Are Particles Real, or Model Dependent?

I found this new video confusing:

Why particles might not exist | Sabine Hossenfelder, Hilary Lawson, Tim Maudlin

Sabine Hossenfelder, Hilary Lawson, and Tim Maudlin discuss the existence of particles, quantum field theory, and ultimate reality.

Are particles just an invention of the human mind?

From Democritus to Einstein, we have assumed the world is made of tiny building blocks of matter. But the more we’ve looked for them, the more they’ve disappeared. Our best theory now proposes the world is better described by ‘fields’ that don’t have the familiar properties of physical bits, things, or particles. Yet physicists still refer to particles, though few seem to agree on their nature. Some say they ‘approximately exist’ and others say that they don’t exist at all. Stranger still, there are ‘quasiparticles’, phenomena that we can treat as particles and enable us to solve equations, but which we know aren't fundamentally real.

They argued about whether a particle is a vibration in a field.

They also argued about how to think about physics, when there are mathematically equivalent descriptions of it.

Even if it 11:10 were true, we're we have that all the 11:12 time in physics and we don't think they 11:14 have to be equal. So, Lorentz had an 11:16 understanding of spacetime where there's 11:18 absolute simultaneity. 11:19 Einstein got rid of it, but you can 11:22 prove in their applications. They make 11:26 the same predictions. Nobody thinks 11:27 they're the same theory. All right? 11:29 There's different theories.

Actually I do think that they are same theory. Most people did in the early 1900s, as it was called Lorentz-Einstein theory (LET). Some said that Minkowski's theory was different, because it was based on a Lorentz-invariant spacetime geometry, but Einstein's was the same as Lorentz's. The main difference was that Einstein postulated the Michelson-Morley consequences.

Einstein's famous 1905 relativity paper has a whole section on simultaneity, but never says there is no absolute simultaneity. Here is how the section ends:

It is essential to have time defined by means of stationary clocks in the stationary system, and the time now defined being appropriate to the stationary system we call it “the time of the stationary system.”

The next section ends:

So we see that we cannot attach any absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity, but that two events which, viewed from a system of co-ordinates, are simultaneous, can no longer be looked upon as simultaneous events when envisaged from a system which is in motion relatively to that system.

So two events can be simultaneous in one frame, but not another. The same is true in Lorentz's theory, as motion makes time run more slowly.

Even today, it is generally believed that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) defines an absolute simultaneity.

It often happens that there are mathematically equivalent descriptions, in which I do not see how one can be more real than the other.

If particles are defined as having definite positions, velocities, and trajectories, then they are certainly not real. Quantum mechanics only says that they look real when observations are made.