Suppose I had casually dismissed a belief that the sun would rise tomorrow because induction was unprovable. Or I had gone after the rule of the excluded middle. THEN it might make sense to wonder if I was making some largish mistake in over interpreting the non-deducibility of some things which we nevertheless treat as true.

But MWI is vastly different from these other unprovable beliefs.

Induction and simple logic have been overwhelmingly useful in making true statements about the future, the essence of man's power. I can design and build a machine based on inducing that the laws of engineering (or physics if you prefer) I have developed previously will apply to this new configuration, and I will be wrong sometimes but I will be right sometimes and the machine will work, and will move me across 1000s of miles in a few hours or will allow me to discuss rationality with people whose physical locations are scattered widely.

To the best of my knowledge, MWI is not actually "used" for anything that Copenhagen cannot currently also be used for. And the best of my knowledge is pretty good. But further, I have ASKED if I am missing something numerous times. And further, if y'all were championing Copenhagen as though the alternatives (even the not-yet known ones) were dismissable, I'd be making fun of that.

And wedrifid didn't choose not to interact with me, rather he chose to interact with me by labeling my post as "puerile" and "political."

Parenthetically he is right that my post had an element of immaturity. I was mainly making a point that had no relationship to MWI and for fun I threw a casual rebuke at MWI in to it. When dealing with a clubby lot who wear MWI the way Mormons wear magic underwear, this is a stupid thing to do. I could have made the point I wanted to make and not had you and wedrifid get your metaphorical panties in a bunch.

But you see, I have certain other beliefs which get in the way of my respecting the sacred cows of a group purporting, among other purposes, a general interest and respect for methods of avoiding error. I believe respect for sacred cows is consistently more productive of error than protective from it. I believe that minority opinions from well informed and thoughtful people are valuable in protecting from error, and may even be invaluable.

And by the way, I don't think a belief in sacred cows "totally subverts rationality." Even when it is literally a belief in sacred cows. There's plenty of wonderful Hindu engineers and physicists out there building great stuff and finding great truths. When they tell me about quarks, the sacred cows are irrelevant. When they tell me how to avoid human error and human biases, the sacred cows come in to play.

So I suppose, ultimately, the questions are: Is MWI more like a sacred cow, more like Mormon magic underwear, or more like induction? How many of the purposes of lesswrong do we thwart if MWI is not accepted as a given? Is "cult of personality" a valid purpose of lesswrong? Is "cult of personality" something to avoid for lesswrong? Do the constant sniping of highly trained and educated, but "puerile" skeptics at our weakest beliefs serve us or thwart us? Does "catastrophizing" the claims of these skeptics in order to promote the dismissal of these skeptics serve or hinder the purpose of being less wrong?

Because if I'm understanding you correctly, well... let's just say I disagree and leave it at that.

In summary, I don't believe you were understanding me correctly. I think it is perfectly possible to make a bad choice about MWI (whichever direction that might mean) and still be a net plus by a wide margin to rationality. What do you think?