The Composite Human

Allow me to precede this rant with an anecdote:

Once human babies grow old enough, they instinctively attempt to walk. They also instinctively babble and mimic the gestures and behaviors of those around them. Even though every human is unique in their own way, there are certain tendencies that we as a species all share.

And it’s not just in infancy—throughout life, there are behaviors and perceptions that only we as a species exhibit. One example is pareidolia, which is the phenomenon of seeing faces in inanimate objects like power outlets. Another example is the fear of spiders, a common fear in humans of all ages.

Animals, being emotional and instinctive creatures like us, also have biological tendencies. But because their lifestyles differ greatly from ours, and their brain and bodies are built differently, it stands to reason that their biological tendencies differ as well.

Monkeys DO NOT instinctively attempt to babble or learn to speak. Monkeys, of any species, come with different instincts and are stimulated by different forces in nature than we are. Smells that are gross to us may not bother them as much.

Which leads me to my gripe: how could even a single monkey, sitting with a typewriter, out of an infinite amount of monkeys, somehow press the correct keys to create a Shakespeare play? It’s ludicrous! To a monkey, all letters are just random symbols, and the factors influencing the next letter they press include: the position of their finger, their preference for each letter, their mood and emotional state, and their capacity to not get bored at a task that, for monkeys, is meaningless, since they don’t know they’re creating language.

That doesn’t even get into the fact that they’d have to be strapped at the typewriter! And it would take them hours to finish and they’d probably get hungry. Or if you gave the any of the monkeys a break, that would even further decrease the odds them of correctly typing Shakespeare, because the way they reenter the task (seating position, where they place their eyes, etc.) effects the next letter they press.

You can have an infinite amount of something and have duplicate results. That’s something that the infinite monkey theorem misses.

What I mean is, you can have an infinite number of planets in the universe, but NONE of those planets will be square-shaped; they obey certain laws of physics. Likewise, animals, diverse they may be, obey certain laws of nature.

I am surprised zoologists or neuroscientists haven’t pointed this out already. Just another cliché alive and well in the scientific community, I suppose. I still remember when that “humans only use 10% of our brains” idea was popular.