Top all-time · #264
Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Personal blog · rjlipton.wordpress.commathprogramming
Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP is a personal blog at rjlipton.wordpress.com about math and programming. Since 2009, 185 different Hacker News readers have linked it 491 times, most often “Galactic Algorithms (2010)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 6 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Richard Lipton's Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP blog for its coverage of complexity theory, P vs NP claims, chess statistics and mathematicians' obituaries. Commenters cite specific posts and recommend the blog for browsing.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- Comments call the matrix-multiplication post excellent, the blog a great one to browse for chess and theory, and a later Lipton post worth reading.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
a personal view of the theory of computation
Most-linked posts?
- Galactic Algorithms (2010)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2015-12-15
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-08-26
- Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-10-08
- A traveling salesman problem breakthrough3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-09-11
- A New Way To Solve Linear Equations3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-09
- Who’s Afraid of Natural Proofs?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-03-25
- Babai’s Result: Still a Breakthrough3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-01-05
- Helping Wall Street Cheat With Theory3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-10-22
- A Proof That P Is Not Equal To NP?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-08-09
- Tabulation Hashing and Independence (2012)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-04-15
What Hacker News says?
4 possible problems with the proof: http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/issues-in-the-proof...
Comment linking /2010/08/09/issues-in-the-proof-that-p%E2%89%A0np/
on “P ≠ NP”Submitted Mihai Pătraşcu 1982–2012 as a story · 599 points
HN discussionLooking at the comments at https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/a-proof-that-p-is-... there are many points to clarify. Specially the intuition from statistic physics is not true in other examples and the difference is not clear. So ...
Comment linking /2010/08/08/a-proof-that-p-is-not-equal-to-np/
on “P ≠ NP”Submitted P = NP Proofs: Advice to claimers as a story · 153 points
HN discussionHere is a good link. http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/a-proof-that-p-is-n... The suspence is killing me. As an observer I'm worried that there is some small error in the core of his argument that will cause the whole thing to unravel, as is often the case for proofs of this level. But I am hopeful that at least this may be a breakthrough that points to approaches to finally nail this great beast.
Comment linking /2010/08/08/a-proof-that-p-is-not-equal-to-np/
on “P ≠ NP”Submitted Peter M. Neumann has died as a story · 141 points
HN discussionSeveral points on the question of whether the proof is likely to be correct: * As far as I know this paper wasn't circulated for informal peer review before being made public; I heard no talk on the grapevine. (Edit: apparently it was circulated and someone other than the author made it public.) * Therefore a proper assessment is going to take a while. Until then we can only speculate :-) * While the crank attempts…
Comment linking /2009/04/27/how-to-solve-pnp/
on “P ≠ NP”Submitted Limits on Matrix Multiplication as a story · 136 points
HN discussionrelated to https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/galactic-algorithm...
Comment linking /2010/10/23/galactic-algorithms/
on “A Solution of the P versus NP Problem?”Submitted Oded Wins the Knuth Prize as a story · 129 points
HN discussionThe paper[1] claims that MIP* = RE. At first I wasn't sure whether that was true, because the paper is too long and complicated for me to verify. But then I found a series of questions and answers written by this quantum guy Scott Aaronson[2] and by this other quantum guy Kenneth Regan[3], who both know a bunch of quantum stuff. Each one of their blog posts makes me more certain about MIP* = RE, to the point that no…
Comment linking /2020/01/15/halting-is-poly-time-quantum-provable/
on “Landmark computer science proof cascades through physics and math”Submitted Héctor Garcia-Molina, 1953–2019 as a story · 121 points
HN discussionThe first part is actually quoted in the original post. The full letter is here: https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-letter/
Comment linking /the-gdel-letter/
on “The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann”Submitted A New Way To Solve Linear Equations (over finite fields) as a story · 118 points
HN discussionWhile I agree with your sentiment, the more I learn the more I realize there are some profound subtleties that are glossed over by people teaching them and people claiming they understand it. I think it's a sign of maturity to realize that even seemingly simple and well studied problems aren't very well understood by most people. I've been humbled many times thinking I know something when in fact I really had a shal…
Comment linking /2015/06/01/puzzling-evidence/
on “I don’t understand Graph Theory”Submitted John and Alicia Nash, 1928,1933-2015 as a story · 113 points
HN discussionI would also add to your list: * http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/dbpl/ * http://arxiv.org/corr/home * http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/index * http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ * http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ * http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/ and the like
Comment linking /
on “What are the most intellectually stimulating websites you know of?”Submitted Issues in the Proof that P ≠ NP as a story · 108 points
HN discussionThis is something that I've struggled with myself so I can only give you advice as I've learned it from my perspective. Math is a big field so you have to understand what parts you're really interested in and how you want information to be presented so that you'll learn it. For example, I'm interested in computation aspects of mathematics (information theory, computation group theory, abstract algebra, analysis, etc…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Best resources to gain math intuition?”Submitted Lint for Math as a story · 107 points
HN discussionhttps://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/galactic-algorithm...
Comment linking /2010/10/23/galactic-algorithms/
on “Galactic Algorithm”Submitted Predicting When P=NP Is Resolved as a story · 106 points
HN discussionI like the term "Galactic Algorithm" for these algorithms with unpractical constants. https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/galactic-algorithm...
Comment linking /2010/10/23/galactic-algorithms/
on “Meltdown and Spectre”Submitted Major (unfixable) flaw found in P!=NP paper. as a story · 104 points
HN discussionI remember reading about it here: https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/maryam-mirzakhani-... Always a tragic death to be reminded of. :(
Comment linking /2017/07/28/maryam-mirzakhani-1977-2017/
on “Maryam Mirzakhani”Submitted The Derivative of a Number as a story · 101 points
HN discussionAll throughout the talk there were statements like "Let p be an odd prime and…" My friend asked, “what is an odd prime?”—thinking it must be special in some way. The answer back was: not 2. from https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/boolean-solutions-...
Comment linking /2009/05/18/boolean-solutions-to-polynomials-modulo-a-prime/
on “2017 is not just another prime number”Submitted Update on Deolalikar’s Proof that P≠NP as a story · 95 points
HN discussionthis is great article for someone to undertand how cryptography and AES works - but as all great explanations - it fails to explain some key concepts that take it from 0 - to "got it!" for me (hacker with absolutely no idea of how cryptography works other than simple caesar ciphers and stuff from childhood books) - this actually reminds me of the article in rjlipton's blog that also made it up HN a couple of weeks a…
Comment linking /2011/08/05/give-me-a-lever/
on “A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)”Submitted An Annoying Open Problem as a story · 93 points
HN discussion
