〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

I'd say all paths in path integrals are real. We have experiments showing these crazy paths seem to exist (e.g. triple slit experiments). What we informally call "real\reality" is just large-scale decoherence between different indicator states.

I see the motivation for your conclusion, but there’s a huge degeneracy in the theory space! many formulations of QM give the same physical predictions

I mean, can you think of any mathematical idea that isn't degenerate, without a different method to get the same result? I can't. So why would any mathematical description of physics ever be unique? It makes sense to me to look for answers in a different conceptual level, then.

That’s true! But hopefully those equivalent mathematical descriptions can give rise to different physical predictions somehow.

That's a hope, but why would they? At some point the descriptions end up being mathematically equivalent, don't they? Happens all the time in math! I don't put any hopes on experiments discerning what's the One True Way past some point. I'm not sure we're there yet, though.

Yes you’re right .. I suppose I should have said mathematically equivalilent in the ‘classical’ limit .. like how GR was to Newtonian gravity