Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
The poster you are addressing last visited this site in April 2011, so don't hold your breath for a response.
What areas are left for major breakthroughs by a "super genius" ?
- Thread starter Trent Wray
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I can't defend Phipps, but I'd like to know more. I hope this doesn't immediately die.
icerat
Philosopher
Yes, I think here there is room. I think of Barry Marshall who had an insight while working with a friend who was a vet and proved Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most Peptic Ulcers.
Or the breakthrough by my friends Ian Frazer and Jian Zhou which ultimately led to the first vaccine for preventing cancer. While they had institute funding and help, it was relatively small scale and Ian took several mortgages on his house to keep the early research going.
The human microbiome is something we barely understand but early insight seems to indicate it has quite dramatic influences on human health.
The thread is about super geniuses. Phipps was listed. I am just presenting my opinion that Phipps isn't one!
Phipps has published a lot of articles in fringe publications like 'Free Energy'. He has gotten some articles in refereed journals. I think he once did some real scientific work!
A lot of these fringe publications talk about Galilean relativity as an alternative to Einsteinian relativity. I have some empathy with them as I think there is a seed of truth in their accusations.
It is a mystery to me how a person with the disabilities that I infer could have done any work. I read one article of his on some new method of analyzing mathematical series. It didn't seem all that innovative to me, but it certainly seemed valid. That may show my mathematical shortcoming, but maybe Phipps knows something. He also did some measurements on spectral lines that was published.
However, what I got from Vereties is mostly ad hominem attacks on 'the scientific establishment' including Einsteinians. Almost everything had some glaring scientific mistake in it. He showed some expHowever, he covered many of his mistakes with diatribes against Einsteinian relativity.
I first learned about Phipps while arguing with Geocentric Creationists. The GCs are people who believe, based on the literal word of the Bible, that the sun and everything else circles the earth while the earth stands still. They generally refuse to believe any type of relativity including Galilean. They dislike acentric models as much as they dislike heliocentric models.
One Geocentrist started to discuss Galilean relativity. He argued that Newtonian physics was better than Einsteinian physics because it used Galilean relativity. I pointed out that Galilean relativity is still acentric. There is no preferred center in Newtonian physics any more than there is a preferred center in Einsteinian relativity. The fellow was sure I was wrong.
He was nice enough to mail me a copy of Vereties on loan. I got fascinated in Phipps for the wrong reasons. I could only find one thing in the entire book that seemed correct. I mailed that copy back to the Geocentrist. However, I became fascinated with how this odd meme propagated.
Let me point out the only thing in the book that I consider both correct and innovative. Phipps did an experiment with a shaving head to clarify one point in general relativity (the Thomas precession). I think he did the experiment correctly although I disagree with Phipps interpretation. However, when I bring it up with Phipps fans (PF?), I can't get past the antiEinstein polemic. They don't want to hear MY understanding of what relativity means. They just keep on raving about the 'Einstein conspiracy'.
I like to start discussing Phipps on the Internet with his fans. What I find interesting is that they never stick to discussion about the basics. I mention lock-in amplifiers, and they start going on about the scams of Evil Einstein. I mention elastic forces, and they talk about paradigm shifts. When I bring up the formal theory of limits, they dismiss it as 'pure theory'.
I don't know much about Phipps before he went crackers and famous. I know that he was a scientific advisor to La'Roach (LR) for a while. La'Roach was a third party candidate for U.S. President (I forgot when) with what is considered a 'right wing' platform. The platform was primarily based on the idea that power from nuclear fusion could be immediately available to solve all the world's economic problems.
LR was singular as a candidate because he his conjectures on physics were part of his political platform. He had strong opinions on plasma physics! L'Roach is another luny that I became fascinated with. He could have become our President! It just required the vote to be divided up between the three parties.
I think the energy shown by Phipps fans is probably based on politics, not science. However, I am very interested in the leakage. Some of the same nonsense has surfaced with regard to Artificial Global Warming. However, I like to avoid hot topics while they are still hot. The Phipps Phenomenon comprises a smaller subculture. So I have a better chance of understanding the dynamics of conspiracy theories from studying the PF cult.
Part of the fascination with these crackpots is that there is often a seed of truth in their rants. However, some giant delusion often grows from these rants. Eventually, the delusion matures into a full grown cult. So I am fascinated by ontology of these cults.
There are many interesting problems in computer science, the major ones I can think of are:
P=NP? Algorithms solve computational tasks, but not all algorithms are equal, and not all tasks are computationally equivalent. Algorithmic problems are broadly categorized as P, meaning they can be solved in polynomial time (e.g. O(1), O
, O(n lg n), O(VE), O(V + E), O(n2)) on a deterministic Turing machine; or NP, meaning the problem cannot be solved in polynomial time, they are solved in exponential time (e.g. O(n!), O(2n)) on a deterministic Turing machine.Problems that look superficially similar, like finding the shortest path between two points in an unweighted graph (P) and finding the longest acyclic path between two points in an unweighted graph (NP), may belong in different complexity classes.
