I'm talking about this self-replicating effect in particular. In some distance far far away, there'd be some instance of me exactly identical and behaving exactly identically including writing these words right now.

Or, more generally, some superimposed versions of me partially overlapping, as can be seen with those overlapping Es in the original article.

>I'm talking about this self-replicating effect in particular. In some distance far far away, there'd be some instance of me exactly identical and behaving exactly identically including writing these words right now.

Maybe.

>Or, more generally, some superimposed versions of me partially overlapping, as can be seen with those overlapping Es in the original article.

Maybe - it depends on the complexity of not just you but everything around you. There may be billions of similar yous around you, with some variation based on their history, but it's not close enough 'you' for your arbitrary definition.

I guess what I'm saying is, it really depends on how it all works. The interactions of different cellular automata can still give rise to incredible complexity that might make identical yous very difficult or impossible. Twins have similar circumstances to a high degree but even they can be different physically and are always different experimentally.

It's complicated.

This effect also happens with continuous models, as there is only a finite number of quantum states in any finite subset of space. In fact, any notion of infinite space will virtually guarantee that there are exact copies (infinite copies) of you and me doing what we do now. But it's basically only a philosophical question since we only have access to our observable universe.

DNA copying is kinda similar.

Also look into fractals, since they are self similar.