The odds of a Shakespearian sonnet

[Jew4Judaism]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?

Rabbi Schroder picks "How Do I Love Thee?", the only sonnet he's familiar with. It has 489 letters. Ignoring capitalization & punctuation, there are 26^489 possible letter combinations, which is on the order of 10^690 (that's a 1 with 690 zeroes after it).

As for generating those combinations, he says, forget monkeys; they'll never get the job done. Picture the entire universe, with its 10^56 grams of mass, as composed entirely of nanocomputers, each weighing a billionth of a gram, each capable of producing a billion attempted sonnets per second. Over the 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, these nanocomputers would have produced 10^92 attempted sonnets. That's a huge number - but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 10^690 possible letter combinations. We're off by a factor of 10^598. That's like hitting the lottery 57 times in a row.

That's to get the sonnet once, anywhere in the universe, in a universe composed entirely of nanocomputers, going nonstop since the Big Bang. And if those are the odds of getting the sonnet, just imagine the odds of getting Shakespeare.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?

Rabbi Schroder picks "How Do I Love Thee?", the only sonnet he's familiar with. It has 489 letters. Ignoring capitalization & punctuation, there are 26^489 possible letter combinations, which is on the order of 10^690 (that's a 1 with 690 zeroes after it).

As for generating those combinations, he says, forget monkeys; they'll never get the job done. Picture the entire universe, with its 10^56 grams of mass, as composed entirely of nanocomputers, each weighing a billionth of a gram, each capable of producing a billion attempted sonnets per second. Over the 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, these nanocomputers would have produced 10^92 attempted sonnets. That's a huge number - but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 10^690 possible letter combinations. We're off by a factor of 10^598. That's like hitting the lottery 57 times in a row.

That's to get the sonnet once, anywhere in the universe, in a universe composed entirely of nanocomputers, going nonstop since the Big Bang. And if those are the odds of getting the sonnet, just imagine the odds of getting Shakespeare.

Do you want to take a crack at pointing out the logical problems with your post, or would you prefer that I do it?

 

[RabbiO]

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?
.

As far as I am aware, Dr. Schroeder is not a rabbi and has never claimed to be a rabbi. Although on his website he notes the rabbis he has studied with there is no claim that he obtained s'micha. Given that he details his academic credentials on the website, I am sure that he would have provided the information if he had achieved ordination.

By the way, welcome to the forum.

 

[Revoltingest]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?

Rabbi Schroder picks "How Do I Love Thee?", the only sonnet he's familiar with. It has 489 letters. Ignoring capitalization & punctuation, there are 26^489 possible letter combinations, which is on the order of 10^690 (that's a 1 with 690 zeroes after it).

As for generating those combinations, he says, forget monkeys; they'll never get the job done. Picture the entire universe, with its 10^56 grams of mass, as composed entirely of nanocomputers, each weighing a billionth of a gram, each capable of producing a billion attempted sonnets per second. Over the 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, these nanocomputers would have produced 10^92 attempted sonnets. That's a huge number - but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 10^690 possible letter combinations. We're off by a factor of 10^598. That's like hitting the lottery 57 times in a row.

That's to get the sonnet once, anywhere in the universe, in a universe composed entirely of nanocomputers, going nonstop since the Big Bang. And if those are the odds of getting the sonnet, just imagine the odds of getting Shakespeare.

If the calculations are cromulent, then this points out how fortunate we are to result from
the stochastic process of evolution than from the purely random sonnet writing process.

 

[metis]

@RabbiO, I sent you a p.m. but never got a response.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?

Rabbi Schroder picks "How Do I Love Thee?", the only sonnet he's familiar with. It has 489 letters. Ignoring capitalization & punctuation, there are 26^489 possible letter combinations, which is on the order of 10^690 (that's a 1 with 690 zeroes after it).

As for generating those combinations, he says, forget monkeys; they'll never get the job done. Picture the entire universe, with its 10^56 grams of mass, as composed entirely of nanocomputers, each weighing a billionth of a gram, each capable of producing a billion attempted sonnets per second. Over the 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, these nanocomputers would have produced 10^92 attempted sonnets. That's a huge number - but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 10^690 possible letter combinations. We're off by a factor of 10^598. That's like hitting the lottery 57 times in a row.

That's to get the sonnet once, anywhere in the universe, in a universe composed entirely of nanocomputers, going nonstop since the Big Bang. And if those are the odds of getting the sonnet, just imagine the odds of getting Shakespeare.

