3 ms·
I feel like much of modern number theory has about the same level of usefulness
by singularity2001 2y ago
I feel like much of modern number theory has about the same level of usefulness
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoI don't doubt there's pointless research in NT. However, I feel like I should justify just how useless this result is: In theoretical CS, one is typically interested in the computational complexity of mathematical problems. Early on, researchers identified classes of problems with varying difficulty, as well as certain fundamental problems that appear in many applications. Research in these topics is typically quite interesting. Studying stupid problems like Super Mario has no merit at all. It probably contains fundamental problems as sub-problems, so the research then just reduces to finding these problems. "Oh look, if I make a level like this it turns into the halting problem, it means Super Mario is undecidable!" Literally the only reason this is news is because SM is a famous game. I should confess I didn't read the paper, so I'm just guessing what's going on. However, if there was anything actually interesting going on, there would be more fundamental problems discussed rather than SM. Edit: read the article, it reduces to halting problem. God damn it.