"Thought experiments" that allow you to make up whatever you want are pointless, because you can also make up whatever answer you want. So the "thought experiment" tells you nothing.
As actual physicists actually use thought experiments, they cannot make up whatever they want. Thought experiments involve taking a known consistent model and working out consequences of it that were not previously obvious or well known, and seeing where that leads. You can only do that usefully if you constrain the thought experiment by the model, i.e., if you do not allow yourself to make up whatever you want.
Since the discussion here is about an article on physics, it seems appropriate to treat proposed thought experiments the way actual physicists would treat them. That is what I have been doing.
As actual physicists actually use thought experiments, they cannot make up whatever they want. Thought experiments involve taking a known consistent model and working out consequences of it that were not previously obvious or well known, and seeing where that leads. You can only do that usefully if you constrain the thought experiment by the model, i.e., if you do not allow yourself to make up whatever you want.
Since the discussion here is about an article on physics, it seems appropriate to treat proposed thought experiments the way actual physicists would treat them. That is what I have been doing.