On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Tyler Durden wrote: > As for my background it's Optics/Physics/EE, and for the last 8 years worked > with Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers, DWDM and SONET (ie, optical telecom). > (Interestingly, my work in Telecom did once cause me to enter the only joint > classified/unclassified NSA facility, as well as DARPA and DISA.) In case it > matters, I've got a sack of papers and patents in that area, and was fairly > well-known in those circles. After experiencing a couple of layoffs over the > last year, I retreated to the relative sanctity and security of Wall Street, > where I now work (and no, I'm not Pitt/Norton but my nome d'plume gives you > a hint of the kind of company I work for, and it ain't insurance!)
Yeah, EETimes reports telcom still leads in layoffs. Glad to hear you can still eat! > The references are well-appreciated, but wrt the complexities of the > algorithmic issues, I am more interested in knowing what the basic issues > are (as well as what may not be known). At this stage, and for various > reasons, I find that the potential social implications are what I am most > interested in, but the "newbie" in me is trying to sort out what low-level > details must be known in this context, while hopefully making an interesting > point or two along the way. Maybe the history of epistimology would be useful? > As for "Godelian intractability", I didn't see that as necessarily an issue > of complexity. Godel showed that given any formal system, there are > statements that will certainly exist that are true but unprovable from > within that system (mathematical "truth" is often confused with > "provability"). Factorization may simply be one of those things that is > difficult, but unprovably so, in which case it will forever and always be > such. This may mean that we will end up living with factorization for a long > time and yet never know if it's actually "difficult" or not. Factoring is sub-exponential in complexity. Elliptic curve discrete log is (still) fully exponential. I'm not sure about lattice theory (see NTRU). There's a lot of mathematical relationships to be discovered yet. What was "difficult" 50 years ago is now high school level knowledge. If that kind of thing doesn't continue, humans will just stagnate and die. A sub probelm to all this is "what is thinking?" Why do we even bother? > Again, sorry to all for being a little chatty and clumsy at this point. I don't know of any other way to approach it, so keep chatting! Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
