The idea that the Universe is this sort of discrete lattice always makes me suspect simulation.
I feel like true reality should not become grainy at some point, it feels like a mark of artificial origin.
I see some hints too, but that's probably because my mind is wired to be programmer :) So it's probably just a sort of confirmation bias.
However seeing the quantum effects like a version of compression, dark matter and dark energy which could be an ugly hack to stabilize matter and galaxies, the fractal self similarity of the universe is just too amusing to ignore :)
Or you can simply think of it as the best "resolution" that macroscopic instruments rooted in 3 dimensions can reduce it to.
I feel like the whole "wave-particle duality" is already a hint that the true nature of reality may always remain outside of our observation capability.
In fact, I think that humans may be a little too biased towards picturing everything as made up of discrete parts ("particles"), and that is probably a byproduct of having visual eyesight. Can't wait to meet alien intelligences with completely different senses and see what they think. :)
QM can be defined by the fact that the reality you observe isn't the "actual reality", but overall it doesn't really matter.
Wave-particle duality is a bit of a misnomer it's more of a pop-sci concept, all particles are defined by their wave function and there isn't a "particle function".
And if you think that we are too biased towards picturing everything made out of discrete parts then you won't like QM which is basically what the Q stands for which is "quanta" as in the smallest clump-thing-w/e of something.
That said most people that choose to study physics in high school (year 10-12) and or college would be exposed to Quantum Field Theory which makes everything make considerably more sense when you start thinking about everything in terms of fields.
Once you no longer think of an electron as an individual thing but as a electron field that extends through all space and the particles are the quanta of that field as in localized excitations of the field which when they reach a certain amplitude or energy level bring forth something we can measure and identify as an electron.
I wish QFT would be popularized more because it would bring so many important concepts into the common sense realm and it would actually be easier to explain things like why do particle accelerators work.
I read about this phenomenon where the two slit experiment could be replicated with drops bouncing on an oil bath (here's an article on it: http://resonance.is/news/quantum-weirdness-replaced-by-class... ). And one about how a higher-dimensional mathematical object could dramatically simplify certain quantum mechanical calculation ( http://www.wired.com/2013/12/amplituhedron-jewel-quantum-phy... ). I realize this proves nothing, but I'm still holding out hope that the randomness we observe is just a result of the interaction that higher dimensional "matter/energy" does when it intersects with our 3/4 dimensions. Maybe god doesn't play dice after all, maybe there's just a whole lot going on before we get to make our measurements.
I think that gets it backwards: the universe can move information around and perform computation because it has a level where things become both discrete and stochastic.
FWIW, my own intuition it precisely the opposite. I would be very surprised if reality turned out to be continuous, because of the resulting infinite information density.
However seeing the quantum effects like a version of compression, dark matter and dark energy which could be an ugly hack to stabilize matter and galaxies, the fractal self similarity of the universe is just too amusing to ignore :)