The philosophical interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is a very hard, unsolved problem. There are many reasons why quantum mechanics is theoretically good and philosophically terrible, and not just in a subtle, esoteric way. The reason is that in Quantum Mechanics there are 2 main types of entities: particles, "things" that evolve according to the Schrodinger equation, and "observers". Observers are what deliver to us the results of randomly sampling from the probability distribution defined by the squared amplitude of the wave function by "collapsing" it, according to the Copenhagen interpretation. However, there is no particle that acts as an observer, they all just follow the Schrodinger equation, but nothing that exists isn't a particle. How could "observers" exist and interact with particles then? The Copenhagen interpretation is philosophically terrible. And it really pisses me off that this article title seems to hint that they've really confirmed it. In a lab, an experimenter can just point to his apparatus and say, "that's the observer". Or, being more formal, they can say a thermodynamically irreversible process plays the role of an observer. But this is not really a satisfying explanation because how could it be possible to generate these large, discontinuous motions we call "collapse" on the macroscale if it is impossible on the microscale? There are the multiverse theories that you seem to describe, but they have their own problems. Rae's Quantum Physics: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Illusion-Reality-Class...

goes over a lot of them without getting to messy in the math. Other interpretations of QM are in the book as well. There are many:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...