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This Scott Aaronson lecture I really liked is relevant. It's like a "why quantum mechanics probably had to do the weird probability amplitudes (which can be negative and complex) instead of just normal probabilities even without experimental results" lecture: https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html

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I like SA's blog; and, based on that I bought this book (Quantum Computing Since the Time of Democritus). It's expensive and bad. Really mind-numbingly awful. I can't tell if his writing has improved dramatically since he wrote the book, or what. The entire book is done in this tongue-in-cheek pseudo-first-person, chatty, pseudo-Socratic dialogue style. That sort of stuff is fine for, say, a couple of tightly-written pages. But ... not for hundreds of pages. It's a pity, since the information in the book is good.

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