Faux Fu

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Runaway Thought Train

So put 100 monkeys in a room with typewriters, give them 3 or 4 billion years and one of them will type up "Macbeth." And let's say that for some reason the monkey that comes up with "Macbeth" assumes some kind of cache, and thus scores more chicks.

That's sort of the idea.

And if our DNA code is a script, just a long string of letters, we are actually the result of a mechanism (natural selection) very much like those 100 monkeys in a room and that one lucky stud monkey with a Shakespearean bent.

Everything living on the planet is the result of this mechanism. So that's kind of interesting, or mind-fucking. And then if we think of our lives, and our bodies and brains we think isn't all kind of amazing?

We are kind of a controlled experiment. Or an uncontrolled experiment. Or maybe an experiment gone awry. Or an experiment with no point. Or not really an experiment at all. Those 100 monkeys just can't help themselves. Click, clack, click. (We don't let them have word processors, it's more satisfying to think of them whacking away on old Remington typewriters for some reason).

So there's no good reason we shouldn't just have a great old time while we're here. I mean what the hell.

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