Terence Tao summarizing current status of P!=NP paper. | Hacker News Reader

Terence Tao summarizing current status of P!=NP paper.

rjlipton.wordpress.com

63 pointsamichail10 comments

"It is based on trying to integrate several comments by others that I do not fully understand at every level, and so may be somewhat inaccurate; please help in pointing out any deficiencies."

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There is something to be said for a guy this smart, and with this many accolades, being so humble. One need only read Terry's blog to understand how much the guy DOES understand.

Is not a matter of being humble, he is talking to professionals. They know no one grasps every aspect of TOC.

Humility is very often correlated with smartness. I have seen this as a common quality in most great engineers and scientists: truth comes first.

I've noticed the same thing. My hunch is that the work involved to reach the pinnacle of human understanding in a certain subdiscipline makes one acutely aware of just how far they are from that same level of understanding in every other subdiscipline. On the other hand, high-IQ dilettantes often think they already know everything.

It's very enlightening to see truly smart people admitting they don't understand. Guess they don't have proved how smart they are and are comfortable revealing themselves.

A smart person will clearly delineate what he does and doesn't know, especially in mathematics when statements are either true or false. Terry has stated before he's far from an expert on this subject, and everyone is very well aware of that. Putting on any other guise would be a huge discredit to his integrity.

Admitting ignorance is opening up the cap on your personal store of knowledge, providing an opportunity for new knowledge to flow in. If you always pretend you are always right, never wrong, and never ignorant of anything then you will keep that cap sealed up tight and you will have far fewer opportunities to add new knowledge.

Terence Tao's second iteration: http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/deolalikar-responds...

It seems that he more or less reversed his summary of the problems from the first iteration ... which is, of course, fine given the pace of things.

That was a crystal clear, high level explanation of Deolalikar's approach, and the issues with it. Terry's clarity never ceases to amaze me.

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