Thursday, April 01, 2021

Want to Buy a Theorem?

This is embarrassing to admit but after a few badly timed trades on GameStop options I find myself a bit tight on money. To raise some cash, I reluctantly decided to sell one of my prized possessions, one of my theorems.

For Sale: Boolean formula satisfiability cannot be solved in both logarithmic space and quasilinear time. For a more formal and slightly more general statement and a proof, see this paper.

Bidding starts at 12 BTC (about $705,000). 

The winning bid, upon verified payment, will receive:

  • The ability to give the theorem the name of your choice such as your own name, your best friend's mother's name or "Teddy McTheoremface".
  • A non-fungible token (NFT) attesting ownership of the theorem and the name you have chosen for it.
  • Anyone citing this result will be required to note that you own it and use the name you chose above. You cannot, however, limit the use of the theorem or receive compensation for its use. 
  • By virtue of owning this theorem you will a Fortnow number of zero. This immediately gives you an Erdős number of 2. If you have previously written a paper with Paul Erdős then both of us will now have an Erdős number of 1.
Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why this theorem?

A: The theorem is in one of my few solely authored papers and I can't afford to share the proceeds of the sale. 

Q: Doesn't Ryan Williams and others have stronger theorems?

A: The results are incomparable. Ryan gives bounds on a single algorithm with low time and space. My theorem allows different machines for the time and space bounds.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, Ryan's theorem is not for sale.

Q: Doesn't the proof of the theorem rely on other people's theorems such as Nepomnjascii? Shouldn't he get some of the value from this sale?

A: I'm not selling the proof of the theorem, just the theorem itself.

Q: If I purchase this theorem will I get to write next year's April Fools post?

A: No.

4 comments:

  1. :) The proposition of selling theorems isn't such a bad idea to raise some cash. It has probably been on the mind of a few.

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  2. Joke aside, I've proposed to fund Open Access journals through NFT's, but my idea hasn't been received that well: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/164144/can-non-fungible-tokens-fund-open-access-journals

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  3. Mathematics is not for sale

    ReplyDelete
  4. This sounds stupid but how do you buy Athene rim

    ReplyDelete