9 ms·

It takes a lot of time to turn a laboratory discovery into a reliably working prototype, then longer still for the industry to agree on standards and branding,

It takes a lot of time to turn a laboratory discovery into a reliably working prototype, then longer still for the industry to agree on standards and branding, and even longer to ramp up mass-manufacturing and get the distribution chain working. We could discover teleportation tomorrow morning and it would be twenty years before teleporters were common-place. Everything takes time to be fully realized. If you want to know what the near future holds look at what was discovered thirty years ago.

eganist 10y ago
> We could discover teleportation tomorrow morning and it would be twenty years before teleporters were common-place. Everything takes time to be fully realized. I can appreciate this example, though in the specific context of teleportation, there'll probably be a few decades tacked on to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising from the question of whether or not the person arriving out of the other end is in fact the same person. (I'm of the position that it doesn't matter, but still... anyway, this entire thought was just a tangent off an example)
- RhodesianHunter 10y ago
  You say that now, but when you step up to the machine with the knowledge that you are about to cease to exist, while somewhere else a perfect copy of you gets to go about living your life, I bet you change your mind.
  - mathgeek 10y ago
    Ah yes, the dilemma of whether the person on the other end having your memories means that the current you didn't cease to exist at the departing end.
  - Cerium 10y ago
    I think it depends on implementation. I wake up every morning and I'm pretty sure I'm still me. I go in elevators and each time the doors open I'm still me. So, what sort of transportation experience would change that? Admittedly, the closes to teleportation I've ever felt was my first trip on a cruise ship. I went to sleep in one city, and when I opened my eyes I was suddenly in a city hundred miles away. It was magic. I also still felt like myself.
    - raquo 10y ago
      Well, sleep and cruise ships don't destroy and copy your body. Teleportation would be equivalent to being killed the way I see it, until we get a better understanding of conscience at least.
      - adrianN 10y ago
        Your body slowly replaces itself. I'm reasonably sure that when you die you have replaced almost all of its atoms at least once.
        simonh 10y ago
        I've been using the same broom for 20 years! Never needed a new one and I'd never think of getting a new one. Of course I've replaced the handle twice and the brush four or five times.
        soylentcola 10y ago
        Theseus' Meatbag?
        contra64 10y ago
        Eventually, the constituent atoms themselves perform a complete cycle (at the slowest rates) every ~7 years. Some substances (e.g. water) cycle much faster, obviously. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11893583 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1189358... Which tells us that sentient consciousness and identity is mostly about the continuity of a signal across only some cells (nerves), and mostly rides on top of standing waves supported by those special cellular processes, at frequencies of oscillation faster than the underlying polarized/ionic chemical processes.
      - Cerium 10y ago
        How do I know? I don't know what happened while on was sleeping. I fell asleep, and perpetually a few minutes later woke up, but my clock told me it was 8 hours. What happened??
  - kbutler 10y ago
    Think about that as you're taking also tonight. Is the person that wakes up the same person?
    - rebuilder 10y ago
      Why draw the line at sleep? Your consciousness, such as it is, is pretty fleeting and vague anyway. What reason do you have to think any self survives from one moment to another?
      - animal531 10y ago
        At least while awake, you may be fleeting but you exist in a near constant stream of "you", which make it feel constant. When you go to sleep your brain enters an altered state, which is only a subsection of yourself. Who knows what will wake up from that?
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      Yes. You're not unconscious when you're asleep, you're just in an altered state of consciousness. Being actually unconscious is a very different experience; if you'd ever been through surgery with general anaesthesia you'd know about this.
  - neverminder 10y ago
