Originally Posted by Clarkm
Originally Posted by Jordan Smith

Clark,

There's a difference between not knowing or understanding all the variables involved in a system, and trying to explain contradictions between empirical observations and our physical models of the universe by assuming that there must be some local hidden variables that we don't know about and that uniquely determine the state of a system (as in the case of using the deterministic Hidden Variable theory to try to refute the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics). .


Well yeah, in the sense that the phrase "hidden variable theory" is more specific than an unknown out of control variable(s).

I took honors physics from Brown before he wrote the book "Quantum Field Theory"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_S._Brown

And I can tell you he was rabidly anti gun.
They fixed his problem. Physics is now explained in terms of baseballs.

Exactly. The point I was trying to make is that Hidden Variable theory is not about unknown variables in a system, but rather alternative explanations for quantum entanglement.

I had a supervisor when I was doing a thesis in theoretical quantum physics that liked to use the phrase “that’s a smoking gun”, referring to a piece of convincing evidence of some underlying process. I never asked how he actually felt about guns, but he sure didn’t mind talking about them!