In a sense, this IS a restatement of his original point, but with an emphasis on the fact that our "faith" in the difficulty of factorization may be more than wishful thinking. This is an issue that a huge number of very smart mathematicians have tackled and see no real traction on. So our collective "intuition" on this issue may have reality on our side. (In which case we will never "look back and laugh".)
As for finding a process that has already proven to be innately difficult, I do find that an interesting notion. Certainly many such processes exist and have been identified...was factorization chosen because the encryption process used very little hardware (back when that mattered)?
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The End of the Golden Age of Crypto Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 09:48:27 -0800On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 07:13 AM, Tyler Durden wrote:This may be true, but the conclusion that might easily be reached isn't. According to the number theorists (particularly post-Godel), factorization may easily be one of those things that...Yeah, a restatement of his point. It would be nice to have crypto systems based on at least problems which have been shown to be NP-complete.
1) Is inherently dificult
2) and the fact that it is inherently difficult is unprovable.
I don't follow you here. The Greeks knew the proof that there is no largest prime, a proof which can be written down in a paragraph. (If one believes in excluded middle proofs as opposed to constructivist proofs, which in this context is a reasonable belief.)
This may mean that not only is there no "hard evidence", there may never be. This being the case (and it most probably is), then we may always have to live with this uncertainty....and ain't that life?
(I believe that the non-existence of the "last" prime number is also unprovable.)
--Tim May
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