FOM: polynomial v. combinatorial independence

Torkel Franzen torkel at sm.luth.se
Mon Mar 23 13:41:12 EST 1998


  Neil Tennant says:

  >Friedman's (A), by contrast, is pretty natural, and is given by a much
  >more feasible recipe for primitive rendering.

  Certainly. However, I don't see anything in your comments concerning
the idea that Friedman's A, if true, should be true for some simple
reason. Why should this be? Because it's short when written in primitive
notation? Or because of its "provenance"?

  I'm also wondering about the realization you referred to, that
any proof of (A) would require large cardinal assumptions.

  >Or is Torkel unwilling to be impressed by a result that gets from the
  >likes of gargantuan-polynomial (B*) to manageable (A), 

  On the contrary, I was impressed, as I said before, already by the
precursor to the result now at issue, without thinking it
foundationally epochal.

---
Torkel Franzen



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