[FOM] P =? NP: A practically important breakthrough

[Rob Arthan]

> On 13 Jan 2016, at 16:14, Kreinovich, Vladik <vladik at utep.edu> wrote:
>  The main activity of an engineer
> is to produce a design (or a control) that satisfies the given
> specifications: e.g., the design of a bridge that can withstand a
> certain weight, certain winds, and whose cost is within a given
> range. Once such a design is produced, we can usually easily check
> (by running the corresponding computer simulation programs) that
> this design indeed satisfies all the given specifications;
> however, coming up with such a design is often not easy.

I have no views to offer about the significance of the work by
Rossman et al. that was the main subject of Vladik Kreinovich's post
other than to express my skepticism about attempts to deduce
practical consequences of theoretical questions such as P = NP.

However, the claim that it is easy to check that an engineering design
meets its specifications is not substantiated by real world experience
as witnessed by the Intel FDIV bug, Ariane 5 etc., etc. 

Regards,

Rob.