> The ability to send bits across parallel universes is just insane in terms of economic and experimentation value. For example, pharmaceutical companies can do $100 billion trials for all sorts of novel drugs, and trade the results of this information with their clones in other universes.

I remember reading this short story and being obsessed with the consequences. It immediately solves P = NP, and makes guarding secrets way way way harder. This is the first time I've heard someone else mention it.

HPMOR had a similar technology (the time turners) and threw up defensive cannon early:

> If this worked, Harry could use it to recover any sort of answer that was easy to check but hard to find. He wouldn't have just shown that P=NP once you had a Time-Turner, this trick was more general than that. Harry could use it to find the combinations on combination locks, or passwords of every sort. Maybe even find the entrance to Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets, if Harry could figure out some systematic way of describing all the locations in Hogwarts. It would be an awesome cheat even by Harry's standards of cheating.

> Harry took Paper-2 in his trembling hand, and unfolded it.

> Paper-2 said in slightly shaky handwriting:

> DO NOT MESS WITH TIME

I'm a huge SciFi fan, especially Ted Chiang. I perceive his styles to be quite varied and creative. I think that he does a good job of portraying the "awe" of "awe-inspiring discovery".