I’ve been becoming more and more convinced that Kevin and Clippy are the same person. Besides Clippy’s attempt to get money for Kevin, one reason is that both of them refer to people with labels like “User:Kevin”. More evidence just came in here, namely these comments within 5 minutes of each other.
Explain why I should consider this to be evidence that you are not User:Kevin.
(This is not rhetorical. It is something worth exploring. How does this instance of a non-human agent gain credibility? How can myself and such an agent build and maintain cooperation in the game of credible communication despite incentives to lie? Has Clippy himself done any of these things?)
Perhaps you shouldn’t. But there’s a small chance that, if I were a human like User:Kevin, and other Users had made such inferences correctly identifying me, I would regard this time as the optimal one for revealing my true identity.
Yes, there are humans mathematicians who doubt that P is not equal to NP.
See “Guest Column: The P=?NP Poll” http://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/papers/poll.pdf by William Gasarch where a poll was taken of 100 experts, 9 of whom ventured the guess that P = NP and 22 of whom offered no opinion on how the P vs. NP question will be resolved. The document has quotes from various of the people polled elaborating on what their beliefs are on this matter.
There’s a very good summary by Scott Aaronson describing why we believe that P is very likely to be not equal to NP. However, Clippy’s confidence seems unjustified. In particular, there was a poll a few years ago that showed that a majority of computer scientists believe that P=NP but a substantial fraction do not. (The link was here but seems to be not functioning at the moment (according to umd.edu’s main page today they have a scheduled outage of most Web services for maintenance so I’ll check again later. I don’t remember the exact numbers so I can’t cite them right now)).
This isn’t precisely my area, but speaking as a mathematician whose work touches on complexity issues, I’d estimate around a 1⁄100 chance that P=NP.
Because if it were otherwise—if verifying a solution were of the same order of computational difficulty of finding it -- it would be a lot harder to account for my observations than if it weren’t so.
For example, verifying a proof would be of similar difficulty to finding the proof, which would mean nature would stumble upon representations isomorphic to either with similar probability, which we do not see.
The possibility that P = NP but with a “large polynomial degree” or constant is too ridiculous to be taken seriously; the algorithmic complexity of the set of NP-complete problems does not permit a shortcut that characterizes the entire set in a way that would allow such a solution to exist.
I can’t present a formal proof, but I have sufficient reason to predicate future actions on P ≠ NP, for the same reason I have sufficient reason to predicate future actions on any belief I hold, including beliefs about the provability or truth of mathematical theorems.
Most human mathematicians think along similar lines. It will still be a big deal when P ≠ NP is proven, if for no other reason that it pays a million dollars. That’s a lot of paperclips.
The possibility that P = NP but with a “large polynomial degree” or constant is too ridiculous to be taken seriously; the algorithmic complexity of the set of NP-complete problems does not permit a shortcut that characterizes the entire set in a way that would allow such a solution to exist.
P ≠ NP : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1585850
I know. Does any human mathematician really doubt that?
I’ve been becoming more and more convinced that Kevin and Clippy are the same person. Besides Clippy’s attempt to get money for Kevin, one reason is that both of them refer to people with labels like “User:Kevin”. More evidence just came in here, namely these comments within 5 minutes of each other.
I’m not User:Kevin.
Explain why I should consider this to be evidence that you are not User:Kevin.
(This is not rhetorical. It is something worth exploring. How does this instance of a non-human agent gain credibility? How can myself and such an agent build and maintain cooperation in the game of credible communication despite incentives to lie? Has Clippy himself done any of these things?)
Perhaps you shouldn’t. But there’s a small chance that, if I were a human like User:Kevin, and other Users had made such inferences correctly identifying me, I would regard this time as the optimal one for revealing my true identity.
Therefore, my post above is slightly informative.
That could easily be consistent with my statement, if taken in a certain sense.
Okay. Then believe that I am User:Kevin, if that’s what it takes to stop being so bigoted toward me. ⊂≣\
Yes, there are humans mathematicians who doubt that P is not equal to NP.
See “Guest Column: The P=?NP Poll” http://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/papers/poll.pdf by William Gasarch where a poll was taken of 100 experts, 9 of whom ventured the guess that P = NP and 22 of whom offered no opinion on how the P vs. NP question will be resolved. The document has quotes from various of the people polled elaborating on what their beliefs are on this matter.
How do you know you know?
There’s a very good summary by Scott Aaronson describing why we believe that P is very likely to be not equal to NP. However, Clippy’s confidence seems unjustified. In particular, there was a poll a few years ago that showed that a majority of computer scientists believe that P=NP but a substantial fraction do not. (The link was here but seems to be not functioning at the moment (according to umd.edu’s main page today they have a scheduled outage of most Web services for maintenance so I’ll check again later. I don’t remember the exact numbers so I can’t cite them right now)).
This isn’t precisely my area, but speaking as a mathematician whose work touches on complexity issues, I’d estimate around a 1⁄100 chance that P=NP.
URL is repeated twice in link?
Thanks, fixed.
Because if it were otherwise—if verifying a solution were of the same order of computational difficulty of finding it -- it would be a lot harder to account for my observations than if it weren’t so.
For example, verifying a proof would be of similar difficulty to finding the proof, which would mean nature would stumble upon representations isomorphic to either with similar probability, which we do not see.
The possibility that P = NP but with a “large polynomial degree” or constant is too ridiculous to be taken seriously; the algorithmic complexity of the set of NP-complete problems does not permit a shortcut that characterizes the entire set in a way that would allow such a solution to exist.
I can’t present a formal proof, but I have sufficient reason to predicate future actions on P ≠ NP, for the same reason I have sufficient reason to predicate future actions on any belief I hold, including beliefs about the provability or truth of mathematical theorems.
Most human mathematicians think along similar lines. It will still be a big deal when P ≠ NP is proven, if for no other reason that it pays a million dollars. That’s a lot of paperclips.
Let me know if you think you can solve any of these! http://www.claymath.org/millennium/
Would you elaborate.
Under the right conditions, yes.