really I'm just assuming K << N and constant as you can arbitrarily specify an addition but not a subtraction. Consider a nuclear power plant. While there migh

really I'm just assuming K << N and constant as you can arbitrarily specify an addition but not a subtraction. Consider a nuclear power plant. While there might be an infinite number of potential safety valves I could add, it won't take me long to figure out one that will be good enough that I can safely add it somewhere without causing problems. Doubling the available valve options does not really make the task harder, but doubling the complexity does mean it takes about two times longer to validate it. On the other hand if we presuppose that there is one valve in the plant that should be removed, I will on average have to evaluate around half of all the valves before finding it. If you double the number of valves in the plant, now each evaluation is twice as hard, and I will on average have to do twice as many such evaluations, so the task should take about four times as long.