The argument is based upon a strawman in thinking that evolution is random. When natural selection is introduced it is not only possible for a random group of monkeys to type a sonnet, but all of the works of Shakespeare:

Monkeys at typewriters 'close to reproducing Shakespeare'

That was seven years ago and they were 99.99 percent finished in typing his entire works when that went to press. I am sure that they are done by now.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, that is fine, and if you need to get the whole sonnet at one go, this is even a correct calculation.

But, let's try something else.

Suppose we start with a random sequence of 489 letters. We call this sequence the 'parent'.

Now, we create 50 'children' by randomly picking a letter and randomly changing it. So we have 50 randomly created children that differ in one place from the 'parent' in a random way.

Next, we select the child that has the most letters in common with the sonnet in question. That child becomes the new 'parent'.

Next, from that new parent, 50 children are created by randomly selecting a letter and randomly changing it. Again, the child closest to the sonnet is selected to be the next 'parent'.

Now, how many generations do you think will be required to 'find' the sonnet in its complete glory? How many *total* sequences of 489 letters will be searched in doing this?

The answer may well surprise you. We should expect to find the *complete* sonnet from this procedure within about 4000 generations with only 200,000 'children' searched. This is easily done.

Random mutation and selection is a *powerful* way to find optimal solutions to problems.

 

[Revoltingest]

The argument is based upon a strawman in thinking that evolution is random. When natural selection is introduced it is not only possible for a random group of monkeys to type a sonnet, but all of the works of Shakespeare:

Monkeys at typewriters 'close to reproducing Shakespeare'

That was seven years ago and they were 99.99 percent finished in typing his entire works when that went to press. I am sure that they are done by now.

From your link....
Jesse Anderson, the programmer behind the project, said he was inspired
by an episode of The Simpsons which spoofs the famous problem.

 

[Jew4Judaism]

My bad. Dr. Shroeder. Sorry.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

One of the problems I find with this is that it works with ANYTHING - even things for which there is no obvious/perceivable creator - not just Shakespearean sonnets.

Take a stone - any stone - laying on the surface of the Earth. The stone didn't always exist. So, pretend you can go back to before the stone existed and take stock of all atoms and molecules that could possibly go into the formation of that stone. What do you think would be the perceived likelihood of the EXACT set of atoms and molecules that comprise the contemporary stone coming together from the disparate sources you would see before you in the time before the stone existed?

The stone needed no conscious, guiding-hand to form it, and yet it is distinct, unique, one-of-a-kind in all of the universe. And the statistical likelihood that it might exist in its exact form in this moment, given the formation of Earth as an example reference point, is just astronomical in calculation.

I guess my ultimate point with this is that, whether created by the functioning mind of a human being, or created due to the material of the universe adhering to the forces and "laws" of nature, why point to the object created by man to support the existence of a god? Why wouldn't the description of the formation of the stone be sufficient? Why do you point to something so obviously created by an intelligence for your analogy, when you believe that God created it all? My guess would be that you do understand there is a difference. And in that moment should also realize the folly of your analogy.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

@Jew4Judaism - so your position is that all events in history that were needed to cause Shakespeare's works were deliberately designed by your god?

There was a period in Shakespeare's life when he was especially prolific in poetry because he stopped writing plays and switched to poems... and the reason he stopped writing plays was that his theatre was shut down for a long period because of the plague.

So your god deliberately arranged that plague epidemic? This seems to be just one nasty implication of what you're arguing.

 

[Jew4Judaism]

Vestigial: Except that the stone in any other form would still be a stone, but the sonnet would be gibberish, and Shakespeare would be a glob of proteins.

 

[Jew4Judaism]

Penguin: That looks like an emotional argument and belongs in its own thread, say, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Penguin: That looks like an emotional argument and belongs in its own thread, say, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

No; at this stage, I'm just asking you to confirm that this is an implication of what you're saying.

 

[Subduction Zone]

To the OP, do you not realize how your argument against evolution failed? Once again you forgot to take natural selection into account. Evolution is not a random process. That fact makes your supposed problem fall apart.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Vestigial: Except that the stone in any other form would still be a stone, but the sonnet would be gibberish, and Shakespeare would be a glob of proteins.

As an aside, there is a reply button at the bottom of the post you want to reply to. If you press it the user will be notified in their notification box that you replied to them when you submit your comment.
You can also use the @ symbol to tag someone will do the same thing. Like this @Jew4Judaism

 

[Sapiens]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?

Rabbi Schroder picks "How Do I Love Thee?", the only sonnet he's familiar with. It has 489 letters. Ignoring capitalization & punctuation, there are 26^489 possible letter combinations, which is on the order of 10^690 (that's a 1 with 690 zeroes after it).

