I 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 f

I 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.