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varjag • yesterday at 11:10 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

Imagine you're trying to prove that water is wet (P!=NP). You lack a formalism that could make sense at building a proof even though pretty much everyone agrees from empirical evidence that the water is indeed wet. A promising attempt at building one such formalism was just demonstrated by a model to be a dead end.


Replies

zeroonetwothree • today at 1:39 AM

A nontrivial % believe P = NP with some reasonable probability. I wouldn’t say it’s all that settled unlike say RH

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jaaron • yesterday at 11:48 PM

I like this, but the actual finding is a bit different. Trying to keep the water is wet makes this awkward, but I believe it's more like:

Everyone agrees that water is wet (P!=NP), but no one can prove it. In the meantime, a whole field of computer science was built on a stronger belief (ETH): that water, at its worst, soaks. Turns out, even at its worst, water only makes things damp. It's still wet. That said, this finding did produce a new measurement of wetness.

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carefree-bob • today at 3:59 AM

I'm beginning to wonder whether P!=NP is undecidable.

vbezhenar • today at 2:17 AM

Water is not wet. Human lacks water sensor. All the sensors we have a temperature ones so we sense "wet" as a combination of temperature and visual information. Close your eyes, touch water of your skin temperature and you won't sense it. It's not wet.

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manquer • today at 1:16 AM

Not the best analogy; water is famously not wet; it makes a surface wet is the common consensus ; wetness is being a property of a surface

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