The joke in the title is that the class NP is exactly the class for which "solutions" to a problem can be verified "efficiently." Something I just noticed while typing this in, however, is the comment about isolation from socially important problems. This resonates given the responses from others to the question about a research programme, suggesting that the right measure is to find something that "betters the world." https://ephermata.livejournal.com/2005/07/01/ https://ephermata.livejournal.com/88003.html#comments