Researcher sorts problems by permanence: O(n log n) sorting lower bound holds forever
mboehme_ · x · 2026-10-25
Security researcher mboehme offers a taxonomy of research problems in a thread touching on Anthropic and Theorem Labs:
- Ephemeral problems: widely studied until technology, policy, or attention moves on.
- Eternal problems: once solved, known forever — e.g. undecidability: some statements cannot be resolved by any consistent formal system or automated algorithm; PL is full of such solved problems.
- Fundamental research: results that hold regardless of technology, people, or policy — his example is complexity theory, where no algorithm can sort numbers faster than O(n log n) in the worst case.
A theoretical take on what kinds of research remain meaningful in the AI era.
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