In my understanding, what you have presented is an argument for why MWI is interesting (is has strong aesthetic appeal) and why it’s worth looking into seriously (it doesn’t seem to have spontaneous breaking of symmetry).
What I’m looking for is a compilation of reasons that I should believe that it is true, basically a list of problems with other interpretations and how MWI fixes it along with refutations of common objections to MWI. I should also note that I’m explicitly asking for rigorous arguments (I actually am a physicist and I’d like to see the math) and not just casual arguments that make things seem plausible.
On the issue of many-world, I must just be slow because I can’t see how it is “obviously” correct. It certainly seems both self consistent and consistent with observation, but I don’t see how this in particular puts it so far ahead of other ways of understanding QM as to be the default view. If anyone knows of a really good summary for somebody who’s actually studied physics on why MWI is so great (and sadly, Eliezer’s posts here and on overcomingbias don’t do it for me) I would greatly appreciate the pointer.
In particular, two things that I have a hard time wrapping my head around are: -If multiple worlds really are “splitting” from our own how is this accomplished without serious violations of mass and energy conservation. (I’m sure somebody has treated this somewhere since it’s so basic, but I’ve never seen it.) -Even assuming everything else is fine, the actual mechanism for which world diverge has to be spelled out. (Maybe it is somewhere, if so please help me end my ignorance.)
I’ll admit that I haven’t actually spent a great deal of time considering the issue, but I’ve never come across answers to basic questions of this sort.