Apologies if I repeat a question which has already been answered. My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. Some time ago it was asked why Vernor Vinge made passing reference to humans' naivete in trusting public key encryption, and some posters were seeking to contact professor Vinge for clarification. Has any further explanation been discovered for his distrust of PKE?
LP+Apologies if I repeat a question which has already been answered. +My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many +important postings. Some time ago it was asked why Vernor Vinge +made passing reference to humans' naivete in trusting public key +encryption, and some posters were seeking to contact professor +Vinge for clarification. Has any further explanation been +discovered for his distrust of PKE? I once had a girlfriend who factored five digit numbers just by looking at them. "29367? No, that's not prime. It's 117 times 251..." Good ol' Elizabeth. That's what you get for an "IQ" of around 175. Surely there might be higher "IQ's" someplace else in Universe? Albert Szent-Georgi once told me his thought that an IQ difference of thirty points meant that one person solves by inspetion problems which no amount of explanation can make clear to the other. He added that in a normal day we run into people spanning three such gulfs. If an IQ of 100 routinely factors two digit decimal numbers, and you get another digit for every twenty or thirty points, then you're looking for beings with IQ's in the 1,000 range to factor 100 digits binary... Cheers, -dlj. david.lloyd-jones@canrem.com * 1st 1.11 #3818 * "640k should be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates, 1981.
LP+Apologies if I repeat a question which has already been answered. +My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many +important postings. Some time ago it was asked why Vernor Vinge +made passing reference to humans' naivete in trusting public key +encryption, and some posters were seeking to contact professor +Vinge for clarification. Has any further explanation been +discovered for his distrust of PKE?
I once had a girlfriend who factored five digit numbers just by looking at them. "29367? No, that's not prime. It's 117 times 251..." Good ol' Elizabeth. That's what you get for an "IQ" of around 175. Surely there might be higher "IQ's" someplace else in Universe?
Albert Szent-Georgi once told me his thought that an IQ difference of thirty points meant that one person solves by inspetion problems which no amount of explanation can make clear to the other. He added that in a normal day we run into people spanning three such gulfs.
If an IQ of 100 routinely factors two digit decimal numbers, and you get another digit for every twenty or thirty points, then you're looking for beings with IQ's in the 1,000 range to factor 100 digits binary...
There is a class of people called "idiot savants" who contain people who can also solve such problems by inspection - their IQs are often much lower than 100, so that blows Albert's theory. These so-called "idiot savants" can easily factor 100 digit numbers. The ability to solve such problems is not tied to IQ, as there are many such people with IQs of 150+ who cannot solve them. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com 801/534-8857 voicemail 801/460-1883 digital pager Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744@anon.penet.fi ** PGP encrypted email preferred! ** Cop: "How many beers have you had tonight, bro?" Suspect: "Seventy." -- from the TV show "Cops"
Ed Carp writes: EC+There is a class of people called "idiot savants" who contain people who can +also solve such +problems by inspection - their IQs are often much lower than 100, so that +blows Albert's theory. These so-called "idiot savants" can easily factor +100 digit numbers. The ability to solve such problems is not tied to IQ, +as there are many such people with IQs of 150+ who cannot solve them. Many idiot savants can multiply extremely large numbers, though I have not read of numbers with a hundred digits being involved. Factoring large numbers is an extremely different kettle of fish, and I know of no writing about idiot savants doing difficult factoring. If you have references to any such performances, I'd like to read them. Szent Georgi's remark was addressed to general intelligenc in everyday life, not to bravura arithmetic. My scepticism about all things IQish was supposed to be indicated by my use of quotation marks on "IQ". Cheers, -dlj. david.lloyd-jones@canrem.com * 1st 1.11 #3818 * A piano is a piano is a piano. -- Gertrude Steinway.
lwp@garnet.msen.com (Lou Poppler) writes: important postings. Some time ago it was asked why Vernor Vinge made passing reference to humans' naivete in trusting public key encryption, and some posters were seeking to contact professor
I don't recall the conversation, but it could refer to his recent novel "A Fire Upon the Deep." Our galaxy is divided into a number of zones where computation can be easier or harder than in the particular section where the Earth hangs out. The fastest zones have computational ability so far beyond what's physically possible in our zone that we don't understand it. In this situation you can't trust your security to merely computationally difficult problems like factoring large numbers: the denizens of the faster zones could crack them faster than slower communicators could enumerate them. The protagonists spent a fair amount of time on a courier ship that was carrying as its cargo 1/3 of a one-time-pad, which was intended to get to the buyer and be XORed with the other two pieces. This was a valuable cargo. After it became clear that this 1/3 was potentially compromised it was used for some important but less provably reliable communications. Jim Gillogly Trewesday, 15 Solmath S.R. 1995, 01:49
On Sat, 4 Feb 1995, Jim Gillogly wrote:
"A Fire Upon the Deep." Our galaxy is divided into a number of zones where computation can be easier or harder than in the particular section where /.../ In this situation you can't trust your security to merely computationally difficult problems like factoring large numbers: the denizens of the faster zones could crack them faster than slower communicators could enumerate them.
Yes, and even in the here and now, we suspect the existence of Powers with computational resources far in excess of our own. But do we know for sure that PKE *must* rely on computational obfuscation? Is it demonstrable that access to a public key always yields the secret key, given sufficient computational power? Or is this only a result of the clumsy way we construct our keypairs here in the slow zone?
participants (5)
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david.lloyd-jones＠canrem.com -
erc＠s116.slcslip.indirect.com -
Jim Gillogly -
Lou Poppler -
lwp＠garnet.msen.com