On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 07:13 AM, Tyler Durden wrote:
This may be true, but the conclusion that might easily be reached isn't. According to the number theorists (particularly post-Godel), factorization may easily be one of those things that...Yeah, a restatement of his point. It would be nice to have crypto systems based on at least problems which have been shown to be NP-complete.
1) Is inherently dificult
2) and the fact that it is inherently difficult is unprovable.
I don't follow you here. The Greeks knew the proof that there is no largest prime, a proof which can be written down in a paragraph. (If one believes in excluded middle proofs as opposed to constructivist proofs, which in this context is a reasonable belief.)
This may mean that not only is there no "hard evidence", there may never be. This being the case (and it most probably is), then we may always have to live with this uncertainty....and ain't that life?
(I believe that the non-existence of the "last" prime number is also unprovable.)
--Tim May
