What separates the P vs NP problem from a general labourer asking "can we solve the hard stuff as quickly as the easy stuff"?

[Saiyan300Warrior]

Seems like its only a big question because some person or group with academic reputation said its a problem and big question. Also seems more like a philosophical math question in a way and with those you can come with your own ones and can just consider them some paradoxical or tricky type of questions that have no answer.

Could P vs NP be a stupid question that ignores common sense (how human thinking is hardwired which I talked about in my other question which wonders about human step by step kind of thinking and that no P doesn't equal to NP) and is similar to other tricky questions many people come up with.

So maybe all together it's math/philosophy and psychology (biology at heart because it's how our brain is wired, or philosophy if you consider self awareness as the only true knowledge) question. I mean how with how we understand our thought patterns and add to that a problem which caters to our step by step thought patterns are we going to answer it with a P = NP if that is just opposite to how we naturally think (what I mean is take a problem that has 2 steps and compare it to a problem that has more than 2 steps). Yeah we have imagination that we think is limitless which we can use to even think up the question of P vs NP and what may not be P != NP but it just goes back to how the world really works based on what we can grasp which is based on how we are physically made which has limits from a perspective.

[fiveworlds]

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Seems like its only a big question because some person or group with academic reputation said its a problem and big question.

Yeah that is basically it. Two American academics came up with some new idea for his phd and then has to defend it. What is so special about these non-deterministic machines when my normal computer does everything I want? The question is there precisely because he didn't have a proper answer to that and nobody else seems to either even after offering a million dollars it. Heck he even went so far as to say if we prove the wrong thing we break banking security. Which is ridiculous really even if one or two encryption algorithms such as RSA won't work anymore there are other ways banks use to secure your data such as passwords and multi-factor authentication.

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What separates the P vs NP problem from a general labourer asking "can we solve the hard stuff as quickly as the easy stuff"?

It doesn't actually say that. There are plenty of hard problems that simply aren't in NP computing a factorial being an example. We are always looking for ways to make computers faster, more ram, better CPU etc. Why? because it is worth big money, forget about the fact that it is a stupid question and think about what better algorithms mean for people. Some guy comes up with a faster algorithm for drawing light to a screen and now we have new graphics cards that are worth billions to the companies that develop them advertising "ray tracing". 

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are we going to answer it with a P = NP if that is just opposite to how we naturally think 

Lots of computing stuff is just opposite to how we actually think. The guys who have a vested interest in wanting P!=NP say it isn't and the guys who don't care either way such as Donald Knuth say P=NP. Bear in mind Donald Knuth literally wrote the book on computer programming.

Edited November 15, 2020 by fiveworlds

[John Cuthber]

3 hours ago, Saiyan300Warrior said:

Could P vs NP be a stupid question that ignores common sense

No.

1 hour ago, fiveworlds said:

Bear in mind Donald Knuth literally wrote the book on computer programming.

He wrote several, and jolly good ones too.

But he wasn't the only one, not even the first.
If you don't know what a word like "literally" means, don't use it.