In a previous post I mused on the recent 
proof attempt. As a practical matter, complexity theory is very different from what I do, so even though I’m a graduate student in computer science, my ability to comment on the internal dynamics of the discipline is quite limited. My opinions are really a result of the few graduate theory courses I took and my amateur but continuing interest in the area, combined with a bunch of offhand comments theory researchers and student have made in my department.
In my previous post I implied (I think correctly) that nobody works on proving anymore, but I attributed this to there being very little funding in theoretical computer science. In fact, the reason nobody works on the problem is that nobody knows how to work on the problem. This state of affairs is mainly due to the fact that complexity theorists have been a little too successful in ruling out plausible approaches to the problem as doomed to fail. The fact that nobody funds direct attacks on the problem is largely due to the demonstrated barriers and not any kind of growing disinterest in the status of the question.
Finally, for those of you who do not follow theory of computing blogs there are calls for Deolalikar to withdraw his claim due to insurmountable errors in the proof attempt. So that’s that.
