See my response to Oscar. Branches (according to Oxford) are like the blobs in configuration space (or like the ink blots on Emile's illustration!), they're an approximate construct that depends on definition. Which is an absolutely untenable position, if you want to identify the observed portion of reality with a branch, because the observed portion of reality does not owe its existence to our definitions.
If people cared about this issue of vagueness, they could seek objective definitions of world (apart from "a point in configuration space"). For example, they could look at maxima, minima, and other turning points in the wavefunction. The blob could be exactly identified by the maximum that it contains, rather than fuzzily identified by its edges. There might be a dual description of the wavefunction in terms of a topological object in configuration space, rather than a complex-valued function, in which specifying the maxima, minima, etc., carries all the same information. That sort of investigation would be much healthier.
The subject has already been raised in this thread, but in a clumsy fashion. So here is a fresh new thread, where we can discuss, calmly and objectively, the pros and cons of the "Oxford" version of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
This version of MWI is distinguished by two propositions. First, there is no definite number of "worlds" or "branches". They have a fuzzy, vague, approximate, definition-dependent existence. Second, the probability law of quantum mechanics (the Born rule) is to be obtained, not by counting the frequencies of events in the multiverse, but by an analysis of rational behavior in the multiverse. Normally, a prescription for rational behavior is obtained by maximizing expected utility, a quantity which is calculated by averaging "probability x utility" for each possible outcome of an action. In the Oxford school's "decision-theoretic" derivation of the Born rule, we somehow start with a ranking of actions that is deemed rational, then we "divide out" by the utilities, and obtain probabilities that were implicit in the original ranking.
I reject the two propositions. "Worlds" or "branches" can't be vague if they are to correspond to observed reality, because vagueness results from an object being dependent on observer definition, and the local portion of reality does not owe its existence to how we define anything; and the upside-down decision-theoretic derivation, if it ever works, must implicitly smuggle in the premises of probability theory in order to obtain its original rationality ranking.
Some references:
"Decoherence and Ontology: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love FAPP" by David Wallace. In this paper, Wallace says, for example, that the question "how many branches are there?" "does not... make sense", that the question "how many branches are there in which it is sunny?" is "a question which has no answer", "it is a non-question to ask how many [worlds]", etc.
"Quantum Probability from Decision Theory?" by Barnum et al. This is a rebuttal of the original argument (due to David Deutsch) that the Born rule can be justified by an analysis of multiverse rationality.