This one's been blogged all over the place, but what the heck -- I'll post it here, too. Apparently, a gang of artists decided to test the old infinite-monkeys idea. So they put six monkeys in a room with a word processor for a month to see if they'd write King Lear. Thirty days later, they had not managed to write a single word -- and in fact mostly just pushed the letter "s". As Wired News reports:
Posted by Clive Thompson at May 10, 2003 04:19 PM
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"The fact that the work of Shakespeare is probably the work of a group of writers working under a pseudonym adds further irony to the work. "
Why do scientists imagine that doing literary criticism requires less precision than science?
What is this crap?
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at May 11, 2003 6:14 PM
Posted by: Anonymous at May 11, 2003 6:28 PM
That's a cool link!
Actually, I think the group of people who did this were slightly more artists than scientists. But yeah, the old conspiracy theories about Shakespeare-as-borg have been pretty soundly rebutted.
Posted by: Clive at May 11, 2003 10:10 PM
--- At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it. ---
Isn't that how William Gibson used to do it? Get stoned and bash the hell out of it? Oh wait... get -a- stone... my bad. ;)
Perhaps they were just trying to get the MS-Office assistant to disappear?
K
Posted by: Kirk at May 12, 2003 4:32 PM
Back to the cool part.
A better experiment would be to expore visual interfaces and primate brains. For example, chimps can recognize pictures as representations of objects not currently present. Could monkeys be introduced to visually based web surfing? What about putting a digital video camera and a giant projector T.V. screen in a monkey cage? Every day, you play back tapes of what the monkeys videotaped the previous day. Would monkeys begin producing sitcoms? Stan Brahkage films? Tek War?
I am in favour of more monkey work and less Shakespeare conspiracy mongering.
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at May 13, 2003 9:45 AM
I am just so in favor of that idea too. Visually-based sitcom-creation app for chimps!
Posted by: Clive at May 13, 2003 10:54 AM
Wired did a piece a while back about enabling disabled people with an electrode directly connected to their brains. If I recall correctly, didn't they run the experiment on primates as well?
One of the end results of the experiment and the technology was to be able to move a mouse cursor "by thinking about it". The researchers, as I recall, were successful and had a man controlling a mouse cursor as if it were an extension of his body. I am sure that they also did this with primates.
If they didn't, then they should. If they did, then they should encourage the primates to play some Mario Brothers and see what happens. Also, as the primates get used to the virtual environment, (critera possibly being that they play the game for intrinsic value rather than getting a "treat" or "praise" for playing and acheiving goals--or is that even possible?) there could be applications that allow the primates to change their virtual environments--kind of like in Excitebike where you could make your own race-course.
Then we could see what kind of environments the primates would create. I think we could also get the primates to alter the interface they use to create the virtual environments as well with a series of simple binary preferences. The smarter ones would go on to changing the platform the "environment interface program" runs on...the most advanced primates making tweaks to the operating system.
I think the chances of 10000 monkeys in front of 10000 computers coming up with the next incarnation of Windows is higher than their chances of writing a hundred sonnets.
Posted by: Alfred Cloutier at May 13, 2003 2:00 PM
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Posted by: Maktoob at May 14, 2003 4:02 AM
Intrinsic Rewards
Would monkeys do something "just for fun." Perhaps. The endorphin reward system reinforces a lot of human activities. For example, sitting still and reading can become "inherently" rewarding. Some children have slightly broken reward systems and cannot develop the ability to be rewarded by stationary activity -- this is why hyperactive children tear about looking for something that satisfies them, and why they are given stimulants: they have under-responsive reward mechanisms. If primates can find thinking, speaking, playing, drawing inherently rewarding, that would make them much closer to us. Behaviourists normally describe animals as "emitting" behaviours at random. When one of these behaviours produces a reward for the animal (like foood) then there will be a higher likelyhood that the behaviour will be repeated. I wonder if primates are still at the stage where only direct physical benefits (food, water, sex) will cement a behaviour.
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at May 14, 2003 7:11 AM
Maktoob, thanks for the kind words!
