Comment by trees101

Comment by trees101 5 days ago

3 replies

The P≠NP conjecture in CS says checking a solution is easier than finding one. Verifying a Sudoku is fast; solving it from scratch is hard. But Brandolini's Law says the opposite: refuting bullshit costs way more than producing it.

Not actually contradictory. Verification is cheap when there's a spec to check against. 'Valid Sudoku?' is mechanical. But 'good paper?' has no spec. That's judgment, not verification.

degamad 5 days ago

> The P≠NP conjecture in CS says checking a solution is easier than finding one...

... for NP-hard problems.

It says nothing about the difficulty of finding or checking solutions of polynomial ("P") or exponential ("EXPTIME") problems.

bwfan123 5 days ago

producing BS can be equated to generating statements without caring for their truth value. Generating them is easy. Refuting them requires one to find a proof or a contradiction which is a lot of work, and is equal to "solving" the statement. As an analogy, refuting BS is like solving satisfiability, whereas generating BS is like generating propositions.

rspijker 5 days ago

It's not contradictory because solving and producing bullshit are very different things. Generating less than 81 random numbers between 1 and 9 is probably also cheaper than verifying correctness of a sudoku.