FOM: large cardinals and P vs NP

Stephen Cook sacook at cs.toronto.edu
Thu Aug 2 11:33:17 EDT 2001


Further to the question of whether large cardinals might help
settle the P vs NP question, could someone answer the following
question:

I suppose that a large cardinal axiom could be consistent with ZFC,
but in some sense still false.  But in this case, could it imply
a false statement of number theory?

More precisely, suppose C is a large cardinal axiom and A is a statement
of first-order number theory.   Suppose that C + ZFC is consistent,
and  C+ ZFC implies A.  Is A necessarily true?

Stephen Cook





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