I was thinking about this the other day and in the end I'm not sure what I think.
Possibility and chance are very tricky subjects. Similar, but very different. Chance is the liklihood of a specific event happening, whereas possibility is if the event could happen, or not - its as simple as that. But chance can be measured as a percentage, decimal, fraction, ratio or proportion. Take for example, an everyday variable such as the weather. More specifically, rain. Rain is possible. We all know that. In fact there is a relatively high chance that it could rain tomorrow, around 20%. It is also possible there could be a hailstorm the size of footballs. This is very unlikely, but nonetheless possible.
Lets take the old tale of the 1000 typewrites and 1000 monkeys. A philosopher once said that if 1000 monkeys were given 1000 typewriters, they would, after a long period of time, come up with Shakespeare's Hamlet. (or thats how I think the story goes). This, you would think, would be impossible.
Its not. Just very, very, extremely unlikely. Lets take into account the figures. First off, lets assume that the monkeys have been trained to hit random keys on the typewriter, 24/7 without a break and that they type at a speed of 1 character per second. The play has approximately 30,000 words. Ignoring spacing, punctuation and capitals, there are 26 different keys the monkey could hit resulting in there being a 1 in 26 chance that the monkey hits the correct key each time. If you want, go and do the maths yourself. In simpler terms, it is unimaginably unlikely, but still possible.
If however, these monkeys were given an infinite timespan, then the event would definitely happen. Its the same with everything. On an infinite timescale, anything and everything is possible and will happen eventually, whereas on a finite timescale, anything can still happen, but it is just very unlikely.
Which brings me to my point. If anything is possible, this leaves us with a paradox. Anything being possible means that nothing is impossible which results in impossibility being impossible. Despite this, everything is possible resulting in impossibility being both possible and impossible. This could be because possibility is only an idea, though up by humans: it doesn't actually exist. I don't know.
If you have read this thread and have managed to understand, what are your thoughts?
Possibility and chance are very tricky subjects. Similar, but very different. Chance is the liklihood of a specific event happening, whereas possibility is if the event could happen, or not - its as simple as that. But chance can be measured as a percentage, decimal, fraction, ratio or proportion. Take for example, an everyday variable such as the weather. More specifically, rain. Rain is possible. We all know that. In fact there is a relatively high chance that it could rain tomorrow, around 20%. It is also possible there could be a hailstorm the size of footballs. This is very unlikely, but nonetheless possible.
Lets take the old tale of the 1000 typewrites and 1000 monkeys. A philosopher once said that if 1000 monkeys were given 1000 typewriters, they would, after a long period of time, come up with Shakespeare's Hamlet. (or thats how I think the story goes). This, you would think, would be impossible.
Its not. Just very, very, extremely unlikely. Lets take into account the figures. First off, lets assume that the monkeys have been trained to hit random keys on the typewriter, 24/7 without a break and that they type at a speed of 1 character per second. The play has approximately 30,000 words. Ignoring spacing, punctuation and capitals, there are 26 different keys the monkey could hit resulting in there being a 1 in 26 chance that the monkey hits the correct key each time. If you want, go and do the maths yourself. In simpler terms, it is unimaginably unlikely, but still possible.
If however, these monkeys were given an infinite timespan, then the event would definitely happen. Its the same with everything. On an infinite timescale, anything and everything is possible and will happen eventually, whereas on a finite timescale, anything can still happen, but it is just very unlikely.
Which brings me to my point. If anything is possible, this leaves us with a paradox. Anything being possible means that nothing is impossible which results in impossibility being impossible. Despite this, everything is possible resulting in impossibility being both possible and impossible. This could be because possibility is only an idea, though up by humans: it doesn't actually exist. I don't know.
If you have read this thread and have managed to understand, what are your thoughts?