Often, one can write an algorithm to convert or "reduce" one kind of problem into another. For example, represent the vertex cover problem (NP) in terms of the 3-SAT problem (NP). The problem here is that, while one can write an algorithm exists to convert one NP problem into another NP problem in polynomial time, there is no known algorithm which converts an NP problem into a P problem in polynomial time.
One can often verify a solution to an NP problem in polynomial time, but finding a solution requires exponential time (best example I can think of is the subset sum problem).
Most computer scientists believe that P != NP, but this statement lacks a proof. Whoever proves this statement will be remembered to the end of time.
On the flip side, if someone proved that P = NP (for example, they discovered an algorithm which reduces an NP problem to a P problem in polynomial time, or found a polynomial time solution to a NP problem), that would "shake things up" to say the least
While the P=NP problem is the best known example of whether one complexity class reduces to another, it is also an open question whether P=BPP, NP=C, NL=L, P=PSPACE, P=co-NP, etc.
What is the complexity class of integer factorization? Integer factorization is currently not known to be either P or NP or a separate complexity class altogether. Many prime number sieves run in polynomial time for some value of n, but require exponential time proportional to the length of the number (usually in bits) in calculations. We do not know of any algorithm on a classical computer which can factor which can factor a number in polynomial time, meaning an algorithm that runs at least O(length_in_bitsk) time for some constant k.
Factoring using a general number field sieve is known to be sub-exponential time, but still grows faster than any polynomial time algorithm.
Shor's algorithm a quantum algorithm does factors in polynomial time, but because it is a non-deterministic algorithm, it has a (bounded) probability of error. It belongs to a (presumed) superset of P problems known as bounded error quantum polynomial or BQP.
Determining the complexity class of integer factorization is a more specific version of the following class of questions:
What is the fastest algorithm for XYZ? There are many polynomial time algorithms for multiplying of n-bit numbers, matrix multiplication, and solving fast fourier transforms, but it is not known whether faster algorithms exist, nor is it known what the lowerbound solution to these problems are.
Similar to integer factorization, there is no known polynomial time algorithm for computing discrete logarithms, but it is not known whether this problem is P or NP.
Frustratingly, linear programming has a notoriously difficult complexity analysis. It is known to be polynomial, but not known whether it is strongly polynomial. A proof showing that there is no strongly polynomial algorithm to solve linear programming problems would imply that it a different complexity class entirely.
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Super genius is pretty competitive now, what with billions of brains running around on the planet. One consequence is we hold things pretty close to the vest, lest we get scooped. After all, part of the super-genius task is to find, then answer, big questions.
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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<pedant>
There is not only no known algorithm to do that, there is no possible algorithm to do that. If you can take a problem and convert it into a P problem in P time, then your original problem is, in fact, a P problem. It can only be an NP problem if no algorithm can convert it to a P problem in P time.
ftfy
Ziggurat
Penultimate Amazing
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Alcohol has calories (about seven per gram). Anything that contains alcohol will contain calories.
I consider it a scientific fact that if it doesn't contain alcohol, it cannot be beer.
Hercules Rockefeller
Woof!
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Alcohol has calories (about seven per gram). Anything that contains alcohol will contain calories.
I consider it a scientific fact that if it doesn't contain alcohol, it cannot be beer.
You just drink the same amount of anti-beer. Problem solved.
ddt
Mafia Penguin
Absolutely, IMHO that is the single most important open problem in computing science.
(and it's computing science, not computer science - the field has as much to do with the study of computers as astronomy has to do with the study of telescopes, to paraphrase Edsger Dijkstra).
IIRC, every NP problem can be verified in polynomial time; it's in fact an alternative definition for NP.
Another way to prove P = NP would to show a polynomial solution for a so-called NP-complete problem. An NP-complete problem is a problem for which has been shown that every other NP problem can be reduced to it in polynomial time. The Travelling Salesman Problem is an example of it.Most computer scientists believe that P != NP, but this statement lacks a proof. Whoever proves this statement will be remembered to the end of time.
On the flip side, if someone proved that P = NP (for example, they discovered an algorithm which reduces an NP problem to a P problem in polynomial time, or found a polynomial time solution to a NP problem), that would "shake things up" to say the least
Your claim is wrong, the reasoning is right. As long as the question whether P = NP is open, it's not known if there's a possible algorithm to do that. If such an algorithm were found, the question P = NP would be answered.
macdoc
Philosopher
The unknown unknowns..... perhaps why otherwise mostly rational people can't get out of the clmate change denial hole they dug themselves. 
Doghouse Reilly
Adrift on an uncharted sea
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Looks like it turned out that Jacob kid was bogus hype drummed up by his mom. The wiki on him is quite a bit different than it was the last time this thread contained a link to it.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Barnett
And a very interesting article on him, debunking the extravagant claims:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-09-25/
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Barnett
And a very interesting article on him, debunking the extravagant claims:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-09-25/
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