I may have come across as insistent on clearly stating ways around the natural proofs barrier because this is Hacker News, where folks are liable to jump to con

I may have come across as insistent on clearly stating ways around the natural proofs barrier because this is Hacker News, where folks are liable to jump to conclusions, and not, say, http://cstheory.stackexchange.com http://cstheory.stackexchange.com. Given the large number of attempts against P vs. NP, frequently by folks who are not active in complexity theory, it's often better to try to understand these ideas on theory sites. You make an reasonable point, vis-a-vis Chow; rather than being regarded as an absolute barrier for lines of reasoning involving circuit complexity, the requirement of being a sufficiently complex proof may provide a jumping-off point for uncovering a working method.