[Houshalter]

It can also be explained by branching. Run a simulation of a universe, and every time a random bit is required, fork into two separate processes. One where the "random" bit is 1 and another where the bit is 0. From the inside, it would seem indistinguishable from true randomness. But the system as a whole is purely deterministic.

[wruza]

>fork

When I was younger and had most interest in non-useful things (in a boring sense) I came to "the theory" that each time observation or logical induction is performed, the universe splits into many variants ahead of time and these variants that produce "oops" in terms of contradiction simply disappear. Each time you see something weird but real, it is oops that survived, because you didn't see something contrary yet (and now you cannot, because only one thing has to be remaining).

That made me sad, because we could come to hyperdrives and FTL journeys to alien worlds, but some people in 20th century made few observations and conclusions that now prevented fun forever. Magic things were easy before the technology, now they are physics-hard. Our universe is spoiled in a very wrong way.

[hasenj]

How would forking occur? Forking requires copying data. Does the universe get cloned infinitely many copies all the time? That's quite an extraordinary claim.

[AgentME]

This answer seems to be assuming the universe must be implemented on a classical computer and computed in a reasonable amount of time (that's not slowing down exponentially over time). That's not necessarily true.

I feel that assuming that the nature of how the universe is computed matches up with our first intuition feels a bit like the assumption in geocentrism that the universe matches up with our intuition of Earth being the center and the most significant body.

Even if you accept the basic premise of the universe being a simulation, there are still many ways it could work with MWI. The simulator's universe needn't have classical physics; the simulation could be running on quantum computers or something more advanced. Or the simulator's universe could be classical with a classical computer doing the simulation at exponentially-decreasing speeds as it has to simulate the increasing number of branches. It wouldn't make any difference to us how long the simulation takes to compute us, as long as the simulating machine doesn't break down and succumb to entropy. The simulator's universe could be something like Conway's game of life, and the simulation is running on a turing machine pattern which will never decay or break down. (I might be borrowing more than a few ideas from Permutation City here.)

[wruza]

Also https://xkcd.com/505/ (A bunch of rocks).

[SkyMarshal]

Google "multiverse". OP isn't making up this idea.

[quickben]

You have to consider his concept as an analogy. Infinity is a thing inside this universe, it may not be outside.

[hasenj]

The problem is not with infinity per se.

If the universe gets cloned one time every second that would still be a huge claim.

A million times every nanosecond is even a bigger claim.

Now imagine how many states the universe can be in, and how many times a second can be meaningfully divided.

If you can solve the "one clone every second" then I would be satisfied.

[virgil_disgr4ce]

What is the problem, though? Who says the uni/multiverse has a finite memory capacity? For more in this vein: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-...

[hasenj]

It's not about the memory capacity ..

[virgil_disgr4ce]

What is it about?

[Retra]

I'm not reading any problem description in your comment other than an inadequate imagination.

[jamesrcole]

Note that you're assuming that a nanosecond is a tiny amount of time. It's tiny relative to what we're used to, but as far as what "implements the universe" goes, a nanosecond could be enough time for a huge amount of occurrences to happen within. We don't know.

[hasenj]

I did not assume nor imply it's tiny in any "absolute" sense.

[jamesrcole]

Then why is "every second" a "huge claim" and "every nanosecond" "even a bigger claim"?

[hossbeast]

Copy-on-Write

[hasenj]

That's worse (more complicated).

[deepnotderp]

No, it would have to be a true semantic fork I believe.

[shrimpx]

Copy on write. :D