The Paradox Machine

Twenty years ago I made a discovery that was too far ahead of its time. I called the invention the paradox machine, in line with other epistemically impossible devices like the perpetuum mobile and the time machine.

At the time I thought that it would take at least 20 years until technology had evolved to the state that it would be feasible to implement a paradox machine. Recent advances in physics and quantum computing lead me to believe that building one would be possible with today’s technology.

A time machine as seen in the 1960 film The Time Machine, based on the novella by H. G. Wells.

The paradox machine is a computer and solves impossible or untraceable problems. It however uses a model of computation totally different from traditional computers or even most other quantum computers. Instead of causality it is driven by paradox. Results are implied from the precondition. In one possible implementation a pseudo time machine is used. The paradox machine avoids a time paradox by inferring a solution to the problem. In operation it acts as an oracle giving answers to decision problems. 

The central scientific claim of the invention is that in quantum computing P is equal to NP, ie. the class of untraceable problems known as NP-complete can be solved in a reasonable (polynomial) time or with reasonable resources.

This material has never been published before. The text on the PowerPoint slides says Nokia, but I own all rights to the invention. When working for Nokia the assumption was that all inventions be reported for evaluation of patentability. The slides below are part of the invention report. Eventually Nokia decided they have no interest in the invention.

Why was this not published before?

There are several reasons.

I believe that quantum computing is evil. Like nuclear weapons, it has no uses apart from weapons of war or tools of crime. The worst threat is that quantum computing will destroy cryptography. Public key cryptography has had a huge economic impact in enabling a secure internet with its online services. Ultimately it has created hundreds of billions of wealth out of nothing in the form of cryptocurrencies.

Electronic computers have provided access to cryptography to everyone. If a paradox machine or other powerful quantum computer were to exist, only very few would have access to it. It would be first used by the NSA to spy on everyone and remove any privacy of communications.

When I first presented the material I could find few people who showed any interest in it and even less who showed any understanding. The situation may be different now.

I was never satisfied with the solution I gave to the traveling salesman problem. Much later I realized that I had misunderstood the complexity of the problem. To prove that P is equal to NP it is enough to solve a simpler decision problem in polynomial time. For the traveling salesman problem the question is "given the costs and a number x, decide whether there is a round-trip route cheaper than x”. This is the type of problem the paradox machine is able to answer. (I considered leaving out the two slides.)

Lastly there was a the issue of printing or converting the PowerPoint file. Windows computers in 2000 did not have the capability of printing to PDF.  The original PowerPoint file is from May 22, 2000. It uses a proprietary font named Rotis Sans Serif for Nokia, later known as Nokia Sans. Printing or viewing the file without the font installed destroys the layout and muddles the graphics. I was able to recover the font from a Nokia PDF document from the early 2000’s and install it on my computer.