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If you are only worried about analyzing a specific quantum system, then yes, for most part the interpretation does probably not matter. But I think in general the differences are very important, especially as we do not understand quantum mechanics and different interpretations will direct future research in different directions. If you believe in Copenhagen, you will try to figure out how to reconcile unitary evolution with wave function collapse. If you believe in Bohmian mechanics, you will think about the quantum equilibrium hypothesis. If you believe in many worlds, you might be thinking about energy conservation.


If you believe in Copenhagen, you will try to figure out how to reconcile unitary evolution with wave function collapse.

This is saying the interpretations "exist". The interpretation like intermediate values in some calculation process that are never returned. If the interpretations are true, they can be seen, not just "locally".

It seems like a lot of this basically involves people who've "suspended disbelief" provisionally, accepted a violation of their intuition provisionally but still are hankering for their intuition to spring back into validity. It's like people who accept that general relativity specifies curved space, understand the implications but are still expecting to somehow find a higher dimensional space that all this is suspended in 'cause that's what a fundamental reality feels like to them.


I am not really sure what you are trying to say. Are you talking about the difference between an interpretation as a way of thinking about something and an interpretation as describing what something really is?

It's like people who accept that general relativity specifies curved space, understand the implications but are still expecting to somehow find a higher dimensional space that all this is suspended in 'cause that's what a fundamental reality feels like to them.

General relativity works just fine without an embedding space but there still could be one. Not that you should think about it in this way without good reasons but only because it is more intuitive. But in the case of quantum mechanics we do - at least that is what I think - understand things so poorly that it is hard to judge what one should reasonably consider while making contact with questions about the fundamental nature of things.


"Interpretation", in the way that Copenhagen and Many-worlds are called interpretation, is just a way to add human meaning to an existing formalism. Like adding the label "energy" whatever quantity in Newtonian mechanics.


If many worlds is true, then there are actually countless parallel worlds, if pilot wave is true, then there is only one world. Those are metaphysical claims about the most fundamental aspects of the cosmos, I don't think it is fair to just file this under human meaning.




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