Erik: Huh -- good point. I never thought of it that way before. What motivates monkeys, anyway? Is any part of what they do attributable to intellectual stimulation?
Posted by: Clive at May 14, 2003 9:13 AM
Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 11:55 AM
But variables get one benefit people do not
Posted by: Josias at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Leonard at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
The Stack is just what it sounds like: a tower of things that starts at the bottom and builds upward as it goes. In our case, the things in the stack are called "Stack Frames" or just "frames". We start with one stack frame at the very bottom, and we build up from there.
Posted by: Morgan at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.
Posted by: Jucentius at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
To address this issue, we turn to the second place to put variables, which is called the Heap. If you think of the Stack as a high-rise apartment building somewhere, variables as tenets and each level building atop the one before it, then the Heap is the suburban sprawl, every citizen finding a space for herself, each lot a different size and locations that can't be readily predictable. For all the simplicity offered by the Stack, the Heap seems positively chaotic, but the reality is that each just obeys its own rules.
Posted by: Ellois at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.
Posted by: Randolph at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
Each Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.
Posted by: Cadwallader at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
But some variables are immortal. These variables are declared outside of blocks, outside of functions. Since they don't have a block to exist in they are called global variables (as opposed to local variables), because they exist in all blocks, everywhere, and they never go out of scope. Although powerful, these kinds of variables are generally frowned upon because they encourage bad program design.
Posted by: Ottewell at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
Our next line looks familiar, except it starts with an asterisk. Again, we're using the star operator, and noting that this variable we're working with is a pointer. If we didn't, the computer would try to put the results of the right hand side of this statement (which evaluates to 6) into the pointer, overriding the value we need in the pointer, which is an address. This way, the computer knows to put the data not in the pointer, but into the place the pointer points to, which is in the Heap. So after this line, our int is living happily in the Heap, storing a value of 6, and our pointer tells us where that data is living.
Posted by: Arthur at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
Being able to understand that basic idea opens up a vast amount of power that can be used and abused, and we're going to look at a few of the better ways to deal with it in this article.
Posted by: Owen at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
Posted by: julia at January 24, 2004 8:16 PM
Posted by: michelle vieth video porn at December 12, 2004 3:59 AM
"The fact that the work of Shakespeare is probably the work of a group of writers working under a pseudonym adds further irony to the work. "
Why do scientists imagine that doing literary criticism requires less precision than science?
What is this crap?
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at May 11, 2003 6:14 PM
Forgot to post this link which rebuts a lot of the BS about Shakespeare authorship.
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/
Posted by: Anonymous at May 11, 2003 6:28 PM
That's a cool link!
Actually, I think the group of people who did this were slightly more artists than scientists. But yeah, the old conspiracy theories about Shakespeare-as-borg have been pretty soundly rebutted.
Posted by: Clive at May 11, 2003 10:10 PM
--- At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it. ---
Isn't that how William Gibson used to do it? Get stoned and bash the hell out of it? Oh wait... get -a- stone... my bad. ;)
Perhaps they were just trying to get the MS-Office assistant to disappear?
K
Posted by: Kirk at May 12, 2003 4:32 PM
Back to the cool part.
A better experiment would be to expore visual interfaces and primate brains. For example, chimps can recognize pictures as representations of objects not currently present. Could monkeys be introduced to visually based web surfing? What about putting a digital video camera and a giant projector T.V. screen in a monkey cage? Every day, you play back tapes of what the monkeys videotaped the previous day. Would monkeys begin producing sitcoms? Stan Brahkage films? Tek War?
I am in favour of more monkey work and less Shakespeare conspiracy mongering.
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at May 13, 2003 9:45 AM
I am just so in favor of that idea too. Visually-based sitcom-creation app for chimps!
Posted by: Clive at May 13, 2003 10:54 AM
Wired did a piece a while back about enabling disabled people with an electrode directly connected to their brains. If I recall correctly, didn't they run the experiment on primates as well?
One of the end results of the experiment and the technology was to be able to move a mouse cursor "by thinking about it". The researchers, as I recall, were successful and had a man controlling a mouse cursor as if it were an extension of his body. I am sure that they also did this with primates.
