[lambdatronics]

If QM were a tool, it would be a hammer with a corkscrew for a handle. Sure, it works if you can manage to swing it, but it's really hard to grasp -- has awful mental ergonomics. What distinguishes a true theory (as a mental tool) from a bag of tricks: having that underlying model that we can wrap our minds around.

Some physicists claim it's inevitable because we don't have direct sensory access to quintessential quantum behavior -- we can only have intuitive models for classical physics. I don't buy it -- the human imagination is quite powerful.

I suspect that a superior theory (1) will be mathematically equivalent to QM (2) may suggest obvious extensions that are not equivalent, leading to testable predictions (3) won't result from merely reshuffling equations -- it'll take some serious inspiration.

Another hunch: the decoherence approach is barking up the wrong tree. The lesson of Schroedinger's cat is that realism doesn't emerge from a non-realistic theory. It seems like locality has a better chance of being an emergent property.