Agreed, to an extent. But some of the parts of QM seem like things reality demands (double slit experiments) and other parts seem like horrible mathematical art

Agreed, to an extent. But some of the parts of QM seem like things reality demands (double slit experiments) and other parts seem like horrible mathematical artifacts that in enough years we'll come to regret (like the Schrödinger equation). But of course that's not a stance I can defend unless we figure out a better mathematical model for it. Just a hunch.