Monkey Tale

This is rather a controversial question I know but it is something I have wondered about for a while. Before people start writing in, let me point out that I have lived in the country most of my life so I am no way trying to insult country people. Sorry about the picture, but I just couldn’t resist!

People that live in cities generally have to be more aware of certain dangers that just aren’t found in the generally slower pace of the country, namely lots of people. When you have lots of people sharing the same space and resources you tend to get more danger. This I think we an all agree on. I have witnessed a robbery, an attempted robbery, vandalism many times and theft, all in different towns and cities. In the country I have not seen any such crime, probably because there are less people to cause it.

When people are faced with challenging difficulties they generally learn how to deal with these difficulties if they are to survive, a small example of Darwinism. In my humble opinion, city people are slightly more “street wise”, presumably this is due to the additional stimulus of an active and slightly more dangerous environment. So to reiterate my original question, does living in a city make you smarter?

A counter argument is that these days many wealthy people are buying up all the homes in the country, this is certainly the case in England. Many of these homes are in fact second homes or holiday homes. Although I dispute the idea that wealth is linked to innate intelligence, I am pretty confident that a privileged background and private education helps. Around 50% of students at the leading universities of Cambridge and Oxford are from the 7% that went to private schools. [source]

I think there is no real way to prove or disprove this idea, but I would be interested to hear about anyone else’s opinions on this matter.

As mentioned in my introductory post, a monkey could allegedly write the complete works of Shakespeare given enough time, due to random key bashing. Given infinite time and pure randomness then all and every event can and will happen, as infinite is never ending.

However, I have a problem with this theory. You see I don’t think a monkey could hit keys purely randomly, just as people cant. For example ask someone to pick a number between 1 and 10. A big proportion of people pick the number 7 straight away. Why? Because they like it, and it is very often a persons “favorite number” and is considered lucky by some. Most people do not pick the number 1 or 10 because they don’t consider it in the range of 1-10, however, clever people will pick these numbers to try and catch you out. After 7 people tend to pick other odd numbers, in my experience 3, 5 and 9 are the most common. People tend to have a blindness to the number 2 and the numbers 4, 6 and 8 aren’t picked very often. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself, ask someone. First of all think about the sort of person they are, are they likely to be the sort of person who would pick 7 straight away? If they are not, are the likely to be clever and pick 1 or 10? Already we have narrowed down the probability from 1 in 10 to 1 in 7, and with a bit of guess work we can narrow it down further. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule.

Another question to ask people is “Think of a Jungle Animal”. If you can pressure them to answer quickly they are quite likely to pick a Lion, even though Lions don’t live in the jungle. Similarly “Pick a garden vegetable” tends to result in the person choosing “Carrot”. Its a great little party trick!

My point is people don’t do randomness very well, the human brain is actually trying to emulate randomness but is a slave to previous ideas and experiences. A monkey has similar thought processes and is no different in respect to randomness.

Ok then, if we can’t use people or animals to create the pure random factor needed for our Shakespearian plays, then we could use a computer couldn’t we? No, computers cant do random either. When a computer program executes a random function, it is actually just picking a number from a very long list of numbers or a mathematical algorithm which appears random. Such functions are called pseudo-random number generators.

Even if you shake a dice or flip a coin, its not really random, as the outcome is determined by many factors such as the position of the dice before you throw it, the speed in which it is thrown, the temperature and pressure of the air around it to name but a few.

So, how do we get randomness? Some natural events are completely random such as radioactive decay. Measuring such things can give you true randomness. This is not to say a monkey or a computer couldn’t write the complete works of Shakespeare, it just means it wouldn’t be done in a  completely random way.

This website is going to be a place where people can write ideas of any nature. They can be new ideas, unproven theories or just plain crazy ones.

It has often been said that if a monkey was placed in front of a typewriter and given an infinite amount of time he would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare. Its called the infinite monkey theorem. Well I guess with an infinite amount of time he would also write every literary masterpiece in existence and create every future one too, along with a lot of rubbish as well.

I wonder if you placed a monkey in front of a modern computer how long would it take him to create the internet? How about if some web design software was installed on the computer, such as Dreamweaver, how long would it take him to create his first E-commerce website?

Well with the help of WordPress, this web monkey managed to set up this website in a little under 10 minutes. I hope most of the writings on here will be slightly better than that provided by a key bashing monkey, but I am sure some of it wont be!

If you have any wacky ideas you would like to explore, please post a comment, and if it sounds interesting I may contact you so you can have your say on your own page.

The Web Monkey