Re:Complexity Theory’s 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Know...
by daveFNbuck on Saturday August 19, 2023 @02:19PM
(#37191568)
> Running any (halting) algorithm on a human computer is constant time, because you're bound by the number of states you can fit into some terabytes, but nobody should actually try to use that as a final analysis.
That's the sort of thing I would usually say to explain why we do things like use asymptomatic analysis and ignore polynomial factors. If you have a different solution, that's great, but you're no longer taking about the kind of runtime the article is about.
Re:Complexity Theory’s 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Know...
by Dylan16807 on Saturday August 19, 2023 @02:23PM
(#37191592)
It depends on how abstract you want to be. You shouldn't always shove the lever all the way to the most abstract single value.
My suggested solution is "don't delete all nuance". If the runtime doesn't behave nicely, give that a mention. Most things do behave nicely, so that's not much of a burden.
> the kind of runtime the article is about
The article spends plenty of time talking about computational feasibility, which is not about the limits as you approach infinity.
It even equates P with "trivial", which is... not good.
Running any (halting) algorithm on a human computer is constant time, because you're bound by the number of states you can fit into some terabytes, but nobody should actually try to use that as a final analysis.