    Exactly. What if there's a bug and when your "copy" is created at destination original is not destroyed? Would you agree to be killed, should your copy agree instead? Even worse, what if there's an anomaly in transporting data, original is destroyed and copy emerges disfigured, dead or something in between? Teleportation scares the shit out of me.
    - avip 10y ago
      As in the quite ancient https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Original NFB source: https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/ https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/
    - manuelflara 10y ago
      This reminds me of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.
      - zo1 10y ago
        In case anyone isn't aware, you've just read a spoiler.
    - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chances_(TNG_episode) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chances_(TNG_episode)
    - bigtunacan 10y ago
      Did you by chance read the short story "Think Like a Dinosaur" or see the episode of The Outer Limits based off it? It presents this exact same dilemma. Up until that point I never really considered the potential ethical ramifications of teleportation.
    - 10y ago
  - Angostura 10y ago
    Damnit Jim!
  - timje1 10y ago
    It gets more fun when you start to think about it as different consciousness being created and destroyed, each with the same memories. At what point do we start being afraid to fall asleep?
    - Filligree 10y ago
      When you go to sleep your brain doesn't stop working. Comas, now...
  - filoeleven 10y ago
    This is why I have no problem walking through wormholes, but will never set foot in a teleporter.
- amelius 10y ago
  Teleportation will not happen soon, if only because we've invested too much in autonomous cars already.
- babuskov 10y ago
  > it doesn't matter There's a pun in there.
- sethrin 10y ago
  Teleportation would violate Relativity, so the good news is that the dilemma in question is actually impossible.
ptaipale 10y ago
And when we're discussing medical care, the mandatory regulatory approvals are a significant cause of delay and cost. E.g. FDA approvals in the U.S. They are a barrier to entry, and they are a measure to ensure safety of new cures. It's a tough balance.
- chiph 10y ago
  Based on the history of drugs like Thalidomide, I'll pick safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#History
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Safety is good, but it's not a dichotomy of "absolutely no safety" or "safety trumps all other things". It seems to me that the safety aspect is currently very strong, on the expense of long time-to-market and high barrier of entry to market.
    - splawn 10y ago
      .....but we are talking about healthcare. Safety should trump all other things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere
      - ptaipale 10y ago
        If safety absolutely trumps all other things, then there can be no trials of anything (because by definition, a trial is there to experiment and find out about possible safety issues) and there would be no development of new medicines at all. That would not mean staying where we are, it would mean starting to slowly go backwards in the tools available for health care (because e.g. some antibiotics are slowly becoming inefficient and new ones should be developed - and currently the world is not doing enough of that.) See e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095020/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095020/
Jugurtha 10y ago
You are right, it takes time to invent and discover, and then time to roll down to consumers... But I think the second interval has been shrinking. It used to take much, much, longer between the time something is actually invented, and its use by the public (I think 80 years or something for some technologies). It doesn't take that long anymore for its use, not only in its home country, but globally. I live in Africa and touched an iPhone for the first time in 2007, the same year it came out. Why? Because I have a friend who used to watch Jobs keynotes (like wait for them)..and suddenly, the whole world knew about a product. Trade circuits have improved. Doing business with people you never met. All these shrink the time between the time Jobs wrapping up the show, and the moment it is available everywhere. The first interval seems frozen, but I think this is Parkinson's law at work. Today's scientists and engineers have the best technology in History, and they're pursuing the boldest endeavors by that very fact.

