{"id":385,"date":"2009-02-09T15:34:27","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T19:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=385"},"modified":"2009-02-09T15:34:27","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T19:34:27","slug":"popular-complexity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=385","title":{"rendered":"Popular complexity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>A little-known discipline of science called computational intractability studies the boundaries of our understanding &#8211; not questions of the philosophical realm (Is there a god? An afterlife?) but of the everyday computational realm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So says the <em>Boston Globe<\/em>, in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/science\/articles\/2009\/02\/09\/great_unknowns\/\">article that&#8217;s finally appeared<\/a>, after it apparently kept getting bumped for personal health stories (I guess NP-completeness still doesn&#8217;t move papers like cancer).\u00a0 I&#8217;m gratified: in this time of economic crisis, the world urgently needs more articles about what humans still won&#8217;t be able to do in a billion years.\u00a0 (A colleague complained to me that computational intractability is not &#8220;little-known&#8221;; in fact, almost all computer scientists know what it is.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure if he was joking.)<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Public Understanding of Science: as you may have heard, much of the future of American science now hinges on whether the Senate, as it haggles over the $800B stimulus, decides to sprinkle a breadcrumb or two off the table for us.\u00a0 If there was ever a time to email your Senator&#8217;s office, and have a staff person check a box marked &#8220;constituent complaining about science funding&#8221; in your name, it&#8217;s probably this week.\u00a0 The APS has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.congressweb.com\/cweb4\/index.cfm?orgcode=apspa&amp;hotissue=81\">drafted a letter<\/a> for you.<\/p>\n<p><input id=\"gwProxy\" type=\"hidden\" \/><!--Session data--><input onclick=\"jsCall();\" id=\"jsProxy\" type=\"hidden\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A little-known discipline of science called computational intractability studies the boundaries of our understanding &#8211; not questions of the philosophical realm (Is there a god? An afterlife?) but of the everyday computational realm. So says the Boston Globe, in an article that&#8217;s finally appeared, after it apparently kept getting bumped for personal health stories (I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-mirrored-on-csail-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}