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I didn't study physics in university, so please forgive this naïve question. Would an appropriate interpretation of quantum physics simply be that we don't have

I didn't study physics in university, so please forgive this naïve question. Would an appropriate interpretation of quantum physics simply be that we don't have an interpretation of quantum physics? We have mathematical equations and observations that confirm the math, but it seems that we don't have observations that give credibility to one interpretation over the others. Instead of speculating, can't we just agree that we don't know? I'm not suggesting that we should do that -- I suspect that there's a lot that I'm missing. But I guess I don't understand why these speculative interpretations are so alluring if we can't confirm or invalidate them through experiments.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
It's a valid concern to be sure, and one with a lot of interesting historical background. Foundations of quantum mechanics was a taboo subject in physics ever since the Bohr-Einstein debates, and still is to this day, in some circles. And mosts physicists actually do this; they don't worry about intepretation of quantum mechanics in their work. They use the Schrödinger equation and the Born rule for their calculations and leave it at that. This is often referred to as "shut up and calculate". But the measurement problem, addressed through these interpretations is a foundational problem, and the tricky thing with those is you have no idea what the implications might be on other foundational problems. An understanding of the measurement problem may very well have something to say about other open questions like the arrow of time or quantum gravity. It could even have implications for the scalability of quantum computers. And I don't think it's fair to say that this question is empirically unanswerable. A number of possible interpretations have actually been ruled out by the bell inequality, for instance. And both theoretical and empirical research on this topic has seen a resurgence in recent decades. On a purely sociological basis I feel inclined to think that the reason the measurement problem has seemed so incalcitrant is not because it's fundamentally unsolvable, but because physics as a field has denied itself from actually trying to solve it, and actively pushed out those who dared work on it.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

It's a valid concern to be sure, and one with a lot of interesting historical background. Foundations of quantum mechanics was a taboo subject in physics ever since the Bohr-Einstein debates, and still is to this day, in some circles. And mosts physicists actually do this; they don't worry about intepretation of quantum mechanics in their work. They use the Schrödinger equation and the Born rule for their calculations and leave it at that. This is often referred to as "shut up and calculate". But the measurement problem, addressed through these interpretations is a foundational problem, and the tricky thing with those is you have no idea what the implications might be on other foundational problems. An understanding of the measurement problem may very well have something to say about other open questions like the arrow of time or quantum gravity. It could even have implications for the scalability of quantum computers. And I don't think it's fair to say that this question is empirically unanswerable. A number of possible interpretations have actually been ruled out by the bell inequality, for instance. And both theoretical and empirical research on this topic has seen a resurgence in recent decades. On a purely sociological basis I feel inclined to think that the reason the measurement problem has seemed so incalcitrant is not because it's fundamentally unsolvable, but because physics as a field has denied itself from actually trying to solve it, and actively pushed out those who dared work on it.