What does it mean for a hypothesis to "have no moving parts"? Is that a technical thing or just a saying?
Not really either, it's a neat way of saying that a hypothesis doesn't actually explain anything: it doesn't provide a deeper explanation for the phenomenon in question (this explanation is the "moving parts").
A hypothesis allows you to make predictions; a good one will clearly express how and why various factors are combined to make the prediction, while a bad one will at best give the "how" without providing any deeper understanding. So a bad hypothesis is a little like a black box where the internal mechanism is hidden (sometimes, &q...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.