimate matter does this (or an analogue of this), it probably tends to do so more slowly. That might be something to look into.

[Arete]

A point I haven't seen made yet is that DNA  encodes four nucleotides. Codons are groups of three nucleotides - so there are 64 possible "words". All words translate to either an amino acid, or stop, with multiple codons encoding each amino acid. This means that:

1) All possible sequences can be expressed into proteins. There are no gibberish sequences, unlike the English language. 

2) Multiple sequences encode the same string of amino acids. There is a considerable level of redundancy. Several monkeys could type different DNA strings which encode the same protein. 

3) All proteins are subject to environmental selection. The process of eliminating or retaining DNA strings is non-random, as opposed to monkeys banging typewriters. 

So the analogy fails on multiple levels. 

[joigus]

9 hours ago, studiot said:

Random by itself is pretty meaningless, [...]

This connects very much with point 3) by @Arete. Point 3), I think, is essential.

Point 1) I don't think it's crucial as, in Eukaryotes at least, there's a considerable amount of DNA that's just got rid of by RNA splicing. So in eukaryotes there's a lot of RNA material that goes in the dumpster right away during the phase of transcription. I think what Arete's point is that Nature is much less forgiving to "mistyping" DNA than the monkey theorem suggests. Monkeys that mistype too much are removed (see below).

Point 2) give the monkeys a chance to make some typing mistakes, as different codons give rise to same protein. Proofreading processes give the monkeys another shot too. This is equivalent to letting the monkeys disregard certain typographic rules, e.g.: ignore capitals, spell words phonetically, etc. We don't have infinitely many monkeys in our typing bench!

"Random" by itself doesn't mean much. When people use the word "random" in such a way, they usually mean something like equal probability for all outcomes. Equal probability is not what governs evolution. Some changes are more likely than others. It's as if, for some reason, the monkeys are more likely to type the sequence "ow" than the sequence "wt". It is also known that some sequences of nucleotides are more prone to mutation than others.

Trying to elaborate on @Arete's point 3), while connecting with the OP's analogy of the typing monkeys; it is as if every now and then, when a monkey makes a typing mistake that's too bad to be forgiven, some directing process kicks him off the team of typing monkeys and lets other monkeys take his job.

So, again, it's not random. The environment has the final call on which monkeys keep typing an which don't. And internal processes determine which typing mistakes are immaterial, and which aren't.