alt Hacker News> Of course, the monkeys didn't type the sentence, the researcher did.
But the researcher is performing the selection process for the purposes of the experiment, to speed things up. Evolution functions via natural selection. That's what makes it different from the pure random chance processes.
Except evolution does really exist without life. Evolution through natural selection requires some sort of data that is passed from one generation to the next. Without that data passing you cannot have inherited traits building towards increased complexity. If you have data passing, you have life.