I just don’t see any distinction between a hidden variable and a random variable. That it’s fixed has nothing to do with anything. It’s the difference between having a random number generator inside your program, or having a deterministic program which is called with a bunch of randomly generated arguments.
Either way you still have to ask the question of where the numbers are coming from, and if they are truly random. If they are the result of some simple deterministic algorithm. If we could, at least in principle, predict it with total accuracy, or if it’s impossible to predict no matter how much computational power we have.
And I do think there is a practical consequence of it. As you mention, Occam’s razor favor’s simpler hypotheses. If your hypothesis has a huge number of variables that can have arbitrary values, it has far more complexity than a hypothesis that allows for a random number generator.
I just don’t see any distinction between a hidden variable and a random variable. That it’s fixed has nothing to do with anything. It’s the difference between having a random number generator inside your program, or having a deterministic program which is called with a bunch of randomly generated arguments.
Either way you still have to ask the question of where the numbers are coming from, and if they are truly random. If they are the result of some simple deterministic algorithm. If we could, at least in principle, predict it with total accuracy, or if it’s impossible to predict no matter how much computational power we have.
And I do think there is a practical consequence of it. As you mention, Occam’s razor favor’s simpler hypotheses. If your hypothesis has a huge number of variables that can have arbitrary values, it has far more complexity than a hypothesis that allows for a random number generator.