The question that everyone has been dying to know has been answered. Finally! What will scientists study next?

  • PetteriPano@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    234
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    23 days ago

    The theorem holds true. The theorem states that the monkey has infinite time, not just the lifetime of our universe.

    That’s just lazy science to change the conditions to make sensational headlines. Bad scientists!

    • Botzo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      107
      ·
      23 days ago

      This just in: scientists disprove validity of thought experiment; philosophers remain concerned that they’ve missed the point.

      • murmelade@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        22 days ago

        The universe is the cage and we are the monkeys. We have already written Hamlet.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      32
      ·
      edit-2
      23 days ago

      Infinite time is undefined though. We are not sure there was time before the Big Bang. Before anyone says “but there must have been,” consider that it’s just as paradoxical and mind blowing to imagine that time never had a beginning and just stretches infinitely into the past. How can that be so? It means it would have taken an infinite amount of time for us to reach this moment in time, and that means we never would have.

      • Starbuncle@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        23 days ago

        I think the implications behind there being infinite time in the past are fun if you assume that the universe works like a stochastic state machine. It means that either every finite event that has happened and will happen has already happened an infinite number of times or the universe is infinitely large.

      • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        23 days ago

        Why must the concept of time before the big bang (or after our heat death) exist in our physical reality for us to speculate about theoretical infinities past those? The thought experiment is about infinite time, not all the time in our limited universe. A lot of things happen at infinity that break down as soon as you add a limit, but we’re not talking limits when we’re talking infinity.

    • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      23 days ago

      It also makes a pretty bold claim about us actually knowing the lifespan of the universe.