Karl Pilkington has been “vindicated” by a new report about monkeys and William Shakespeare.
On Friday (1 November), a study into the Infinite Monkeys Theorem, which claims that an endless number of primates would be able to type out the works of Shakespeare if given an infinite amount of time, suggested that this thought experiment is “potentially misleading”.
As an example, the two Australian mathematicians who conducted the study claimed that the time it would take these primates to write out Shakespeare’s many plays and sonnets would last longer than our universe.
The findings of the study have since gone viral on social media, with the BBC writing: “Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds.” In response to this, a flurry of comments have pointed to comments once made by Pilkington in a conversation with Ricky Gervais.
In a 2014 clip that’s being widely shared online, Gervais says to Pilkington: “They say an infinite amount of chimps with an infinite amount of typewriters will type the complete works of Shakespeare, and you couldn’t grasp that.”
Pilkington, keeping a straight face, replied: “it wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t happen – and I think you know it wouldn’t happen but you say it would to annoy me.”
Gervais interjects: “No, it works by definition because it’s the nature of infinity,” to which an unimpressed Pilkington fires back: “It doesn’t matter.”
Many are saying Pilkington has been “vindicated” by the study, with one person stating: “Hey @rickygervais, I think you owe Karl Pilkington an apology!”
“Justice for Karl Pilkington!” another fan wrote.
For their study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Franklin Open, mathematicians Professor Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta from the University of Technology Sydney based their calculations on the heat death hypothesis, in which the universe expands to the point that it can no longer sustain life.
“The Infinite Monkey Theorem only considers the infinite limit, with either an infinite number of monkeys or an infinite time period of monkey labour,” said Professor Woodcock.
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“We decided to look at the probability of a given string of letters being typed by a finite number of monkeys within a finite time period consistent with estimates for the lifespan of our universe,” he said.