Freepers circle the stupid wagons

[JBoy]

Disclosure: I'm an engineer, and I'll admit I'm only vaguely familiar with this topic. What was fascinating was the Freeper comments:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2570768/posts

Tide turns against million-dollar maths proof
NewScientist ^ | 8/13/10 | Jacob Aron

Posted on 14-August-2010 7:57:39 PM by LibWhacker

Initially hailed as a solution to the biggest question in computer science, the latest attempt to prove P ≠ NP – otherwise known as the "P vs NP" problem – seems to be running into trouble.

--- Article here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19313-tide-turns-against-milliondollar-maths-proof.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news


To: LibWhacker

What does this mean in english?

To: Mmogamer

In plain english, it means there are weird but smart people who worry about things so I don’t have to...

To: Mmogamer

This mean theoretical mathematicians have nothing better to do. ... Just pretend you never heard of this story, and the world will continue to move as it always has.



Don't worry Freepers, have faith in your ignorance. Someone else will do the thinking for you!

[Odin2005]

1. To be fair, we have a cadre of technophobes here that say similar things.

[BlueJazz]

2. I think we all should just go to McDonalds and everything will be fine.

[ashling]

3. On this occssion I would like to offer the following song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83e3n83Re5s&playnext=1&videos=2JgUTTyKrnQ
:rofl:

[MrScorpio]

4. I couldn't say anything cogent about the equation at all, since I'm practically math illiterate

Knowing the parameters of my limits, I would never dare go off on a tangent with some cynical and sarcastic dig on mathematicians.

However, I do see that a lack of sufficient knowledge has never stopped a gaggle of right wing idiots from reveling to contribute to the sum of their aggregate stupidity.

[aePrime]

5. As a computer scientist

To: Mmogamer

This mean theoretical mathematicians have nothing better to do. ... Just pretend you never heard of this story, and the world will continue to move as it always has.

I am a computer scientist, and P vs. NP is our largest unanswered question. I would just like to take the time to point out that this question, while interesting theoretically, also has a huge practical impact. In short, this freeper is completely off base; this is not simply mathematical masturbation. If somebody proved P = NP, your world could potentially change quite dramatically.

The first thing that comes to mind is that we could lose all of the security offered over the internet. If P = NP, the encryption algorithms for credit card transactions could potentially be worthless.

Aside from data security, we could potentially quickly solve a lot of optimization problems that we can only estimate right now. The one that is used for all undergraduate computer science students is the traveling salesman problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem). Here's a rather trivial example: imagine you are FedEx, and you need to deliver your packages to a bunch of locations around the city. Believe it or not, there is currently no "efficient" way for a computer to tell you the route to deliver these packages with the least amount of driving. If P = NP, we could potentially figure this out easily, and save gas and time.

[IDemo]

6. I thought UPS had a 'right-turn preference' program to route drivers

The idea being that it is quicker to make right turns at intersections than to wait for left turn arrows. That isn't necessarily the 'least amount of driving' distance-wise, but the shortest time-wise.

[aePrime]

7. They do

They do, but this was just an example of a problem that we can't solve efficiently right now. If somebody proved P = NP, we could potentially solve this problem very easily.

The right-turn rule is orthogonal to the problem I was trying to illustrate. If we drove on the left side of the road, they'd have a left-hand rule, as it's just a condition of traffic flow/ traffic laws, and not related to the shortest route. In short, imagine you had the roads all to yourself... . :)