I don't get annoyed reading responses like yours, nor am I nettled my the thought that my post was fluff. Of course it is fluff. Possibly even chaff or lint.

I don't get annoyed reading responses like yours, nor am I nettled my the thought that my post was fluff. Of course it is fluff. Possibly even chaff or lint. That being said, I am not clear on what you are saying about trying to solve P=NP. While this is important, there are a lot of important things to solve and nowhere in my post or in Hamming's original discussion is there the suggestion that importance is judged by popularity. I think it is entirely possible for a lone researcher to work on something that does not interest anyone else, and should you ask why she has chosen that work, she answers that it is an important open problem in the field. So I am suggesting that a dedication to working on important open problems is not necessarily equivalent to following everyone else. People who lie to follow, follow. People who like solitude and adventure strike out in new directions. Either way, the questions retain their importance, IMO.