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by qsort 2086 days ago
puts on hat from the second level of the pedant hierarchy

Assuming P!=NP!=co-NP, that computational model is equivalent to either NP or co-NP depending on the multiverse semantics you are using, not P^NP. If you can send the computation through multiple universes and get back a 'YES' or 'NO' answer, depending on whether the 'YES' or 'NO' is quantified existentially or universally on the leaves of the computation tree, you get NP or co-NP. Intuitively speaking, imagine you have a 3-SAT instance; you can send one assignment of truth values to the variables to each parallel universe for computation. If the multiverse answers you 'YES' if there exists one universe that says 'YES', that solves NP problems in P-time. If the multiverse answers you 'YES' if all universes say 'YES', that solves co-NP problems in P time.