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 | | From: | tcne | | Subject: | Follow-up | | Date: | 19 Jan 2005 21:26:51 -0800 |
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 | This thread would contain a number of open letters and is intended for opinions of relevant people with relevant contents.
Other personal opinions of the highest value can never be wasted but can surely find another spot in this vast space-time.
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In addition, here is a brief note for Daniel and Gerhard:
Thank you very much for the effort toward a comprehensive coverage of the history and status of the issue at:
http://www.win.tue.nl/~gwoegi/P-versus-NP.htm
lumping truth and everything together.
I am quite sure you are aware of the 'unconventional' part in the published version of the paper. However, I here make it explicitly clear that the proof of P != NP does not depend on it. Besides, one major purpose of it being there has absolutely nothing to do with mathematics! I think you may fare better making your understanding of it, if any, explicit.
I would like to further clarify something. Any consequences from it being in the paper are the sole responsibility of the author. Neither the program chair nor the conference committee nor the referee(s) should be blamed in any slight way for it. As a matter of fact, it was not in the version submitted for review. The editor shares no blame, either.
Again, one reason for it was TOTALLY UNRELATED TO MATH. I do not quite know if, --- with reference to A. E. --- in order to have a bit of hope, making it look insane is of help. :)
As a side note, Szabo was invoked not because we absolutely needed it. It was there to impress, showing I could actually have reference in my paper! :)
If you are really serious, I have one recommendation. NP-complete is regarded to be one of the most important theoretical achievements in complexity theory. It would be a great waste to not see it put to some real use. Therefore, for any of the proofs that claim P = NP, try applying the completeness polytime translation and show that the analogy (given about the fractured primes) is polytime solvable.
I think you are responsible people and know that consistent mathematics never allows conflicting claims to be both valid (unless it is your genuine purpose to have both together indiscriminately).
Regards, TCNE
P.S. If you have anything to say about the purpose of your page, the reference to my paper, or anything else, please kindly respond to the post in sci.math.
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 | | From: | tcne | | Subject: | Re: Follow-up | | Date: | 20 Jan 2005 10:07:13 -0800 |
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 | Dear Professor Stewart:
There has been no reply from you on the NP-equals-coNP proof I sent you about a year ago.
Even though a year is really a short time (by Planck's measure of progress), it should be long enough for reading a simple proof of fewer than 10 pages. I can not help wondering what is holding things up.
Maybe, the proof involved new, counter-intuitive theories? But I do not think so. As far as proving NP = coNP is concerned, it only touched basic logic and used only elementary mathematical treatment. Care was exercised to use only what you and everybody else were using, preserving whatever mathematical truth there was or wasn't.
Had you had a problem with any 'unconventional' part in the proof, you surely did not ask a single question, and the proof most obviously does not have to depend on the 'unconventionality', either.
You did take time to write about Minesweeper for CMI, which I can hardly take as an indication of lack of interest. Besides, the reason for my initial writing to you as the primary recipient was given in that message with the allusion to your 'Paradox Lost'.
There is no way, unless you physically demonstrate, that I can be convinced that a simple piece of mathematical truth which you yourself regard as highly important is to be totally ignored.
I am confident that Ian Parberry is right (with a personal generalization): "not one of us". It may be easy to show that any 'system', or any 'portion' of it, can not see its own purpose and I certainly can not explain the ultimate reason why it had to be through any particular person to reveal the little truth about P != NP. I firmly believe, with what we have seen, that it would be exactly the same for the revelation through anybody. However, once embarked on it, there is no turning back. I am very, very sorry.
Did I happen to offend you with anything in that message? I said what I know and believe to be true. If truth could offend, I had no regret, have none. Never will.
I mentioned I would move on and I would (when this is out of the way) in settling P != NP, which I believe is also regarded by the math community as a most important problem in contemporary mathematics. My content in merely seeing the truth faded away; my goal is to have it in our physical vocabulary of truth.
I never believed that Anonymous1 of Bill's poll could be both serious and true. I did not plan to waste my life that way, but I can. The only problem I see is that mathematics has never in its entire history been insulted this profoundly with both words and silence. But I am glad that the decision of making it public had not happened years earlier. It surely could consume a longer 'rest of his life'.
Regards, TCNE
P.S.
Please kindly respond, if you would, to this open letter posted in sci.math.
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 | | From: | Bryan Olson | | Subject: | Re: Follow-up | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:09:16 GMT |
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 | tcne wrote: > Dear Professor Stewart: > > There has been no reply from you on the NP-equals-coNP proof I sent you > about a year ago. [...] > Please kindly respond, if you would, to this open letter posted in > sci.math.
Professor Stewart:
I think you are taking the right approach. This guy has been posting his ludicrous arguments on complexity for quite some years. None of them got as far as understanding the questions. He's received careful explanations of where he went wrong, but he simply rephrases the same misunderstanding.
-- --Bryan
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