Hmm, I suppose my personal classification is slightly different. Thanks for pointing that out.
The agnostic position is “shut up and calculate”, which is basically resigning to one’s inability to model the Born rule with anything better.
The instrumentalist position is to admit that doing research related to the Born rule origins is essential for progress in understanding the fundamentals of QM, but to also acknowledge that interpretations are not interesting physical models and at best have only an inspirational value.
The realist position (hidden variables are fundamental, collapse is fundamental, or MWI is fundamental, or Bohmian mechanics is fundamental) is the one that is easiest to falsify, as soon as it sticks its neck out with testable predictions (Bohm and collapse do not play well with relativity, local hidden variables run afoul of the Bell theorem, MWI makes no testable predictions whatsoever).
I suppose the confusion is that last paragraph: “There are, then, two entirely distinct kinds of physical processes: “ordinary” ones, in which the wave function evolves in a leisurely fashion under the Schrodinger equation, and “measurements”, in which [it] suddenly and discontinuously collapses.” This is a realist position, so I don’t favor it, because it does not make any testable predictions.
I think your flavor of instrumentalism is a respectable position in the foundational debate, but to describe it as the standard position is incorrect.
OK, I will stop calling it standard, just instrumental.
I think there was a time when physicists in general had a more operationalist bent, but things have changed.
Hmm, I suppose my personal classification is slightly different. Thanks for pointing that out.
The agnostic position is “shut up and calculate”, which is basically resigning to one’s inability to model the Born rule with anything better.
The instrumentalist position is to admit that doing research related to the Born rule origins is essential for progress in understanding the fundamentals of QM, but to also acknowledge that interpretations are not interesting physical models and at best have only an inspirational value.
The realist position (hidden variables are fundamental, collapse is fundamental, or MWI is fundamental, or Bohmian mechanics is fundamental) is the one that is easiest to falsify, as soon as it sticks its neck out with testable predictions (Bohm and collapse do not play well with relativity, local hidden variables run afoul of the Bell theorem, MWI makes no testable predictions whatsoever).
I suppose the confusion is that last paragraph: “There are, then, two entirely distinct kinds of physical processes: “ordinary” ones, in which the wave function evolves in a leisurely fashion under the Schrodinger equation, and “measurements”, in which [it] suddenly and discontinuously collapses.” This is a realist position, so I don’t favor it, because it does not make any testable predictions.
OK, I will stop calling it standard, just instrumental.
How?