Friday, November 1, 2024

Is math and computation subjective too?

I've been wondering for a while, whether solutions for NP-Complete problems are subjective.

Or more generally, whether results of computation can be subjective. Or even (in a parallel universe sense) divergent.

From basic principles -- how do we know about the other? The computation is so complex. There is probably something to say about co-NP vs NP, but generally, it's hard to tell whether you're in a universe where there is no solution to a particular NPC instance, or where you just haven't found it yet.

Of course once you've found the solution it's hard to "go back", but as long as you haven't found any solution it's hard to tell (actually it's impossible to tell by definition and by the context)

Practical engineering issues also apply -- even if a computer completes an exhaustive search, you don't know whether the computation is flawless or not. Especially computations that take years to run -- who says there weren't subtle bit flips and made the computer skip over the answer?

Given that there is a process of transitioning from a state not knowing which situation we're in into a state of knowing, it seems that if we apply the same principles of decision making math and computation could be subjective too.

In fact it _should_ be.

But that doesn't make sense in the classical sense.

Which in itself is a very interesting thing.

No comments:

Post a Comment