Back to 80: My literary life

Chapter 192 Infinite Monkey Theory (Second update)

"This is a human-machine battle organized by the Go club. His name is Yang Shengli." Li Li secretly pointed at the gentle boy who was playing chess and said: "He is the president of the Go club. He ranks first in the school in Go. It is said that he passed the five-level amateur Go exam. Duan. He is also a master of physics in our school."

Li Li then secretly pointed at an older boy standing next to the computer and said: "His name is Qi Bo. He is a Ph.D. in the computer department of our school and a member of the Go club. He has programmed a Go game and is said to have beaten an invincible player." , Yang Shengli was dissatisfied, so he agreed to compete today."

"He made it up himself?"

"Yes, very powerful."

Fang Minghua glanced at the boy again, looking at the screen with a calm look, but his messy hair was particularly eye-catching.

"What about this computer?"

"It was the computer in their laboratory, secretly taken out." Li Li chuckled.

You are brave enough.

A computer in this era is worth tens of thousands, but it is a treasure among treasures.

"Won!"

Suddenly there was a burst of cheers in front of the computer, and the boy with glasses who was playing chess stood up and looked at Qi Bo next to him, with a somewhat arrogant tone:

"Qi Bo, you said this program you wrote is very good, but I don't think it's very good at all. I can make it work twice."

Qi Bo was not frustrated. Instead, he looked at Yang Shengli and smiled: "This computer is 286, and its computing speed is not good. The English name of the chess-playing machine "Deep Thought" developed by a team from Carnegie Mellon University in the United States is "Deep Thought." , it is said that it can reach the level of international stunt masters. It uses mathematical brute force algorithm (exhaustive method). If you study physics, you must also understand the principles."

Yang Shengli became silent.

"You mean that if computers run fast enough and are advanced enough in the future, the software can defeat people?" asked a classmate next to him.

Qi Bo nodded and continued.

"It's not the future, it's now! If I don't have a 286 microcomputer, but a computer like "Shenzhen", I can't say that the program I compiled can beat Nie Weiping, but there is no problem in beating amateur players like us. "

Fang Minghua stood at the door and just listened quietly.

This is true.

Isn’t there a very popular Go artificial intelligence Alpha Dog in the future? It is said that he defeated all the top Go masters.

Ke Jie, the world's No. 1 Go world champion at the time: "In my opinion, it (Alpha Go) is the God of Go and can defeat everything. For AlphaGo's self-improvement, humans are too redundant.

Later I heard that AlphaGo looks like machine learning, but in essence it also uses brute force algorithms.

But this involves the future, and since he is a layman in technology, Fang Minghua naturally has a hard time talking about it.

At this time, Li Li suddenly spoke: "My mentor, Professor Xu, said that the French mathematician Emile Borrell once wrote a book about probability. There has always been such a conjecture in the scientific community, which has made countless people A monkey sits in front of a typewriter and taps the keyboard randomly. If there is no time limit, then one day they will type out the complete works of Shakespeare. This is actually an exhaustive method."

"Li Li, you are right." It seemed that Qi Bo knew Li Li. He cast admiring glances at him at the door, but suddenly noticed Fang Minghua next to Li Li, with a strange look in his eyes.

Li Li's words attracted the attention of other students, and soon someone recognized Fang Minghua.

"Isn't this the writer Minghua?" Someone quickly recognized it, and there was a commotion in the classroom.

Fang Minghua quickly smiled and said that he came to school to see Li Li for something. I don't know anything about Go, so you can continue playing.

"Let's go, Li Li, I have something to do with you." Fang Minghua whispered, gently tugged on the girl's sweater sleeve, turned around and was about to leave. This small movement fell into Qi Bo's eyes again.

Seeing Li Li following Fang Minghua to leave, he suddenly shouted.

"Fang Minghua!" Fang Minghua had no choice but to stay and turn around to look at him.

"You are engaged in literary creation. Have you heard of what Li Li just said?"

Fang Minghua nodded.

Qi Bo's expression suddenly became a little excited.

"Have you heard of it? That's good. A monkey typing out the Complete Works of Shakespeare is just a metaphor. According to the infinite monkey theory, all human literary works can be written!"

Listening to Qi Bo's slightly excited tone, Fang Minghua vaguely wondered why Qi Bo emphasized what Li Li said.

Sure enough, a little boy said: "According to your opinion, wouldn't all writers, including poets, be unemployed in the future?!"

Qi Bo nodded proudly and looked at Fang Minghua: "Are you right?"

Ah?

What do you mean?

We have no grievances, right?

Where is the irony in your sentence?

Fang Minghua looked at the other person's eyes and occasionally glanced at Li Li, who was standing next to him, and suddenly understood something.

Are you jealous of the wrong person?

Li Li also heard the meaning of Qi Bo's words, and her pretty face suddenly turned cold.

I just thought of saying it casually, but I didn't expect that he would use the topic as an excuse.

"Qi Bo, what do you mean?"

"It's not interesting, I just want to discuss this issue with him." Qi Bo looked innocent.

Fang Minghua smiled and said: "The infinite monkey theory is just a hypothesis in mathematics, but literature is not mathematics. Whether it is monkeys or computers, they may be able to write novels or poems in the future, but it is impossible to write as beautiful as Li Bai poems or articles like Shakespeare's."

"reason?"

"Let's take relatively simple poetry as an example. If a monkey wants to be like Li Bai or surpass Li Bai, there are only two ways: first, write the poems that surpass him; second, write all the poems!

Is this true? "

Qi Bo thought for a moment, nodded and admitted: "Yes, this is a brute force algorithm in mathematics (exhaustive method), the same principle as when I wrote a Go program."

"Li Bai is good at five-character poems and seven-character poems. He can further write all the words of common word patterns, so that he can surpass Su Dongpo. In order to achieve this goal, he should try all the combinations of Chinese characters in the poems that conform to these rhythms, right?" Fang Minghua said. A follow-through approach.

"That seems to be the case." Qi Bo nodded again.

Fang Minghua smiled and looked at Qi Bo: "Do you think it's possible?"

Before Qi Bo could answer, Yang Shengli, who had been listening to the conversation between the two, suddenly screamed: "Impossible!"

"Why?" A girl with a ponytail next to her asked inexplicably, "Are there many?"

"Of course there are many!" Yang Shengli said with a smile, "Let me ask you, if you write one poem each of five-character and seven-character poems, as well as those common word cards, how many words are there in total?"

"This is simple. The commonly used Chinese characters are only two to three thousand. Is that much?" The girl still looked confused.

"Ask Qi Bo, is it too much?" Yang Shengli said, looking at Qi Bo with mocking eyes.

At this time, Qi Bo's expression changed drastically. As a PhD student in computer science, why didn't he understand the mathematical knowledge contained in it?

(End of this chapter)