We give the first examples of non-trivially positively-useless predicates subject only to P != NP. In particular, for every constraint function Q : {-1,1}^4 -> R, we construct Contraint-Satisfaction-Problem (CSP) instances without negations which have value at least 1-eps when evaluted for the arity-four odd-parity predicate, yet it is NP-hard to find a solution with value significantly better than a random biased assignment when evaluated for Q. More generally, we show that all parities except one are positively useless. Although we are not able to exhibit a single protocol producing hard instances when evaluated for every Q, we show that two protocols do the trick. The first protocol is the classical one used by Håstad with a twist. We extend the protocol to multilayered Label Cover and employ a particular distribution over layers in order to limit moments of table biases. The second protocol is a modification of Chan's multi-question protocol where queried tuples of Label Cover vertices are randomized in such a way that the tables can be seen as being independently sampled from a common distribution and in effect having identical expected biases. We believe that our techniques may prove useful in further analyzing the approximability of CSPs without negations.
@InProceedings{wenner:LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2014.433, author = {Wenner, Cenny}, title = {{Parity is Positively Useless}}, booktitle = {Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2014)}, pages = {433--448}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-939897-74-3}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2014}, volume = {28}, editor = {Jansen, Klaus and Rolim, Jos\'{e} and Devanur, Nikhil R. and Moore, Cristopher}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2014.433}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-47144}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2014.433}, annote = {Keywords: Approximation hardness, approximation resistance, parity, usefulness, negations, monotone, constraint satisfaction problems, smoothness, multilayer, L} }
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