I think this comment by Aaron Sterling is important: "I’d like to respond to the tone of a couple anonymous comments. It is almost irrelevant to me whether th

I think this comment by Aaron Sterling is important: "I’d like to respond to the tone of a couple anonymous comments. It is almost irrelevant to me whether the proof, as currently written, is correct. (I expect there to be flaws, perhaps unfixable ones.) What excites me — and, I think, a lot of other people — is the attempt to join together descriptive complexity with statistical physics. The bridge between finite, discrete complexity, and hardness in the continuous world “has to exist,” and the “evidence” for this can be found in everything from the distribution of the primes to the computer simulation of chemical reactions. Despite this, over the last few years, I’ve gotten the impression that researchers in logic and physics tend to be put off by — even scared by — the notations and dialogues of each other. So when someone from “outside” says he’s found a way to connect the two areas, it’s intriguing. I’ve certainly gained insight into areas I had no clue about whatsoever, until just a couple days ago. It seems to me this whole situation is only partly about trying to understand a proof. Perhaps the more important part is us trying to understand one another." http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/update-on-deolalikars-proof-that-p%E2%89%A0np/#comment-4856 http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/update-on-deolalika...