I'm leaning toward the parallel universe hypothesis as well, except I'm thinking it's more like there are part-time processes that run in parallel, do their wor

I'm leaning toward the parallel universe hypothesis as well, except I'm thinking it's more like there are part-time processes that run in parallel, do their work, then exit after they come to some type of consensus of state. It would end up looking something like a bunch of containers running a game on your computer, processing all the other player's moves, arriving at consensus, sending that consensus to a central 'compute' spot where a global consensus took place, wait for a reply, then take what the global central thing said was a valid state of things. Rinse and repeat. Stick it all in blockchain in case there's a disagreement. I keep pointing out to people I can't make their beers (including glass) disappear while we're talking at a table. That this universe doesn't allow me to hack it (and presumably keeps others from hacking it) is a nice feature.