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Article #325

Re: Infinity and its consequences

#325
From: Mr. Gordon L. Nelson
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 00:00
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You really ought to read "One, Two, Three, Infinity" by George Gamow.  
He is the originator of  the "Monkey at the typewriter" parable.  You 
take a monkey, totally ignorant of  the English language, and put him 
at a typewriter (or better, a computer).  Let him type away at random.  
Eventually he will produce all of the plays of William Shakespeare, all 
of  the great books ever written, as well as all of the books and 
papers ever published on scientific matters.  Of course,as Gamow points 
out, you will have a horrendous editing problem because 99.99% of what 
the monkey writes will be gibberish.  Sifting through the mountain of 
gibberish to extract the really good stuff would be simply 
overhwhelming.  Anyway, that's my spin on the significance of the 
infinite and the vanishingly small probability that some very unlikely 
event will occur.

G. Nelson
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From: JTSW06A@prodigy.com (Mr. Gordon L. Nelson)
Subject: Re: Infinity and its consequences
Date: 1998/08/23
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