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From: tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Complexity and Philosophy
Message-ID: <19071@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 28-May-87 06:11:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.19071
Posted: Thu May 28 06:11:05 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 29-May-87 05:28:37 EDT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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>Lately I've been chating informally to a philosopher/friend about
>common interests in our work.  He was unfamiliar with the concept of the
>TIME TO COMPUTE consequences of facts.  Furthermore, the ramifactions of
>intractability (ie. if P != NP is, as we all suspect, true) seemed to
>be new to my friend.  The absolute consequences are hard to get across
>to a non-computer scientist; They always say "but computers are getting
>faster all the time...".
>
>I'm digging around for references in AI on these ideas. This isn't my area.
>Can anyone suggest some?

I believe the philosophical consequences of complexity theory are
enormous and that the field is wide open for someone with the
ambition to pursue it.