Is there a list of implications of $P=NP$?
Presumably, a proof of $P \ne NP$ will be by contradiction, for which a list of consequences of $P=NP$ would be useful.
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Sign up to join this communityIs there a list of implications of $P=NP$?
Presumably, a proof of $P \ne NP$ will be by contradiction, for which a list of consequences of $P=NP$ would be useful.
If P=NP, then all of the NP problems can be solved deterministically in Polynomial time.
This is because the NP problems are all essentially the same problem, just stated in different terms.
As far as lists go -- many of the NP-Complete problems are enumerated here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NP-complete_problems
Further implications? Our cryptosystems break down, armchair philosophers argue about what it means, the world changes, and somebody gets a Fields medal or Turing award + a big hunk of cash, etc... but that's a tangent.
For example, one of the classic NP problems is clique. If you could solve clique with a polynomial time algorithm, this would prove that P=NP, and then you could also use your method for solving clique to solve all of the other problems on that wiki-list, as an implication.
There wouldn't be a lot of practical implications. In practice, the question is not whether a problem can be solved in polynomial time, the question is whether it can be solved in a reasonable amount of time.
Let's say I can solve the Travelling Salesman problem for n cities in n^12 nanoseconds. So what? N=50 still takes thousands of years.
No fast algorithms for this problem are known. P=NP doesn't magically give us any fast algorithms.
Of course P = NP would affect a huge number of open problems in computer science, where certain problems are obviously in P, and obviously in NP but not known to be NP-complete, and it is unknown where exactly between P and NP they are - all these problems would be known to be in P. (See this question for example: Existence of NP problems with complexity intermediate between P and NP-hard )
And if a guaranteed polynomial time algorithm for checking primality hadn't been known, we would know that one exists (but that knowledge would have been no help whatsoever to find this algorithm).
It also implies that some unsolvable problems may just be very hard. One of which being "which specific genes cause the phenomenon of consciousness" which could yet be solvable.