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Isn't this essentially Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe hypothesis?

I believe so, yes. I think it's somewhat likely that mathematically minded people would come up with that idea independently -- it's essentially Platonism taken to its logical conclusion.

For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

Yep, had the same thoughts a few years ago too. Basically if you accept mathematical realism as an axiom, pretty often you get to this idea

Had this thought in the bath ~25 years ago. Not an idea you can actually do anything with, though, other than go 'huh, interesting' and add more hot water.

OP here... yeah it sure looks like it is!

I hadn't heard of it before, and will need to do some more reading, but at a high-level it does look to be the same line of thinking.

Cool! He has some books on the topic that you'd be interested in.

You might also like to check out Greg Egan's Permutation City[0] which (in the form of entertaining scifi) presents some related arguments about the need for a computational substrate, or lack thereof.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

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