Stephen Wolfram

“Could there be a faster program for that?” It’s a fundamental type of question in theoretical computer science. But except in special cases, such a question has proved fiendishly difficult to answer. And, for example, in half a century, almost no progress has been made even on the rather coarse (though very famous) P vs. NP question—essentially of whether for any nondeterministic program there will always be a deterministic one that is as fast. From a purely theoretical point of view, it’s never been very clear how to even start addressing such a question. But what if one were to look at the question empirically, say in effect just by enumerating possible programs and explicitly seeing how fast they are, etc.?