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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • You’re shifting the goalposts, and that still doesn’t work.

    An infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite length of time doesn’t necessitate that they stop once they reach 191,726 characters and then start over again. It also doesn’t necessitate that they never repeat a pattern of characters. In fact, it’s incredibly likely that they repeat more or less the same patterns more often than not. They’re probably going to repeatedly press keys that are in proximity to one another while moving around the keyboard. Things like: “;ml9o fklibhuasdfbuklghaol;jios9 fdlhnikuasdf”.

    If you’re measuring whether or not eventually you’ll produce Hamlet by typing out every single possible permutation of 191,726 characters on a keyboard, well… yeah, of course you will. But infinite monkeys aren’t a grid search system for combinations of keystrokes, they’re monkeys mashing the keys without knowing what they mean or in all likelihood what a typewriter or computer is.

    You want monkeys on keyboards? You’re mostly going to get gibberish.

    If you put a bunch of yarn in a room with some high-powered rotating fans, are they eventually going to produce a sweater? Probably not. You’re just going to have a bunch of tangled yarn. Sweaters require a consistent repetition of a non-random pattern of movement. Alter that pattern only a handful of times and you won’t have a sweater even if you do manage to stumble across some version of that pattern accidentally.

    Is there a non-zero chance? Eh… maybe? But there’s no reason to assume that it’ll actually happen given any amount of time unless someone comes along who knows how to make a sweater and does so.

    With monkeys and keyboards you’d be lucky to get a few lines of anything resembling English in iambic pentameter.



  • millie@beehaw.orgtoScience Memes@mander.xyzHoney
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    17 days ago

    They’re certainly exposed to a very different living situation than would be typical for them in most cases, to their detriment. For example, bees that make their combs in frames lose substantial heat from their hives, which usually helps protect against disease and even predation. They’re also often given a sugar water substitute to eat when their honey is drained off for human consumption, which is nowhere near as nutritious. They’re also moved around on the bee keeper’s schedule, which may be a substantial stressor compared with a hive that stays in one place. Never mind that they may be exposed to climates that substantially differ from where that particular variety of honey be evolved.

    Given issues like colony collapse disorder, it’s pretty clear that many forms of bee keeping aren’t really great for bees. Does that constitute torture? That’s hard to tell, but it certainly does put pressures on them in multiple aspects of their lives and the lives of their hives as a whole that they wouldn’t be dealing with otherwise, and which probably aren’t pleasant.

    Would you consider it torture, or at least cruel, to forcibly relocate the population of a city to an area that’s freezing cold, force them to live in poorly insulated homes, make them eat food that isn’t healthy for them, and steal the product of their labor in exchange for their efforts?