This is just a short follow-up to the preceding episode of Hypothoughts, brought to you by a snarky fellow with far too much time on his hands.

Should I start using GIFs?  I feel like a GIF would have gone rather well there.

I said it was a follow-up, but it's more like something I probably should have covered before I got all into the simulation argument.  I'd like to briefly explain how the universe could behave like a computer.

One of the crazy components to the universe is its behavior at incredibly small scales.  Everything is quantized, or incremental.  There are discrete levels that exist and nothing in between.  This goes for the amount of energy a partical can have - electrons, for instance, are trapped in very specific orbitals, emitting photons at very specific frequencies to jump down from one level to another rather than slowly spiralling down closer and closer to the nucleus - but it also theoretically applies to distances and time intervals.  As in, something can be located here, in this space, or here, in this adjacent space, but not in between the spaces.  There's like this infinitesimal grid of allowed positions, billions of times smaller than even particles.  And each infinitesimal unit of time defines a tick during which this orientation is held, with changes permissible only when the next tick comes along.

Subtle throwback to this thing that neatly demonstrates what I mean.

So the idea is that this grid is very similar to the way a computer works.  If we represent particles with a bunch of 1's and 0's (which we can, because for the most part these particles can be defined by a few of their characteristics) and put them in their proper locations, and then run physics equations as the programming, we basically have the whole universe covered just like that.

If you ask me, it's pretty darn cool.  And if you want to think back to the whole simulation argument from my previous post, this only supports the possibility (probability?) that everything we see is contained within some supercomputer.