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Basically this interest in P!=NP is like yielding to authority. I would like to decide for myself what's worth studying -- not have it dictated to me. Having
by amichail 16y ago
Basically this interest in P!=NP is like yielding to authority.
I would like to decide for myself what's worth studying -- not have it dictated to me.
Having said this, of course anyone who has an interest in computing should know what the P vs NP problem is about, but learning enough to be able to follow proof strategy for P vs NP is another matter.
- mquander 16y agoI think the interest in P=NP specifically is for two reasons besides authority: - Anyone with a little bit of CS or programming background can understand the formulation of the problem, similar to how anyone can understand Fermat's Last Theorem. - There are only so many open problems that anyone can understand. Open problems are interesting to casual observers since they represent a boundary between the known and unknown, and since they invite the imagination to think up ways to attack them. Once you've invested yourself a little bit in the problem for these reasons, I think it's natural curiosity to want to spend twenty or thirty minutes, or more, learning about the outline of a novel proof strategy. That said, this article was a general introduction to what the problem is about, not a description of the proof.