World freezes if gamerule randomTickSpeed is set to a very high value

The world freezes if the gamerule randomTickSpeed is set to a very high value. Like 1000000000.

How to reproduce:
Type the following:

/gamerule randomTickSpeed 1000000000

in a world with cheats on. You'll see you aren't able to do anything other than move and place and destroy blocks. For instance, the "place block" sound will not play, but the "break block" sound will play. Music is unaffected. You can't send chat messages, and chunks stop loading. You cannot set the randomTickSpeed gamerule back to 3. Reloading the save fixes it.