No, not neccessarily. It's purpose is to make predictions. It need not be an accurate description of reality. We know this from our own internal model of reality and from classical mechanics, neither of which seem to be accurate descriptions of reality but both of which are very good models for predicting outcomes.
I happen to disagree with ta1234567890 too, and think the parent is correct, and ta1234567890's comment is non-sensical.
He says:
"I really dislike it when explanations about reality become explanations about a model of reality. Can the original question be answered without assuming some model is the perfect reflection of reality, or just without using the model?"
My point is, you cannot talk about reality without using a model, except in some obscure philosophical sense (like e.g. Kant's ding an sich).
Models are not some bizarro abstractions that have little to do with reality, they are exactly our way of talking about reality. Any talk about reality is about a model of reality.
So ta1234567890 inquiry is bogus, we can't have "explanations about reality [NOT] become explanations about a model of reality".
That models are abstractions, and that 'the map is not the territorry" (two ideas that might have informed ta123456... comment) is correct, but it just means that no model is perfect. Not that model-less talk about reality is possible...
Plus, the idea that no model is perfect, is problematic in itself, often usef for a tin-foil rejection of any model. Some models can be perfect for their domain, or perfect for up to some very small degree of measurement error...
They're tools to predict experience. Anything beyond that is philosophy, positive or negative (i.e. that they are only that or that they are more than that). Your philosophical position is that the reason that they are able to predict future experience is because they accurately describe reality to some degree. This is just the opposite position of Hume. If you think that the models give us knowledge of reality, then this is the opposite position of Kant.
Your position is held by only 57.1% of professional philosophers. The Humean position is held by 24.7%. [1] My point here is that Kant's position is hardly obscure being that one more extreme than it is held by a quarter of philosophers and it's not wise for you to take your position as being objectively correct and anything else a "misunderstanding." Even if you only mean that it is more common, it's firstly only barely so and secondly however reality is or is not is not going to be decided democratically.
I think additionally that your position is particularly naive considering that QM doesn't even pretend to tell us how reality actually is. That's what the various interpretations do. Or will you claim that QM is not a physical model?
Isn't that backwards? QM, without "interpretation" tells what outcomes of experiments should be. That's reality.
The interpretations are interchangeable, so even if there was some oracle to tell us one of them was better, it wouldn't tell us anything about reality.
If you stop believing in QM, everything happens just as before and if all knowledge was lost, the theory could be recreated.
But if you stop believing in the Copenhagen interpretation, and start believing in many-worlds, or you say "the hand of God directs things", nothing changes. If all knowledge of those ideas vanished, nothing would ensure it was recreated.
What people want to know is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. What you've claimed so far is that the results of experiments (i.e. effects) don't go away if you stop believing in them. This isn't controversial; however it is incomplete. It doesn't tell us what caused the effects. If many-worlds, for example, is true, then when you stop believing in it then its branching and branches will not go away. If pilot-wave theory is true, the pilot waves do not go away when you stop believing in them. If objective collapse theories are true, wave functions spontaneously collapse whether you believe so or not. You, on the other hand, are only accounting for effects and models, not causes and what is modeled.
If so, I don't know what.
Anyway, I think you're implicitly privileging one abstraction, called an "interpretation" over "just the plain math". But if they're equivalent, what is real about choosing one or the other, let alone between different "interpretations"?
Why is an "interpretation" a real thing and not the equations?
This seems structurally similar to a classic theological argument between theist and atheist; ok, you believe in a god, but why that particular god? And if there's no reason for a particular god, why bother with any?
Like the things I mentioned. Please read more carefully.
> Anyway, I think you're implicitly privileging one abstraction, called an "interpretation" over "just the plain math".
One doesn't need to privilege one over the other to ask what the math is about.
> Why is an "interpretation" a real thing and not the equations?
Nobody thinks the math is not "a real thing." They want to know what the math is about.