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Dismantling the Infinite Monkey Theorem: Randomness in Reality
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Introduction
What is the Infinite Moneky Theorem?
“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare.”
It is a probabilistic thought experiment. However, non-theists usually use it as an evidence claiming that randomness and chance can produce order and complexity in reality. However, there are numerous fundamental problems with such claims. Here we will only address a few of them.
1. The universe didn’t have infinite time
The universe is about 14 billion years old. While this is an immense timespan, it is infinitesimally small compared to the concept of infinity (14,000,000,000 ÷ ∞ = 0). This applies a time limit to everything in the universe — including the monkey and typewriter — making the infinite monkey theorem impractical and invalid for any real-world scenario.