eganist 10y ago

> We could discover teleportation tomorrow morning and it would be twenty years before teleporters were common-place. Everything takes time to be fully realized. I can appreciate this example, though in the specific context of teleportation, there'll probably be a few decades tacked on to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising from the question of whether or not the person arriving out of the other end is in fact the same person. (I'm of the position that it doesn't matter, but still... anyway, this entire thought was just a tangent off an example)

RhodesianHunter 10y ago
You say that now, but when you step up to the machine with the knowledge that you are about to cease to exist, while somewhere else a perfect copy of you gets to go about living your life, I bet you change your mind.
- mathgeek 10y ago
  Ah yes, the dilemma of whether the person on the other end having your memories means that the current you didn't cease to exist at the departing end.
- Cerium 10y ago
  I think it depends on implementation. I wake up every morning and I'm pretty sure I'm still me. I go in elevators and each time the doors open I'm still me. So, what sort of transportation experience would change that? Admittedly, the closes to teleportation I've ever felt was my first trip on a cruise ship. I went to sleep in one city, and when I opened my eyes I was suddenly in a city hundred miles away. It was magic. I also still felt like myself.
  - raquo 10y ago
    Well, sleep and cruise ships don't destroy and copy your body. Teleportation would be equivalent to being killed the way I see it, until we get a better understanding of conscience at least.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      Your body slowly replaces itself. I'm reasonably sure that when you die you have replaced almost all of its atoms at least once.
      - simonh 10y ago
        I've been using the same broom for 20 years! Never needed a new one and I'd never think of getting a new one. Of course I've replaced the handle twice and the brush four or five times.
      - soylentcola 10y ago
        Theseus' Meatbag?
      - contra64 10y ago
        Eventually, the constituent atoms themselves perform a complete cycle (at the slowest rates) every ~7 years. Some substances (e.g. water) cycle much faster, obviously. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11893583 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1189358... Which tells us that sentient consciousness and identity is mostly about the continuity of a signal across only some cells (nerves), and mostly rides on top of standing waves supported by those special cellular processes, at frequencies of oscillation faster than the underlying polarized/ionic chemical processes.
    - Cerium 10y ago
      How do I know? I don't know what happened while on was sleeping. I fell asleep, and perpetually a few minutes later woke up, but my clock told me it was 8 hours. What happened??
- kbutler 10y ago
  Think about that as you're taking also tonight. Is the person that wakes up the same person?
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    Why draw the line at sleep? Your consciousness, such as it is, is pretty fleeting and vague anyway. What reason do you have to think any self survives from one moment to another?
    - animal531 10y ago
      At least while awake, you may be fleeting but you exist in a near constant stream of "you", which make it feel constant. When you go to sleep your brain enters an altered state, which is only a subsection of yourself. Who knows what will wake up from that?
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Yes. You're not unconscious when you're asleep, you're just in an altered state of consciousness. Being actually unconscious is a very different experience; if you'd ever been through surgery with general anaesthesia you'd know about this.
- neverminder 10y ago
  Exactly. What if there's a bug and when your "copy" is created at destination original is not destroyed? Would you agree to be killed, should your copy agree instead? Even worse, what if there's an anomaly in transporting data, original is destroyed and copy emerges disfigured, dead or something in between? Teleportation scares the shit out of me.
  - avip 10y ago
    As in the quite ancient https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Original NFB source: https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/ https://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/
  - manuelflara 10y ago
    This reminds me of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.
    - zo1 10y ago
      In case anyone isn't aware, you've just read a spoiler.
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chances_(TNG_episode) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chances_(TNG_episode)
  - bigtunacan 10y ago
    Did you by chance read the short story "Think Like a Dinosaur" or see the episode of The Outer Limits based off it? It presents this exact same dilemma. Up until that point I never really considered the potential ethical ramifications of teleportation.
  - 10y ago
- Angostura 10y ago
  Damnit Jim!
- timje1 10y ago
  It gets more fun when you start to think about it as different consciousness being created and destroyed, each with the same memories. At what point do we start being afraid to fall asleep?
  - Filligree 10y ago
    When you go to sleep your brain doesn't stop working. Comas, now...
- filoeleven 10y ago
  This is why I have no problem walking through wormholes, but will never set foot in a teleporter.
amelius 10y ago
Teleportation will not happen soon, if only because we've invested too much in autonomous cars already.
babuskov 10y ago
> it doesn't matter There's a pun in there.
sethrin 10y ago
Teleportation would violate Relativity, so the good news is that the dilemma in question is actually impossible.

ptaipale 10y ago

And when we're discussing medical care, the mandatory regulatory approvals are a significant cause of delay and cost. E.g. FDA approvals in the U.S. They are a barrier to entry, and they are a measure to ensure safety of new cures. It's a tough balance.

chiph 10y ago
Based on the history of drugs like Thalidomide, I'll pick safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#History
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Safety is good, but it's not a dichotomy of "absolutely no safety" or "safety trumps all other things". It seems to me that the safety aspect is currently very strong, on the expense of long time-to-market and high barrier of entry to market.
  - splawn 10y ago
    .....but we are talking about healthcare. Safety should trump all other things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      If safety absolutely trumps all other things, then there can be no trials of anything (because by definition, a trial is there to experiment and find out about possible safety issues) and there would be no development of new medicines at all. That would not mean staying where we are, it would mean starting to slowly go backwards in the tools available for health care (because e.g. some antibiotics are slowly becoming inefficient and new ones should be developed - and currently the world is not doing enough of that.) See e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095020/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095020/

Jugurtha 10y ago

You are right, it takes time to invent and discover, and then time to roll down to consumers... But I think the second interval has been shrinking. It used to take much, much, longer between the time something is actually invented, and its use by the public (I think 80 years or something for some technologies). It doesn't take that long anymore for its use, not only in its home country, but globally. I live in Africa and touched an iPhone for the first time in 2007, the same year it came out. Why? Because I have a friend who used to watch Jobs keynotes (like wait for them)..and suddenly, the whole world knew about a product. Trade circuits have improved. Doing business with people you never met. All these shrink the time between the time Jobs wrapping up the show, and the moment it is available everywhere. The first interval seems frozen, but I think this is Parkinson's law at work. Today's scientists and engineers have the best technology in History, and they're pursuing the boldest endeavors by that very fact.