🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1e7fvdINN87s@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>, ramsay@math.ubc.ca (Keith Ramsay) writes:
> In article <PHR.92Nov15203840@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com 
> (Paul Rubin) writes:
>>It is true that if P=NP then all cryptography everywhere (not just RSA)
>>is dead; but at this point I wouldn't take Swart's claims seriously
>>without seeing some consensus among complexity efforts that unlike
>>his previous attempts, his latest effort is free of bugs.
> 
> Mathematics would also be placed in a surprising position by P=NP.
> P=NP implies that there is an algorithm which, given a theorem
> expressed formally in ZF, say, and a number n, either gives a formal
> proof of the theorem of length at most n, or shows that there is none,
> and which would take time bounded by some polynomial in n. It wouldn't
> *necessarily* put us all out of the math research business, but....

And remember, proving P=NP doesn't necessarily mean finding such an algorithm,
merely proving it exists.

-- 
James Annan.
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                [  "The only good Tory is a lavatory"  ]
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