Generalizations of Laver tables is posted (140 pages)

The full version of the paper Generalizations of Laver tables is now posted.

In the paper, I have focused on building the general theory of Laver tables rather than solving a major problem with regards to the Laver tables. In fact, one should consider this paper as an account of “what everyone needs to know about Laver tables” rather than “solutions to problems about Laver tables.” This paper lays the foundations for future work on Laver tables. Since there is only one paper on the generalizations of Laver tables as of August 2017, an aspiring researcher currently does not have to go through many journal articles in order to further investigate these structures. I hope and expect that this paper on Laver tables will incite a broad interest on these structures among set theorists and non-set theorists, and that further investigation on these structures will be made possible by this paper.

Researching Laver tables

If you would like to investigate Laver tables, then please investigate the permutative LD-systems, multigenic Laver tables, and endomorphic Laver tables instead of simply the classical Laver tables. Very little work has been done on the classical Laver tables since the mid 1990’s. The classical Laver tables by themselves are a dead-end research direction unless one investigates more general classes of structures.

The most important avenue of further investigation will be to evaluate the security and improve the efficiency of the functional endomorphic Laver table based cryptosystems. Here are some ways in which one can directly improve functional endomorphic Laver table based cryptography.

1. Try to break these cryptosystems.
2. Compute $A_{96}$.
3. Find compatible linear orderings on Laver-like LD-systems.
4. Find new multigenic Laver tables and new Laver-like LD-systems.

It usually takes about 15 years from when a new public key cryptosystem is proposed for the public to gain confidence in such a cryptosystem. Furthermore, people will only gain confidence in a new public key cryptosystem if the mathematics behind such a cryptosystem is well-developed. Therefore, any meaningful investigation into large cardinals above hugeness and the Laver tables will indirectly improve the security of these new cryptosystems.

While people have hoped for a strong connection between knots and braids and Laver tables, the Laver tables so far have not produced any meaningful results about knots or braids that cannot be proven without Laver tables. The action of the positive braid monoid is essential for even the definition of the permutative LD-systems, so one may be able to apply the permutative LD-systems to investigating knots and braids or even apply knots and braids to investigating permutative LD-systems. However, I would regard any investigation into the application of Laver tables to knots and braids to be a risky endeavor since so far people have not been able to establish a deep connection between these two types of structures.

If you are a set theorist investigating the Laver tables and you are not sure if you will stay in academia for your entire career, then I recommend for you to work on something that requires extensive computer programming. This will greatly improve your job prospects if you ever leave academia for any reason. Besides, today nearly all respectable mathematicians need to also be reasonably proficient computer programmers. You do not want to be in academia trying to help students get real-world jobs when you do not yourself have the invaluable real-world skill of computer programming.

My future work

I will not be able to work on Laver-like algebras too much in the near future since I am currently preoccupied with my work on Nebula, the upcoming cryptocurrency which will incentivize the construction of the reversible computer. I am already behind on my work on Nebula since this paper has taken most of my time already, so I really need to work more on Nebula now. Since developing and maintaining a cryptocurrency is a full-time job, I will probably not be able to continue my investigations on Laver tables.