[gloriousduke]

> then you get a picture of an extraordinarily complicated system, and the nuts and bolts of exactly what that system is running on fall away into irrelevance

I think this is a common failing of thought experiments. Gedankenexperiments help us ask better questions and design better real experiments, but if you're trying to use them to make fundamental conclusions about reality in an a priori way, you're likely going to fail.