I think there is plenty of pessimism in the OP. Essentially physicists today do not understand quantum theory better than the last generation of physicists did.

I think there is plenty of pessimism in the OP. Essentially physicists today do not understand quantum theory better than the last generation of physicists did. I got my master in physics 20 years ago, and it was fairly obvious to me then that this would be the case. Now compare that with AI/ML or large scale data processing over the last 20 years. I don’t think you should assume that the smartest people were those that didn’t see this coming and wanted to spend their life on interpretations of double slit experiments and string theory.