17 research outputs found
A Second Step Towards Complexity-Theoretic Analogs of Rice's Theorem
Rice's Theorem states that every nontrivial language property of the
recursively enumerable sets is undecidable. Borchert and Stephan initiated the
search for complexity-theoretic analogs of Rice's Theorem. In particular, they
proved that every nontrivial counting property of circuits is UP-hard, and that
a number of closely related problems are SPP-hard.
The present paper studies whether their UP-hardness result itself can be
improved to SPP-hardness. We show that their UP-hardness result cannot be
strengthened to SPP-hardness unless unlikely complexity class containments
hold. Nonetheless, we prove that every P-constructibly bi-infinite counting
property of circuits is SPP-hard. We also raise their general lower bound from
unambiguous nondeterminism to constant-ambiguity nondeterminism.Comment: 14 pages. To appear in Theoretical Computer Scienc
Credimus
We believe that economic design and computational complexity---while already
important to each other---should become even more important to each other with
each passing year. But for that to happen, experts in on the one hand such
areas as social choice, economics, and political science and on the other hand
computational complexity will have to better understand each other's
worldviews.
This article, written by two complexity theorists who also work in
computational social choice theory, focuses on one direction of that process by
presenting a brief overview of how most computational complexity theorists view
the world. Although our immediate motivation is to make the lens through which
complexity theorists see the world be better understood by those in the social
sciences, we also feel that even within computer science it is very important
for nontheoreticians to understand how theoreticians think, just as it is
equally important within computer science for theoreticians to understand how
nontheoreticians think
Is Complexity a Source of Incompleteness?
In this paper we prove Chaitin's ``heuristic principle'', {\it the theorems
of a finitely-specified theory cannot be significantly more complex than the
theory itself}, for an appropriate measure of complexity. We show that the
measure is invariant under the change of the G\"odel numbering. For this
measure, the theorems of a finitely-specified, sound, consistent theory strong
enough to formalize arithmetic which is arithmetically sound (like
Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with choice or Peano Arithmetic) have bounded
complexity, hence every sentence of the theory which is significantly more
complex than the theory is unprovable. Previous results showing that
incompleteness is not accidental, but ubiquitous are here reinforced in
probabilistic terms: the probability that a true sentence of length is
provable in the theory tends to zero when tends to infinity, while the
probability that a sentence of length is true is strictly positive.Comment: 15 pages, improved versio
On end extensions of models of subsystems of peano arithmetic
AbstractWe survey results and problems concerning subsystems of Peano Arithmetic. In particular, we deal with end extensions of models of such theories. First, we discuss the results of Paris and Kirby (Logic Colloquium ’77, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1978, pp. 199–209) and of Clote (Fund. Math. 127 (1986) 163; Fund. Math. 158 (1998) 301), which generalize the MacDowell and Specker theorem (Proc. Symp. on Foundation of Mathematics, Warsaw, 1959, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1961, p. 257–263) we also discuss a related problem of Kaufmann (On existence of Σn end extensions, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 859, Springer, Berlin, 1980, pp. 92). Then we sketch an alternative proof of Clote's theorem, using the arithmetized completeness theorem in the spirit of McAloon (Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 239 (1978) 253) and Paris (Some conservation results for fragments of arithmetic, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 890, Springer, Berlin, 1981, p. 251)
Relations between diagonalization, proof systems, and complexity gaps
AbstractIn this paper we study diagonal processes over time bounded computations of one-tape Turing machines by diagonalizing only over those machines for which there exist formal proofs that they operate in the given time bound. This replaces the traditional “clock” in resource bounded diagonalization by formal proofs about running times and establishes close relations between properties of proof systems and existence of sharp time bounds for one-tape Turing machine complexity classes. These diagonalization methods also show that the Gap Theorem for resource bounded computations can hold only for those complexity classes which differ from the corresponding provable complexity classes. Furthermore, we show that there exist recursive time bounds T(n) such that the class of languages for which we can formally prove the existence of Turing machines which accept them in time T(n) differs from the class of languages accepted by Turing machines for which we can prove formally that they run in time T(n). We also investigate the corresponding problems for tape bound computations and discuss the difference time and tapebounded computations
Resource Bounded Unprovability of Computational Lower Bounds
This paper introduces new notions of asymptotic proofs,
PT(polynomial-time)-extensions, PTM(polynomial-time Turing
machine)-omega-consistency, etc. on formal theories of arithmetic including PA
(Peano Arithmetic). This paper shows that P not= NP (more generally, any
super-polynomial-time lower bound in PSPACE) is unprovable in a
PTM-omega-consistent theory T, where T is a consistent PT-extension of PA. This
result gives a unified view to the existing two major negative results on
proving P not= NP, Natural Proofs and relativizable proofs, through the two
manners of characterization of PTM-omega-consistency. We also show that the
PTM-omega-consistency of T cannot be proven in any PTM-omega-consistent theory
S, where S is a consistent PT-extension of T.Comment: 78 page
Incompleteness Theorems, Large Cardinals, and Automata over Finite Words
International audienceWe prove that one can construct various kinds of automata over finite words for which some elementary properties are actually independent from strong set theories like Tn =:ZFC + "There exist (at least) n inaccessible cardinals", for integers n ≥ 0. In particular, we prove independence results for languages of finite words generated by context-free grammars, or accepted by 2-tape or 1-counter automata. Moreover we get some independence results for weighted automata and for some related finitely generated subsemigroups of the set Z ^{3×3} of 3-3 matrices with integer entries. Some of these latter results are independence results from the Peano axiomatic system PA