From: david.lloyd-jones@canrem.com (David Lloyd-Jones)
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 95 23:00:50 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Vinge on PKE ?
In-Reply-To: <m0ravI7-0013GtC@garnet.msen.com>
Message-ID: <60.19880.6525.0C1CDEB4@canrem.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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.