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The idea that with enough time anything is possible is what philosophers call a category error. The fact is, there are infinite ways for the process to fail, and only one possible path to success. The statistical likelihood of a monkey writing Hamlet is therefore the same as the statistical likelihood of a broken glass suddenly reassembling itself. In other words, to all intents and purposes, zero. No matter how many monkeys and how much time, the error probability (even a single letter in a single word) is infinitely greater than the probability of success that success (a complete error-free text) never occurs.

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Allan Milne Lees
Allan Milne Lees

Written by Allan Milne Lees

Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.

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