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I think he believes that P!=NP, but he also believes that the proof offered is deeply flawed.

His bet is to emphasize the second point. The fact that he wont' gain anything if the proof is wrong and lost $200K if the proof is correct only underscores how strongly he believes the proof is almost certainly flawed.

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Well, he also states that he hasn't really spent any time analyzing the proof, so it's not like he knows that it's deeply flawed. Isn't Aaronson maintaining a bit of a bad-boy online persona? Could just be his way of saying what Bill Gasarch just wrote on his blog:

"So what are my uninformed views? If I was a betting man I would bet that it won't pan out. I would bet that he proved something very interesting, but not P ≠ NP. Why do I think this? This is NOT based on the author who seems to be a person to be taken seriously. Its just that the problem is so hard and we've made no progress on it since... . Hmmm, when is the last time we made progress on it?"

There has been lots of progress. We know a lot of things that (for sure!) that can't settle the question.

To quote (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1586749): >> It's known that a proof resolving P vs NP can't relativize, can't be "natural", and can't "algebrize". <<

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