As for generating those combinations, he says, forget monkeys; they'll never get the job done. Picture the entire universe, with its 10^56 grams of mass, as composed entirely of nanocomputers, each weighing a billionth of a gram, each capable of producing a billion attempted sonnets per second. Over the 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, these nanocomputers would have produced 10^92 attempted sonnets. That's a huge number - but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 10^690 possible letter combinations. We're off by a factor of 10^598. That's like hitting the lottery 57 times in a row.

That's to get the sonnet once, anywhere in the universe, in a universe composed entirely of nanocomputers, going nonstop since the Big Bang. And if those are the odds of getting the sonnet, just imagine the odds of getting Shakespeare.

Sheer stupidity and failure to research the issue or conscious duplicity by strawman on the part of your quoted "authority," Gerald Schroder. Google and wiki should be his friend before he shoots his mouth off:

Weasel program - Wikipedia

 

[siti]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

What are the odds against an atheist actually making this argument I wonder? In any case, Shakespeare's sonnets were written by an ape, not a monkey, and using a bird's feather rather than a typewriter. What are the odds against that rather than a completely random and nonsensical jumble of words emerging? Dunno - but I reckon Dr Shroeder and your good self have already made your contribution to the latter. And here is mine!

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

What are the odds that Shakespeare would have written anyone of his sonnets, starting at the moment of the Big Bang (or whatever other starting point you would like to use)? Fantastically small.

That anyone else would write one of his sonnets, without knowing about his prior penning? Fantastically small. Unless the universe is truly infinite in size, and then it has happened/will happen an infinite number of times.

But, what is the probability--given all of the actual events from the beginning of the universe up until that moment--that led up to Shakespeare sitting down one morning to write a sonnet and penned that particular sonnet?

Even at that moment before he started writing, it was not a 100 percent chance...but it was much higher than 1 in 10^690 (or infinity). And of course, by the time he got done composing Sonnet X, the chance was 1 in 1...again, given everything including all the influences on him up to the point of starting to write, and those that occurred in his experience while he was writing

The odds of any one particular thing happening in a "random" system may be vanishingly small...but the odds that SOMETHING will happen is 100 percent. And as others have already point out that the universe is not a random system, at least once evolution starts operating on living systems.

The odds of something complex happening, without any precursors, is of course nil. But even in this ridiculous thought experiment, typewriters, monkeys and language all have to happen spontaneously, in order to be compared the actual Shakespeare, who was the result of a path-dependent history that make it possible for him to exist and to write sonnets.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Atheists often say we shouldn't be impressed by evidence of design in the universe, because while we wouldn't expect a monkey to randomly type a Shakespearian sonnet, if you have billions of monkeys typing away for billions of years, we shouldn't be surprised if one of them gets it.

This is a mis-statement of a hypothetical used to illustrate the nature of infinity and probability, not the nature of a finite reality. The actual thought experiment says that, given enough time, a monkey or group of monkeys with a typewriter randomly pushing buttons would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare - and if we stretch this amount of time infinitely, then the probability of this even occurring has to be 100%.

Rabbi Gerald Schroder, who teaches at Aish Hatorah in Jerusalem, takes the atheists' bull by the horns: what, indeed, are the odds of randomly typing a Shakespearian sonnet?

Rabbi Schroder picks "How Do I Love Thee?", the only sonnet he's familiar with. It has 489 letters. Ignoring capitalization & punctuation, there are 26^489 possible letter combinations, which is on the order of 10^690 (that's a 1 with 690 zeroes after it).

As for generating those combinations, he says, forget monkeys; they'll never get the job done. Picture the entire universe, with its 10^56 grams of mass, as composed entirely of nanocomputers, each weighing a billionth of a gram, each capable of producing a billion attempted sonnets per second. Over the 10^18 seconds since the Big Bang, these nanocomputers would have produced 10^92 attempted sonnets. That's a huge number - but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 10^690 possible letter combinations. We're off by a factor of 10^598. That's like hitting the lottery 57 times in a row.

That's to get the sonnet once, anywhere in the universe, in a universe composed entirely of nanocomputers, going nonstop since the Big Bang. And if those are the odds of getting the sonnet, just imagine the odds of getting Shakespeare.

Please look into something called "statistical thermodynamics", because it renders Rabbi Schroder's argument entirely meaningless. I'd be happy to explain in my own words, but I'm a little tired of explaining it on these forums, so I'll only explain it if you ask me to.