Yo, sorry i've been a bit useless.

Just going to ramble a bit about what I know

of QM, nothing technical or really argumentative, more a kind of vibe. I'm doing
like a literature review project this term as one of my papers, and one of the
supervisors was actually doing "Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics" - I applie
d for it but it was suuuper popular and there was like, 2 places, so I'm doing s
omething much less interesting.
Everything we've learned so far (all the mathematical methods / calculations / p
redictions) are based on the Copenhagen interpretation, which doesn't offer any
explanation per se as to why QM is like it is, it's just a model that solved the
problems leading to the development of QM and fits observable behaviour as we k
now it. So it seems at least to me like that's all you really need to 'do physic
s', which I guess is why there isn't much talk in the scientific establishment a
bout interpretations of QM (at least as far as I'm aware, not that I read anythi
ng outside of my course). (Assume you've come across Copenhagen - in brief,
- 'a state' (a particle, a whole bunch of particles, the entire Universe... a de
scription of some system) is completely described by a wavefunction (i.e. the fu
nction provides all the information there could possibly be about that system) (
there are some conditions on the wave-function. More importantly, the wavefuncti
on itself is not an observable thing - you can't measure the 'value' of it, at b
est you can only measure the probability density, which is the modulus (magntitu
de i.e. w/o the +/- sign) squared of it.)
- for an observable quantity A, say (like velocity or linear momentum), instead
of the quantity being a property of the particle/system that changes with time,
etc., and is in some way inherent to that systeml in QM there's an operator corr
esponding to that quantity, and the action of that operator on the system gives
you the possible values if you were to measure that quantity of the system. So i
t's not like the quantity's value is a thing carried around by a particle, it's
more like that quantity is some action upon a particle. The first weirder bit is
that the results of a measurement of the quantity A are discrete - like, it cou
ld be a or -a for example (and that the possible values are the eigen-values of
the operator A, but that's just maths really. Importantly the results are a prop
erty of the corresponding operator, not the system.) (Again there are conditions
on the kind of operator - the important one being because we only ever measure
real quantities - imaginary numbers are 'a thing', in some sense, but we can nev
er measure like, 1+i.)
- now, corresponding to each of those possible results of the measurement (the e
igenvalues of A), there is an associated (eigen)state. The probability of measur
ing a certain value for A is determined by the corresponding eigenstate and the
state of the system.
- the really weird bit: the collapse of the wavefunction. When we perform a meas
urement of the quantity A of our system that gives the value a, say, we change t
he state of the system to the eigenstate of our A operator corresponding to that
measured value a.
(Apart from this, a state/wavefunction evolves in time according to the Schrodin
ger equation - which seems more like classical physics, because it's just a diff
erential equation.)
Other than that, the many-worlds interpretation seems pretty sensible to me. I m
ean, it's not 'science' b/c it doesn't make any predictions that we could test,
but if you're interested in preserving a kind of Platonic existence of mathemati
cal entities, then making the wavefunction a 'real' thing, rather than something
which 'collapses', then it's sensible.
I basically think the hidden-variable stuff is rubbish, it's clinging on to a pa
radigm that used to apply, it's a kind of reactionary response from people who d
on't want to lose the order and security they felt like classical science had (y
ou know, straightforward causality, particles as real, tangible 'things', whatev
er). A cop-out, really - not to say we know everything there is to know about QM

v. classical right now, but that we can't suppose it'll come under the classica
l paradigm again.
Personally I don't really see physics as a tool to understand the nature of the
universe / "the way things are", but strictly a predictive tool - like, you come
up with a theoretical model of a certain behaviour that applies under certain c
onditions, you test it via experiment under those conditions to try and verify t
hat it works to some desirable degree of accuracy for the intended applications
- and if that's all fine, then what you have is something that can reliably be u
sed to make predictions about a certain behaviour under certain conditions, whic
h you can put to some use - rather than getting at some objective reality. QM v.
classical physics is the same thing - the latter is still useful in the vast ma
jority of applications, same with General Relativity v. Newtonian gravity etc.
Which isn't to say I don't think there's any value thinking about Reality, just
that Science / the scientific method isn't able to bridge the gap from us to obj
ective reality. Like, it can inform our conceptualization of the universe, and d
oes to a great extent, and that's totally sensible, but it can never verify or p
rove it. Maybe that's not relevant.
Anyway - that's about as much use as I can be, I'm not sure how much any of that
will help or what you've come across / are writing about so far - but hope it g
oes well!