Well, I prefer not to vote and rather give my personal comment (at least to call for other comments
).
I still have not understood why one wants to have a single “interpretation” concerning QM interpretations.
My main problem with the QM interpretations concerns the “many words” used within the interpretation itself that usually displace the physical problem towards philosophy or metaphysics rather than focussing on "concrete" physics. Currently, I cannot see what usable information a peculiar QM interpretation can bring to a physicist (except for an equivalent mathematical model).
When we use the Newtonian mechanics, we have not such questions (at least myself
). Have you been questioning the possible statistical Newtonian mechanics interpretations?
I do not think so.
However, with statistical Newtonian mechanics we can build the same vote for the possible interpretations: MWI, de brooglie Bohm, orthodox or Copenhagen. All the philosophical content of these point of views are possible. Is it possible to make such a vote?
Nevertheless, today, not many people (I know) seem to be concerned by the interpretations of the statistical Newtonian mechanics. Moreover, I cannot see the physical information such an interpretation can bring to Newtonian mechanics (may be I am too short minded).
In addition, when we remove the interpretation philosophy, all the proposed interpretations rely on the postulates/assumptions of QM:
** unitary state system evolution
** born rules: given an input state, we have a probability “p_out” to get an output state.
** The experimental results: I call it the experimental result postulate and it is usually called “projection postulate” of “collapse postulate”. This assertion explains the results of an experiment (what an observer can see/measure).
It is mainly the last point together (with the born rules) that is subject to interpretations. However as far as I have searched, no one of these interpretations try to explain (with testable experiments) the born rules and/or the experimental results. Consequently, I wonder what a particular interpretation can bring to my knowledge of physics.
Let’s take the de Brooglie Bohm (DBM) theory as an example:
DBM is by construction an equivalent mathematical model of QM but with its own interpretation/philosophy. The DBM interpretation statement “q(t) describes the path of a bohmian particle” is non testable (included in the principles of DBM model). It is thus a philosophy to believe or not on the “reality” interpretation of the bohmian particle, that has no impact on the testable results of QM: No new testable information is brought by this interpretation.
If we follow this philosophy (the reality of the bohmian particle), we will say that there exists a faster than light quantum potential while if we reject this interpretation we have no FTL potential. In this peculiar aspect, this interpretation consequence is almost analogue to the interpretation of the electromagnetic field in the coulomb gauge: Is the electric coulomb potential V(r) a FTL signal or not? Well, depending on the interpretation, consistent with the Maxwell equations, we want to give we can say yes or no without changing the physics or the special relativity content (Lorentz invariance).
So, I return to my question: what sort of usable information a peculiar QM interpretation can provide (except for equivalent mathematical models). If it is the physical explanation of the experimental results (the projection postulate), I prefer to say it is the scope of the decoherence program (as long as we do not mix philosophy with the results).
Seratend.
P.S. For the physical explanation of the born rules (the source of statistics in QM), I currently do not know if there is any interesting results available.