If they didn't, then they should. If they did, then they should encourage the primates to play some Mario Brothers and see what happens. Also, as the primates get used to the virtual environment, (critera possibly being that they play the game for intrinsic value rather than getting a "treat" or "praise" for playing and acheiving goals--or is that even possible?) there could be applications that allow the primates to change their virtual environments--kind of like in Excitebike where you could make your own race-course.
Then we could see what kind of environments the primates would create. I think we could also get the primates to alter the interface they use to create the virtual environments as well with a series of simple binary preferences. The smarter ones would go on to changing the platform the "environment interface program" runs on...the most advanced primates making tweaks to the operating system.
I think the chances of 10000 monkeys in front of 10000 computers coming up with the next incarnation of Windows is higher than their chances of writing a hundred sonnets.
Posted by: Alfred Cloutier at May 13, 2003 2:00 PM
hi, very nice blog. wish more success for you.
Posted by: Maktoob at May 14, 2003 4:02 AM
Intrinsic Rewards
Would monkeys do something "just for fun." Perhaps. The endorphin reward system reinforces a lot of human activities. For example, sitting still and reading can become "inherently" rewarding. Some children have slightly broken reward systems and cannot develop the ability to be rewarded by stationary activity -- this is why hyperactive children tear about looking for something that satisfies them, and why they are given stimulants: they have under-responsive reward mechanisms. If primates can find thinking, speaking, playing, drawing inherently rewarding, that would make them much closer to us. Behaviourists normally describe animals as "emitting" behaviours at random. When one of these behaviours produces a reward for the animal (like foood) then there will be a higher likelyhood that the behaviour will be repeated. I wonder if primates are still at the stage where only direct physical benefits (food, water, sex) will cement a behaviour.
Posted by: Erik Weissengruber at May 14, 2003 7:11 AM
Maktoob, thanks for the kind words!
Erik: Huh -- good point. I never thought of it that way before. What motivates monkeys, anyway? Is any part of what they do attributable to intellectual stimulation?
Posted by: Clive at May 14, 2003 9:13 AM
Nice site. thx.
Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 11:55 AM
But variables get one benefit people do not
Posted by: Josias at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Leonard at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
The Stack is just what it sounds like: a tower of things that starts at the bottom and builds upward as it goes. In our case, the things in the stack are called "Stack Frames" or just "frames". We start with one stack frame at the very bottom, and we build up from there.
Posted by: Morgan at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.
Posted by: Jucentius at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
To address this issue, we turn to the second place to put variables, which is called the Heap. If you think of the Stack as a high-rise apartment building somewhere, variables as tenets and each level building atop the one before it, then the Heap is the suburban sprawl, every citizen finding a space for herself, each lot a different size and locations that can't be readily predictable. For all the simplicity offered by the Stack, the Heap seems positively chaotic, but the reality is that each just obeys its own rules.
Posted by: Ellois at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.
Posted by: Randolph at January 19, 2004 6:18 PM
Each Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.
Posted by: Cadwallader at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
But some variables are immortal. These variables are declared outside of blocks, outside of functions. Since they don't have a block to exist in they are called global variables (as opposed to local variables), because they exist in all blocks, everywhere, and they never go out of scope. Although powerful, these kinds of variables are generally frowned upon because they encourage bad program design.
Posted by: Ottewell at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
Our next line looks familiar, except it starts with an asterisk. Again, we're using the star operator, and noting that this variable we're working with is a pointer. If we didn't, the computer would try to put the results of the right hand side of this statement (which evaluates to 6) into the pointer, overriding the value we need in the pointer, which is an address. This way, the computer knows to put the data not in the pointer, but into the place the pointer points to, which is in the Heap. So after this line, our int is living happily in the Heap, storing a value of 6, and our pointer tells us where that data is living.
Posted by: Arthur at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
Being able to understand that basic idea opens up a vast amount of power that can be used and abused, and we're going to look at a few of the better ways to deal with it in this article.
Posted by: Owen at January 19, 2004 6:19 PM
Posted by: julia at January 24, 2004 8:16 PM
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