[concreteblock]

The problem seems to have the same flavor as the Collatz conjecture. Simple dynamical system - very difficult to tell what happens in the long run.

Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics. I wonder if anyone has proved any theorems that make this precise. E.g. "Most cellular automata rules cannot be analyzed efficiently".

I don't know enough complexity theory/set theory to formulate this precisely.

[schoen]

> Perhaps these things are too hard for (human) mathematics.

I'm guessing this thought is partly inspired by Erdős's remark about the Collatz conjecture?

https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6389/paul-erdos-quot...