
Amoeba finds approximate solutions to NP-hard problem in linear time - danielam
https://m.phys.org/news/2018-12-amoeba-approximate-solutions-np-hard-problem.html
======
ColinWright
For anyone interested in looking at this story in depth, here are some of the
times it or similar stories have been submitted to HN. Some of these
submissions have comments and discussions, and those might be interesting to
read too. Note that these are not all the same story, but they are all talking
about "solving" things like TSP using slime-moulds or other organisms.

My take is this: No, they're not really doing anything interesting other than
search, and no, they're not "solving" the TSP. Not least, given larger
instances, they don't always find the minimum path, and they don't even find
necessarily _good_ paths. So while they do find _a_ path, it really doesn't
have any impact at all on the question of solving NP problems.

None.

If someone disagrees with that then I'd love to have a decent discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18787254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18787254)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18784956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18784956)
(1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18775638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18775638)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18774656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18774656)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18771244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18771244)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765134)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18750018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18750018)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746032)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745530)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735903)
(76 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18729284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18729284)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18725828)
(1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304427)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4303169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4303169)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970427)
(20 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853748)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3757527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3757527)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3728933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3728933)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477746)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3406446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3406446)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1727875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1727875)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072876)
(21 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071568)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071533)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071093)

