Jordan, I’m really sorry to inject unneeded rigor into the discussion again, but the statement “FNP is strictly harder than NP” doesn’t work. It makes sense to talk about P=NP because P and NP are both sets of decision problems, but FNP is a set of function problems, so to compare it with NP you have to provide a mapping of some sort. Thus your argument doesn’t prove that PP>NP yet.
For me personally, function problems are exotic beasts and I’d prefer to settle the power of quantum voodoo on decision problems first :-)
There’s a natural partial mapping in my mind, but a rigorous mapping is beyond me. Check out this. Apparently it can be shown that FNP is strictly harder than NP, under certain conditions. I didn’t understand the condition, and whether it was reasonable or not.
Regardless of all this complexity jazz, which has definitely exceeded my grasp, my random dictionary example still demonstrates that certain problems can be solved exponentially faster with postselection than without, even if it doesn’t prove that FNP > NP.
ETA: Coming from a numerics background, decision problems seem like exotic beasts. I’d prefer to settle the power of quantum voodoo on function problems first =P
Jordan, I’m really sorry to inject unneeded rigor into the discussion again, but the statement “FNP is strictly harder than NP” doesn’t work. It makes sense to talk about P=NP because P and NP are both sets of decision problems, but FNP is a set of function problems, so to compare it with NP you have to provide a mapping of some sort. Thus your argument doesn’t prove that PP>NP yet.
For me personally, function problems are exotic beasts and I’d prefer to settle the power of quantum voodoo on decision problems first :-)
There’s a natural partial mapping in my mind, but a rigorous mapping is beyond me. Check out this. Apparently it can be shown that FNP is strictly harder than NP, under certain conditions. I didn’t understand the condition, and whether it was reasonable or not.
Regardless of all this complexity jazz, which has definitely exceeded my grasp, my random dictionary example still demonstrates that certain problems can be solved exponentially faster with postselection than without, even if it doesn’t prove that FNP > NP.
ETA: Coming from a numerics background, decision problems seem like exotic beasts. I’d prefer to settle the power of quantum voodoo on function problems first =P