[Confusion]

  * If the statistical physics method used here is powerful
  enough to resolve P != NP, then there's a good chance it
  is powerful enough to have led to many smaller results
  before the author was able to nail the big one. It's a
  little weird we haven't heard anything about that earlier.

Well, Wiles didn't publish intermediate results either, partly because someone might have beat him to the final result with those intermediate results. It would also give away what he was working on. Deolalikar was aiming for the grand prize as well, so skipping the publishing of intermediate results doesn't seem strange to me.

[Vivtek]

The conclusion might seem to be that prizes harm science.

Which sucks, but intermediate results are important for science as a whole; if there's significant financial reason to withhold them, we're no better than the alchemists.

[loup-vaillant]

The problem is, the most important prize (being able to say "I found it first") is unavoidable.

[Confusion]

Yeah, that's what I meant with 'the grand prize'. Not the 1 M$ from the Clay institute; that's just topping on the cake.

[dLuna]

Agree fully. Also worth considering if this proof turns out to be correct, is that he will probably have employment contracts and speaker deals dwarfing that $1M quite soon.

[akshayubhat]

Money is the last thing to care about if you solve P ?= NP. Humanity will remember you in same league as Turing Pythagoras Gauss and others.

[connellybarnes]

You can't eat prestige. Nor find joy in a life of isolation. Look at Rembrandt's philosopher if you want the true picture of the life of the mind.

How history remembers you only matters after you're dead. Can you really tell someone to live a life of solitary confinement? The isolating parts of academia honestly suck. But everyone convinces themselves that academia is so great, in part because so many have gone before, suffering, down the same path.

Look at all the theoretical physicists and mathematicians. Do you think these people are HAPPY? Remember, if you leave math you are "dead." It's about sacrifice, not about your health or happiness as a human being.

The best part of academia is the collaboration, the social aspects. As for the environment, it could definitely be renovated to make accommodation for humanity. Obviously that will never happen. So there needs to be big CAUTION signs posted up whenever someone lauds the greatness of academia, saying it is not all fun and games, lots of people spend decades locked in offices hunched over pieces of paper.

[pmiller2]

But, there was no prize for solving FLT other than being able to list on one's CV "Proved FLT."

[sfk]

Not that it matters, but there was the Wolfskehl Prize:

http://www.simonsingh.net/Wolfskehl_Prize.html

[shadowfox]

You wouldnt actually need to put that in your CV

[bonafidehan]

You actually won't need a CV.

[shadowfox]

That is a more precise statement :)