hmm
well im still waiting but now its enough its not funny
i dont know what you are expecting from this game
i dont think that you will get the response that you might thought
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Author Comments
Inspired by this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news /technology-15060310
which is based on the famous thought experiment.
You get one monkey who fires out 120 words per second, Enter a word and the program will simulate how many attempts it will take for that word to get typed.
Enter a word in the top box, that will be the goal.
Click the monkey to start, and again to end the test.
It's totally fine to change the text midway through the simulation.
The monkey types up to 10 letters at once, Don't expect quick results.
It only types one word at a time but underscores are A_O_K.
HydroEmperor responds:
Probably true, But if I made the program cheat by saving letters or by making the maximum character amount any more forgiving it wouldn't be true to the original experiment, which is the point.
At least it shows that the original thought experiment just isn't practical.
Word = blah.
Monkeys work = undefined.
Wasted paper = 300000 and counting.
>->
HydroEmperor responds:
Yeah, I have 990000 attempts and counting for a three letter word.
It's like the old rice on a chessboard argument, each letter adds the difficulty exponentially, making the program actually useless for anything but proving a point after 4 letters, the point would be that the infinite moneys and typewriters argument really would take infinite time.
Well..
This is interesting. Not really of much use or enjoyment. But interesting. I am still waiting for a single 5 letter word to appear. I do have a couple of comments though.
1). 120 words per second? I am assuming wasted paper is actually the number of failed words rather than some kind of simulation of sheets of paper. If this is indeed the case then it is maybe pulling 120 words per minute.
2) The simulation does not seem to run (or runs very slowly) when the flash is not visible on the screen. This is evidenced in that as I have been typing this (and regardless of the monkey's speed, I type much more slowly) very little progress has been made. It also completely stops when you switch to a different tab. However if you are using a different window and the flash is still visible it seems to run fine.
Overall It seems to do what it is meant to do, but doesn't do much more. Curiosity alone begs me to continue using it.. and waiting. That being said I am going to give this a passable score of 3/5 and 5/10. Think I must just be in a good mood.
HydroEmperor responds:
Yeah its not really very fun, Its one of those ideas that sounds fascinating in your head but in practice its quite boring, Shame really.
1) It generates a word every frame, gibberish mostly, and it cranked up to 120 frames per second. Its assumed the monkey doesn't have any care about the environment or re-use, and uses a new piece of paper for each word.
2) That's odd, It happens for me if I move to another tab. Flash must pause to save CPU power. Which isn't very convenient if you want to leave it on and do something interesting like any sane man would.
Its more of a tool than a game really, I have to admit I was hoping it would be more interesting that it was, But the classic example had infinite monkeys and time, a flash program doesn't have that long to get results.
Amusing tool
I like the concept. The link you posted says it can't be found. I'm guessing it's related to experiment Richard Dawkins wrote for "The Blind Watchmaker". It's well done. Though, have you considered modifying it so that if part of the string is correct it will keep that and just try to generate the rest of the word? I chose banana and it still hasn't got there after almost 20,000 tries.
HydroEmperor responds:
It was based off Jesse Anderson's work, the link may only work in the UK since its from the BBC.
Having it save letters is a good idea but defeats the purpose, Maybe I'll add it as an option if I ever revisit the project.
And yeah, the more letters you add the less lightly it is to work, a single letter took about 720 tries for me but typing out the word "LOL" still isn't finished for me and its up to 847076 attempts, Silly old chimp.