Like Gods
I read a really interesting article today, penned by Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He talks about NP-complete problems, methods that people have proposed for revolutionary advances in computing power, and how if human beings were able to create algorithms such that P=NP, then we would be like gods, in that we could replicate evolutionary history, predict the stock market, recreate Shakespeare, and so on. It’s an amusing article, requiring a bit of math, computer science, and physics to grasp, but entertaining nonetheless.
