In my view the problem with interpreting physics theory precedes the quantum era. Nobody really knew what classical gravity or magnetism consisted of. The idea

In my view the problem with interpreting physics theory precedes the quantum era. Nobody really knew what classical gravity or magnetism consisted of. The idea of the planets acting on one another instantaneously without contact in a vacuum was absurd on the face of it. Einstein was disturbed by this. The history of QM that I learned in school a long time ago, is that a few physicists endorsed adopting a purely mathematical formalism with no preferred interpretation in order to be free of preconceptions that might prevent them from making progress. They were still free to debate interpretation, but considered it to be separate from the problem of forming an experimentally testable theory. But in terms of finding a philosophically satisfactory interpretation, we don't know what to look for. No science has ever attempted to dig deeper than the level of analogies that are easy to grasp. And it seems reasonable that the interpretation should depend on the science. Otherwise we risk embracing an interpretation that becomes a barrier to progress, or that is overturned by new experimental evidence. I think the biggest problem with fundamental physics today, is that it's hard. As in, hard enough that it's not yielding answers at the rate that it was 100 years ago, and we don't know when it will: 10 years, 100, 1000? The big problem -- reconciling quantum mechanics and gravity -- won't be solved until we solve it. A theory that solves this problem will require one of those two things to be "wrong" in some sense, in which case its interpretation will have to be revised.